Hold up, hold up!! We need to pause for the briefest of moments and think about something slightly nonsensical.
Music is among the most personal and powerful of all art forms. It soundtracks the highs and lows of human experience. Sport is much the same: the irrational adoration of a team seemingly incapable of winning.
Emotion. Identity. Memory. Belonging.
Yet the principal systems we use to profile the 'identifiable fan' cannot capture, analyse or explain the basis of that human connection.
They can connect every stream, click, purchase, ticket and interaction. Brilliant. Valuable. Technically impressive.
But the technology can connect the evidence. It cannot make the human meaning appear.
And if the person has never purchased, registered, attended, downloaded or joined? They are not an incomplete record. They are completely invisible.
YOU CAN OWN THE DATA AND STILL MISUNDERSTAND THE FAN
Owning fan data matters. But possessing the record of someone’s behaviour is not the same as understanding the person.
The fan who spends most may not be the most passionate. The supporter who attends least may be making the greatest sacrifice. And some of your most influential advocates may barely appear in your database at all.
Article 47 of The Superfan Formula asks a deceptively simple question: what do you actually understand when you ‘own’ the fan data?
SFF45: YOU KEEP USING THE WORD “INSIGHT”…
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the slide in your presentation labelled “Insights” probably doesn’t contain any.
Streams increased by 14%. Frequent match attendees buy more replica shirts. Vinyl buyers spend more on concert tickets.
These may be useful observations, patterns or correlations. But they do not necessarily explain why anything happened. And without the human explanation, we may be measuring activity while completely misunderstanding the person.
This atricle: why data, evidence and insight are not interchangeable and why knowing what fans did yesterday is not enough to create growth tomorrow.
You Keep Using the Word “Insight”…
AN AUDIENCE IS NOT A COMMUNITY. AND A COMMUNITY IS NOT A FAN STRATEGY.
There’s a growing consensus across music - and increasingly sport - that we need to build stronger, more direct relationships with fans. I agree completely, but we also need to be much more precise about what we mean.
An audience is not automatically a community.
A database is not automatically an owned relationship.
A group of highly engaged consumers is not automatically a fan strategy.
And calling something a community does not make it one.
Not every fan wants the same relationship. Some want access. Some want recognition. Some want to participate, create or advocate. Some simply want to listen, attend and remain quietly loyal for decades.
That does not make them less passionate. Although many of the engagement metrics we use to judge fandom would suggest otherwise.
This week’s edition of The Superfan Formula distinguishes between six things that are related - but absolutely not interchangeable.