Check the awesome Auburn promotion video. #NoMercy
A very cool edit.
Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.
(via Texas East Kids)
British Gymnastics – Nigel Hill
He’s a marketing guru with experience at Reebok and adidas. He’s been working for BG for 18 months.
Q. As someone coming in to gymnastics from the outside, what struck you immediately as being the big untapped opportunities within the sport?
A. … From the outside, I thought I could see that gymnastics seemed under-commercialised.
Q. Were there specific, unforseen barriers to how you commercialise the rights and properties?
A. The sport itself is – certainly was – very focussed on the organisational stuff: safeguarding and regulations and so on. Quite rightly so …
I saw [British Gymnastics] as a hidden gem. …
A. Tell us how you’re trying to shift the brand and the narrative…
The three main headlines …:
1) We have a participation boom, particularly among our core audience of 5-14s.
2) We’re medalling well at the high performance level; and
3) We have this high female bias – roughly 80% in our participation.
Q. What impact have you seen so far?
A. ‘Power to amaze’ is not an external strapline, but rather a brand essence. We’ll be starting to roll it out across our events this Spring.
It’s also informed our commercial proposition, which has three main threads.
One is around community. …
The second area for partnership is innovation. …
The third area … is that we have access to really engaging and interesting content in gymnastics.
From behind-the-scenes to clubs to gymnasts – there’s a whole thread. … Gymnastics already benchmarks really well against other sports on social media, particularly Facebook and YouTube. …
(He mentions Nile Wilson’s YouTube channel with 1m + subscribers.)
… But we know many gymnasts have their own platforms and audiences outside of British Gymnastics, and they’re free to pursue those commercial opportunities to supplement their funding.
Q. As a sport that enjoys a huge Olympic boom every four years, how does that cycle affect your planning?
A. One of the incongruous things is that our high performance success has mainly been driven from the men’s side, but our participation is driven from the female side. …
Sport Industry Group – NIGEL HILL Q&A: GYM GETS COMMERCIAL
Click through. There’s much more.
IN THE BEGINNING … was Blythe Lawrence
In the early days of the gymternet, Blythe was the only trained journalist. To start she wrote for a site called Gymnastics Examiner.
Liked and respected by all, Blythe got called up to work for FIG in Switzerland. She speaks French. That helps.
When Aly Raisman asked her to collaborate on her book Fierce, Blythe left FIG.
Happily — for us 🙂 — Blythe is back posting under the name Rocker. Check a sample post with the highlights of this past weekend.
U.K. interview with Simone
In advance of Simone’s appearance at the Superstars Of Gymnastics in London on 23 March, the Guardian newspaper posted an in-depth feature.
… At times, she seems younger than her years, a product of the almost religiously sheltered upbringing of the professional child athlete. At others, she sounds like a 45-year-old woman who should be running for political office. …
What has become apparent, in the last year, is Biles’ moral courage. As an athlete, she is talked of in the same breath as Serena Williams …
Like most professional athletes, she is incredibly hard on herself and competes less with others than with her own internal set of ideals. …
“Even when I win, there are still times when I’m upset. Like at Worlds, last year. It doesn’t mean, because you win, you’ll be happy.” Why? “I fell twice. Yes, I still won. But I didn’t put out my best performance.”
in praise of Toni-Ann
Toni-Ann Williams is one of the 6 finalists for the AAI.
Sadly she had a season and NCAA career ending injury — Achilles tendon tear.
Click PLAY or watch her coaches & teammates on Facebook.
Claudia Fragapane – new Floor
Claudia will be competing Europeans, replacing Kelly Simm who had to withdraw due to a foot fracture.
Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.
how to land Handspring double front
It’s dangerous. It ain’t easy.
Click PLAY or watch Garrett Kasiski on Twitter.
Click PLAY or watch it again on Twitter.
new skill by Gabriel Hannah
Coach Will Banthorpe posted this.
Handspring to double salto forwards with 1/2 twist ~ Morandi with 1/2 turn.
Yep. It should be impossible.
Click PLAY or watch it on Instagram.
Gabriel competed it this weekend and was awarded E-value.
Click PLAY or watch it on Instagram.
backward handspring from sitting position
Ana PADURARIU – Beam
Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.
Brazil’s obviously a team medal contender for Tokyo. But don’t count out Canada. Just saying’.
With smaller team size and increased parity, it could come down to who has the best performance on the day. #consistency
