Psychographic segmentation differentiates customers by grouping them using personality traits, attitudes, and lifestyles that are common among them. The method includes past, present, as well as prospective customers and proves very useful when marketing the same product over and over to a heterogeneous population segment. According to Haider et al. (2017), when psychographic segmentation is executed expertly, it results in unexpected returns in terms of profits, loyalty, and value to the company. The method is popular in sports marketing, as marketers use psychographic segmentation to differentiate the population and maximize profits. The Ontario Reign is a perfect example. The team is California based, and it made a play in the 2015-16 season (Elite Prospects, 2020). The success of the team at that time can only be attributed to the discovery of their fans' avidity. Kilmer (2017) describes avid fans as those fanatics who have an attached emotional connection to the game. Such individuals have extreme enthusiasm that defies the norm.
The Ontario Reign understands their avid fans. For instance, most of them attend all of the team's games and also consume the product, hockey, through different media means. According to a recent survey, most of The Ontario Reign fans are around 39 years old and prefer buying high-quality gadgets such as high definition televisions to keep watching their favorite team. Additionally, most of them are active on social media, considering that the Ontario Reign have over 100,000 followers across all social media platforms (Elite Prospects, 2020). The team also has a website that updates them on various upcoming games and changes. The Ontario Reign incorporates all its media platforms and posts on the website, which helps enthusiastic fans gather all the information from one place instead of going through all the other channels. From a marketing perspective, such fans can be described as web-centric in that other fans communicate through email, direct mail, and even postcards. The Ontario Reign then collects both online and offline data to gauge and see the number of avid fans that they have. Although the number is not definite, based on online activity and number of direct mails and postcards.
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Another way that The Ontario Reign interacts with fans is through their shop, ontarioreignshop.com, which has all types of products ranging from accessories, women wear, and featured products that bear the team's name and logo. Moreover, the interaction is further enhanced through other online events like the AHL auctions. During such events, thousands of fans come together to meet the teams and also purchase jerseys alongside other branded items. In doing so, the team gets to interact with them while also making profits through such purchases. The team's prices are also considerably low, with t-shirts going for as low as $20 (AHLSTORE.COM, 2020). This is because the Ontario Reign understands the demographic compositions of their fans. Considering most of them are middle-aged with families, setting the prices too high would mean that most cannot afford it since they have other family-related expenses. For this reason, the team's shop sets the prices at reasonable amounts to make sure fans enjoy the games wearing branded items that they can afford. The Ontario Reign also offers direct-to-consumer products such as bottle openers, which is in line with its goal of a 360-degree customer view.
The Ontario Reign is also affiliated with NHL's Los Angeles Kings, in a franchise that has helped the team build its brand name. Prior to the affiliation, hockey has faced some tough times, which can be traced back to the 2005 lockout (Treber et al., 2018). Since then, the leading sports television network, ESPN, has relegated hockey outside the mainstream, apart from when it’s in season. For this reason, the franchise came at an appropriate time since LA kings had found a new way to integrate social media with earnestness. The Ontario Reign has finally found a way to change the game through a change in their personality on social media. As Godey et al. (2016) explains, social media influence does not happen overnight, and at times, a change of personality comes in handy in substantiating the efforts of gaining popularity. The team's stakeholders understand that which is why they have opened doors for fans to not only interact with them but also take part in sports consumption. Though the use of social media, particularly twitter, the Ontario Reign has managed to bring down certain barriers that made fans not to get through to the team. This has been done by transforming the fans from just avid and voyeuristic to co-producers and participants in sports consumption. In doing so, the team has been able to interact with fans in ways that the hockey industry has never seen before contributing to their success.
Social media marketing and interaction are not the only strategies that the Ontario Reign has utilized. The team has also utilized brand animation by having a unique logo that sets it apart from other ice hockey teams. The Ontario Reign has gone a step further into interacting with sports-related personalities such as team insiders and bloggers to give the team a buzz it needs to be recognized. One of the popular blogs is Mayors Manor, which has topped the list of Los Angeles Times' most influential sports blogs once (Skrba, 2020). The Ontario Reign maintains a close relationship with the blog by giving out helpful scoops about the players and team in general. What is more, the team invites Mayors Manor, which also covers news about the LA Kings to publish pre-game reviews to boost the rating of the team. In doing so, it gets the fans talking about the team even before the tournaments begin, thus boosting the interactive spirit. Wells (2017) agrees with the tactic by adding that brand animation using the various social media platforms allow teams and organization to communicate with fans and potential customers. Nevertheless, this tactic is not new since most business persons link different websites to their social media pages to get more potential clients to view their products and services. However, when Ontario Reign does it, it results in a chain of links that brings together many users and platforms, forming a robust online community of fans and sports consumers with the team in the middle of it. The result of this is a seamless relationship between the team, fans, team-sources that are both official and unofficial as well as bloggers.
The Ontario Reign has taken it a step further by introducing a social fun club platform to interact with fans across the country on matters outside the club. For instance, fans get to ask the players personal questions and share experiences that they can relate to. Moreover, the club is in charge of collecting and organizing the team's content from all over the internet, including opinion polls and hashtags and pooling them together on the platform. By so doing, the fans have reorganized the content since the team's inception into one big online club where fans from all over can access and associate themselves with the Ontario Reign brand. When such a relationship is nurtured, the fans not only transform from being consumers to producers and synthesizers of information leading to more popularity and eventually profits.
References
Elite Prospects. (2020). Ontario Reign at Eliteprospects.com . https://www.Eliteprospects.Com/Team/2694/Ontario-Reign
Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R. (2016). Social Media Marketing Efforts of Luxury Brands: Influence on Brand Equity and Consumer Behavior. Journal of Business Research , 69 (12), 5833-5841.
Haider, A. A., Zafar, A., Khalid, A., Majid, A., Abdullah, M. A., & Sarwar, M. B. (2017). Marketing Management. Head, B , 22.
Kilmer, E. (2017). Professional Hockey Elements Attracting Fans to AHL Games. Sport Management Undergraduate, 130.
AHLSTORE.COM. (2020). Ontario Reign . https://www.ahlstore.com/collections/ontario-reign
Treber, J., Mulcahy, L., & Sharma, M. B. (2018). Empty Seats or Empty Threats? Examining the Effects of the 1994-1995 And 2004-2005 Lockouts on Attendance and Revenue in The National Hockey League. Journal of Sports Economics , 19 (5), 677-695.
Skrba, A. (2020, February 9). Best Blogs In 2020 - 30+ Examples of Popular & Successful Blogs . https://Firstsiteguide.Com/Examples-Of-Blogs/
Wells, P. (2019). Just Do It, Impossible Is Nothing: Animation and Sports Commercials. In Animation and Advertising (Pp. 179-193). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
