Thursday, July 10, 2008

C'mon ESPN, you know better that that!

I'm a big fan of Rick Reilly, former Sports Illustrated and current ESPN columnist. I couldn't wait for his new book, Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, to hit book stores in Canada.

I was reading a post of his on ESPN.com, and noticed, right next to his column, an ad for Kenny Mane's book: An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport.

Now maybe ESPN.com is to blame for not thinking of it, and maybe Sports Illustrated is to blame (publisher of Reilly's book) for not asking for it, but wouldn't you want to have an ad for the book written by the columnist next to the columnist's column?

If I'm reading Rick Reilly online, I'm a really captive audience for Rick Reilly's book. Not Kenny Mane's.

It's possible that ESPN.com wouldn't sell ad space to SI because SI has its online affiliation with CNN (sportsillustrated.cnn.com). But it would be in ESPN.com's best interest because click-throughs would go up, and better stats leads to better online ad sales, and more revenue. Plus, if you can demonstrate that kind of intuition when creating your online ad campaigns, you can pitch that attention to detail and advertiser focus to possible advertisers.

The point is, never stop thinking about possible cross-sell opportunities like this. Stay active in your marketing.

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