Like Nike or Adidas, athlete’s themselves can also be thought of as a brand. And many athletes have been able to boost their brand and cash in on their popularity through the micro blogging site Twitter. For example, back in 2011, Shaquille O’Neal’s media strategists estimated that he could earn one to five million dollars through brand shout-outs on Twitter alone (“$5 million in 140 characters,” 2011). This was due to his 4.3 million followers, which has since grown to around 6.3 million in less than a year (“$5 million in 140 characters,” 2011; ; https://twitter.com/SHAQ).

Although Twitter allows sports athletes to present their own message, communicate with followers, and potentially earn a significant amount of advertising revenue dollars, the media is filled with a number of Twitter horror stories. The fact is that these ‘tweets’ are often unfiltered by marketers or public relation professionals (Pegoraro, 2010). This lack of filtration has gotten some of the tweeting athletes into more than a little hot water.

Athletes in this summer’s past Olympic games were not immune to the negative ramifications that can come from inappropriate Twitter remarks. For example, Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella was sent home from the Olympic games for tweeting insulting comments about another team, while Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papahristou was booted from his team for his own derogatory Twitter comments which were shared over 100 times (Belson, 2012).

According to an article in the LA Times, Twitter can allow for one to quickly build up a brand. However, Twitter’s simplicity of use and “a lack of social-media training” can lead to missteps that can quickly destroy a brand as well (Holmes, 2011). But if a mistake does take place, all may not be lost. Experts say, “brands can be repaired if demands for transparency are met – quickly (Holmes, 2011).”

The above discussion clearly points out the need to further study athletes on Twitter. There is already a significant amount of research on the topic with some of the studies focusing on classifying what athletes are saying while on Twitter (Hambrick et al., 2011; Pegoraro, 2010; Blaszka, 2011). This article may draw on some of these findings and further the investigation by taking a look at athlete brand equity development as a function of being formed and co-created through athlete ‘tweets’ and follower interactions. More specifically, this article will look at the attention Twitter missteps may bring, the acceptance or non-acceptance of athlete apologies, and how this impacts brand image, knowledge, and ultimately equity.

According to Keller (1993), brand equity can occur only in the presence of brand knowledge. Keller (1993) further breaks brand knowledge into two components, brand awareness and brand image. Berry (2000), in his service-branding model appears to present the same two concepts giving one a different title. Berry (2000) suggests that brand awareness and brand meaning (brand image) both impact service brand equity. Clearly brand awareness and brand meaning represent important concepts within the branding literature and will be of use to this present article.

As presented by Berry (2000), external brand communication can impact both brand awareness and brand meaning. Berry (2000) defines external brand communication as “information customers absorb about the company and its service that essentially is uncontrolled by the company.” In the present context, an athlete’s tweet is the “presented brand” while “external brand communication” can be thought of as the comments posted by the athlete’s followers. In essence this can be viewed as a type of word of mouth (WOM) (Berry, 2000).

The above explanation meshes nicely with the idea of the prosumer and service dominant logic. The prosumer is one who both consumes and produces (Ritzer et al., 2012). This is exactly the case when it comes to some of the followers of athletes on Twitter. These followers not only consume the message of the athlete, but they develop its meaning and significance with their own comments as well. Ritzer et al. (2012) stated, “this process is also clear in the case of brands where consumers play a major role in producing the shared meanings that are the brand; they do not simply accept the brand messages created by marketers and advertisers. Thus, in a real sense, prosumers produce the meaning that surrounds brands such as McDonald’s, BMW, and Nike.” This same line of reasoning is displayed in the idea of service dominant logic. Lusch et al. (2007) states the importance of co-creation in adding value as a foundational premise of service-dominant logic.

As can be seen in recent cases, mistakes made by athletes on Twitter, such as that made by Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papahristou, can have grave consequences. A poor statement can bring a great deal of attention for the athlete who makes the mistake bringing a greater level of brand awareness to the athlete. However, this can come at cost to the athlete in the form of a hit to his or her own brand image. This is often followed by a tweet with an explanation, excuse, or apology. But how accepting are followers of the athlete’s response? What drives acceptance, and how does this impact the brand image of the athlete and ultimately brand equity? This article proposes that a consumer’s acceptance of an athlete’s explanation, excuse, or apology following a Twitter mistake is not only dependent on what the athlete communicates (i.e. the presented brand), but also on the reactions (WOM) presented by other followers. In essence, the athlete’s brand image and ultimately brand equity is co-created with his or her fans, haters, and spectators.

But to what extent do comments from Twitter followers really influence an individual’s perception of an athlete, and to what extent do these comments influence one’s acceptance of an athlete’s apology? This article attempts to shed some light on these questions, and add to the persuasion literature by incorporating the elaboration likelihood model with a focus on an individual’s involvement level (Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann, 1983; Petty and Cacioppo, 1986).

References

$5 million in 140 characters. (2011, November 10). Men’s Journal, Retrieved from http://archive.mensjournal.com/5-million-in-140-characters

Belson, K. (2012, July 30). Swiss athlete sent home for twitter remark. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/sports/olympics/swiss-soccer-player-michel-morganella-sent-home-for-twitter-remark.html?_r=0

Berry, Leonard L. 2000. “Cultivating Service Brand Equity.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 28 (1): 128-137.

Blaszka, M. An Examination of Sports Consumers’ Twitter Usage. Georgia State University Departmen of Kinesiology and Health, May 7, 2011.

Hambrick, M.E., Simmons, J.M., Greenhalgh, G.P., & Greenwell, T.C. (2011). Understanding professional athletes’ use of Twitter: A content analysis of athlete tweets. International Journal of Sport Communication, 3(4), 454-471.

Holmes, B. (2011, May 15). When athletes post on twitter, controversy can follow. Los angeles times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/15/sports/la-sp-0516-athletes-twitter-20110516

Keller, Kevin Lane (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring., & managing customer-based brand equity, Journal of Marketing, 57 (January), 1–22

Lusch, R.P., Vargo, S. L., and O’Brien, M., (2007), “Competing Through Service: Insights from Service-Dominant Logic,” Journal of Retailing, Vol. 83, No. 1, 5-18.

Petty, Richard E., John T. Cacioppo, and David Schumann (1983), “Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement,” Journal of Consumer Research, 10 (September), 135-146

Petty, R.E. & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986b) The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, pp. 123–205.

Ritzer, G., Dean, P., & Jurgenson, N. (2012). The coming of age of the prosumer. The American Behavioral Scientist, 56, 379-398.

Pegoraro, A. (2010) Look who‘s talking—athletes on Twitter: a case study. International Journal of Sport Communication,3, 501-514.

As I read the Gilpin article, I was reminded of the way the Chinese have a very relationship oriented approach to doing business.  It is not uncommon to have multiple dinners together before discussing actual business.  This has been a source of mild frustration for Western professionals who like to “get down to business.”  With the context collapse that seems inherent in new media, a relational approach to professional interactions takes on more of a Chinese flavor than the previously distinct personal and professional compartments of Western culture.

While public relations has always been front and center in creating and maintaining the identity of a client, and by necessity, their relationship to the public, the public relations of PR as a profession has received relatively little attention.  Previously, PR involved countless phone calls, faxes and other measures that required significant investments of time of resources and manpower.  Traditional venues for public relations rely on the resources of the client, yet current technology allows PR professionals to “practice was they preach” without significant investments of time or money.  As stated by the article, “Activity on Twitter can be seen as a means of increasing one’s professional visibility, as well as driving traffic to one’s presence in other online venues” (p246).  While it may be true that, “that this visibility is not necessarily a reliable indicator of overall expertise” (p247), there is something compelling about the sales pitch that says, “What I have done for myself, I can do for you.”

The Mendelson and Papacharissi article empirically captured a significant moment in personal development: the breaking away from one’s family as an individual and the attempt to connect with the larger social body.  I was also intrigued by the brief discussion of meta-photography and the way the camera becomes and en extension of the body.  While there are moments from my early adult life that I wish I had been able to capture with the ease of a camera phone, there are far more moments for which I am glad there is no evidence.

The “always-on lifestyle” makes perfect sense to me.  As Boyd states, it’s not that I always want to be connected, but I always want access to the network.  Before the proliferation of the internet, I began amassing books on a wide variety of topics so that I could easily have information at my fingertips.  Similarly, I kept phone numbers, business cards and phone books from many cities so that I could contact who ever I wanted with ease.  I may never use a number or need someone’s card, but it was nice to know I had it if I needed it.  I wonder how many others in the always-on cohort have or had similar stockpiles of material prior to present technology?  I blog only occasionally; I don’t Tweet, nor is my digital consumption as great as many, but I want it there whenever I have urge.

Ok Ms. Boyd, you caught me red-handedly. GUILTY AS CHARGED!!! I am definitely fit the description  of those “always-on” people that you described yourself as in ch. 6 of The Social Media Reader. If I pull up the browser on my cell phone, it will go directly to my Facebook mobile page, which I remained logged in to, even when I’m not using it. If I go to twitter, it will come up, already logged into, ready for use. A lot of times, my Facebook account will be up all day, periodially checking for updates and posting into different forums and groups between work. I don’t know if I work and occasionally take internet breaks,  or surf the internet and occasionally take work breaks *that was a joke everyone, I definitely don’t want to get fired :-) * Text messaging is not exempt, where throughout the course of a day I can easily get 30-40 texts if I actually engage with the senders of the texts. I tend to agree with her that the always-on approach is definitely a lifestyle, and frankly can be very addictive.

A few weeks ago, I attended a seminar on Time Management, in which the presenter stated that the average time spent on social media and checking e-mails, etc. was almost 2 hours per day. He stated that he avoids this by only turning his phone on two times during a day – once at I believe he said 12:30 PM, and the other time at 5:30 PM. He said that his phone remains off at every other time during the day, and that these designated times are when he replies to texts, returns phone calls, etc. Maybe I need to take his approach!!!

In chapter 12 of A Networked Self, the “Kodak culture” (Chalfen 1987) is discussed. Personal photography in social media can be innocent, or can be extremely detrimental. For some odd reason, I’ve always been the person who will get up and move anytime someone pulls out a camera to take pictures. On the other hand, I know several people who are “camera hams”, and will pose at the drop of a dime. Never mind that some of these poses occur while they are in possession of alcohol (and other intoxicating substances), dressed provocatively, etc. And they have no problem displaying these images on their Facebook/Twitter accounts. As a coach who has recruited student-athletes to my institution, I on multiple occasions have looked at a person’s social media page to see what type of activities that person may indulge in. On some Facebook pages, I have seen student-athletes doing some things that needless to say, made offering them a scholarship impossible.

In chapter 6 of The Social Media Reader, Boyd discussed this idea of being always-on when it comes to the Internet. She does not necessarily mean that these individuals are always surfing the web or checking their email, but rather that these individuals have access to the Internet at almost any moment.  The chapter described a world of individuals plugged into a network with tons of information that no one could ever sort through. It is true; there is so much information out there. It almost makes me dizzy just thinking about it. In the chapter, Boyd raised the question of how does she sort through all of this information? Clearly there is no formula or step-by-step process that we all can follow. I guess we can only do like Boyd does. We can try our best. However, I felt that she brought up an important question at the end. She stated, “but aren’t we living in a world where knowing how to get information is more important than memorizing it? (pg. 75)” As discussed, we do have so much information at our finger tips, so shouldn’t there be more of a focus on learning how to access this information as opposed to rote memorization?

Back when I was working on my undergraduate degree, I had a professor who told us that his tests would be open book. He said something along the lines of, “if you don’t know the answer in the “real world,” you’ll just go look it up.” Therefore, he allowed us to look in the book while on the test. I appreciated this gesture since it took some of the pressure off due to the fact that I would not have to memorize everything for the tests, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t have to study. In fact, some may argue that these tests are harder because you never have time to look everything up, but I disagree. Sure you have to be familiar with the material and know where to find the answer, and I think that this is what Boyd is getting at.

Chapter 11 of A Networked Self discussed Twitter. Much of what is discussed in this chapter is pertinent to my abstract that I am posting today. Though I did not cite this chapter, much of the ideas go hand in hand with some of the ideas that I present.

Chapter 12 of A Networked Self analyzed the photos of college students on Facebook. I did not find their results to be that surprising. Much of their findings were what I would expect. In fact, my own experience with Facebook can relate to some of these findings. I think that there is a lot of substance to the idea that posting a photo helps to build and express the relationships with the individuals in the photo.

Papacharissi, Z. (Ed.). (2010). A Networked Self:!Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge.

Mandiberg, M. (Ed.) (2012). The Social Media Reader. New York: NYU Press.

The network has gone digitally mobile. It is with us all the time. Danah Boyd is correct in her assessment of the modern predicament as being “always on.” The kind of connectivity permitted by the Internet is the result of an embedded desire within the culture at large. We have always been a network society. It has only ever been a question of saturation, of how heightened and boundless the net can become. Technology allows the connections to spread with unheard of rapidity. To envision the Internet and try to understand its machinations is to look into a mirror. Is it any surprise that what that mirror reflects is the poetry of destruction mixed with creation? The predicament of Internet identities and spokespeople, whether bloggers, Twitter marketers, or fellow SNS users who talk about and inadvertently sell perspectives and memberships into select groups/clubs/cliques, is how to remain current, hip, and seductive. As creatures of consumption, we cannot ignore these seductions, only accept or reject them.  The real question boils down to what we will purchase next (or buy into), and from whom. Who shall we be tomorrow and from what immaterial means shall the new we be composed?

The professional identities investigated by Dawn R. Gilpin in her chapter, “Working the Twittersphere,” were intriguing as examples of online identity construction, a phenomenon shown to be more a result of peer to peer interactions, or conversations, (at least within the context of Twitter) than solitary constructs. This kind of identity building extends beyond Twitter and into SNS and even the websites we choose to frequent, blogs included. Whether we, as users, comment on blog sites and the like, there is a creation of identity as a singular unit and also as a member of a group of followers or professional compatriots assembled and unified by the websites from which we choose to seek out information. It is a kind of branding as a member of a gang while at the same time striving to exist as a unique individual. No brand is exactly the same, but there is always another brand that is rather similar. Mendelson and Papacharissi’s chapter “Look at Us,” about college Facebook photo galleries, gives the impression of a stream of similarly composed and performed photographs chronicling the newly (semi) independent youths of America. While the study continues the identity construction hit upon in the essay by Gilpin, the investigation of pictorial evidence as visual proof of individual and group identity heightens the impact and co-constructed meanings therein.

The idea of constructing a professional identity is interesting to me in the context of social networking sites. In A Networked Self, Giplin explains, “Public professional identities are constructed through a combination of social ties and relational content…Connections to other users on such sites have been described as ‘public displays of connection’ that add value and validity to an individual’s identity performance” (233). If we think about the idea of professional identity as it is shaped through our engagement with social networking sites, it seems like the online-networking arena lends itself more suitably to some professions than others. I’m thinking of academics (and perhaps specifically communication academics, and perhaps more specifically rhetoric academics).

My brother owns a body-care business and sells products to spas. He for sure has a twitter and Facebook account as to foster “information sharing, networking, and establishing professional expertise” (232). The success of his business greatly depends on his online presence and interaction because his associates, clients, and even competitors are always online. You would think that, based on the idea of “information sharing, networking, and establishing professional expertise,” that a profession in academia would go hand in hand with social networking. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

In class, we have talked at length about collapse among our social circles, and Giplin mentions, “Online interactive media further complicate the question of boundaries” (233). Through our in-class discussions, we have become spooked by the idea of privacy breakdown, although Danah Boyd in The Social Media Reader attempts (albeit pathetically) to argue in behalf of public disclosure (76). Most of my professors are super conservative in class and online about what they disclose to students, and I personally will not become “friends” with any of my students on Facebook until long after the semester is over. There is an inherent resistance to let those boundaries collapse in academia, even though one could argue that the students are our “clients,” or at least those of the university. What’s more is, I know graduate students who are incredibly leery of making public anything in their professional toolkit. Vitas, lesson plans, and teaching philosophies are kept locked up because of the fear that they will be copied or somehow altered.

This doesn’t mean that academics haven’t attempted to enter into the social networking world. Academia.com allows academics to network within a scholarly context, but my own account doesn’t seem to garner a lot of traffic, and I’m not really interested in other people’s profiles. Based on the principles of “information sharing, networking, and establishing professional expertise,” why wouldn’t academics take to the opportunities of online networking? Have they? Furthermore, Giplin says, “Constructing a professional identity also means constructing the identity of the profession” (234). How can communication scholars help the much needed effort to construct a distinct discipline for the professional world of communication, especially amid the barriers I’ve mentioned?