Steve Patti

While "diversity" usually refers to people of different color & culture -- it can mean far more. Diverse perspectives can come from people from different industries, roles, education, and geographies. Embracing diversity can include the following: * Planning: Provide efficient channels for diverse perspectives to be heard during the strategy planning process, while avoiding "decision by committee." This might include shared documents, collaboration mediums, and sprint or standup meetings. * Execution: discourage implementation in silos; instead create outcome-oriented teams (acquisition, expansion, etc.) * Optimization: Encourage peer cross-team analysis to provide more holistic strategy insights for improvement.

To overcome pushback on the adoption and use of brand strategy tools, connect benefits to each stakeholder's individual area of responsibility. In short, explain "what's in it for them" to appeal to their self-interest. For example, if you are introducing brand (health) tracker tools be sure to highlight benefits such as: * Measure & evaluate performance * Make comparisons * Test strategies * Monitor competitors * Preference and propensity to buy (funnel) * Product/solution opportunities Where possible, quantify these benefits in terms of: * Cost savings * Time to market * Marketing ROI * Incremental revenue

Beyond memorable branding for your eSports platform/series, remember that there is revenue in naming rights for your individual leagues, tournaments, or special events by creating "presenting sponsor" tiers for corporate brands to pay. By carefully associating your eSports brand with relevant, respected corporate brands you build further credibility through association. A real-life sports example includes the "Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona" (motorsport race). Or "RedBull Racing" (team sponsorship in Formula One).

A key to growing an eSports brand via social media channels is to leverage the social media reach of the players in the league. By structuring the entry and game play to require players to post, tag, and amplify league posts and updates (including offering points or other incentives), you can accelerate UGC creation and reach. Audience growth and engagement are key to driving revenue from corporate brands that are seeking to access large (engaged) audiences via advertising, product placement and sponsorship.

Building a successful eSports business requires partners and sponsors that can help you monetize the audience engagement that will become your strategic asset. Pooling resources with like-minded strategic partners to stretch your marketing budget and accelerate growth is critical. Key partner categories: (1) Infrastructure - companies that can provide technology and operations capabilities (web hosting, game platform, gaming peripherals, live venues, etc.) (2) Incentives - consumer brands that can provide prizes for winners (apparel, electronics, travel, etc.) (3) Promotion - media and influencers who can promote your league(s) and assets to amplify reach and engagement (thus, increasing the value of your brand and sponsorships.

While collaborate tools and regular meetings (e.g. morning standup) can be helpful to foster communication among B2B marketing team members, leaders can go farther by expanding insight collection beyond the team: > Developing feedback loops from the audiences receiving the campaigns to collect/share additional insights with the campaign team. > Message test creative with ICP panels to provide feedback prior to campaign launch & scaling. > Create customer advisory panels or informal groups that can provide feedback as to key priority challenges to guide content development, community/social posts, and event topics.