Launching innovation within sports communities: strategies and influence mechanisms
- Jerome Minet
- May 19
- 6 min read
Introduction
"The community isn't ready for my solution! I'm too far ahead of the curve." This statement from an entrepreneur I heard a few weeks ago really resonated with me, because 10 years ago, I said the same thing to myself while trying to make an impact on the motorcycle world.
In a context of distrust of traditional marketing discourse, sports communities have become powerful spaces of influence—sometimes even more powerful than institutions or brands themselves. They structure ways of being, consuming, equipping oneself, and telling the world.
Assuming that the proposed solutions provide real benefits to communities, how can they be accepted? What should be considered for successful launches within communities?
1. How groups and communities work
1.1 Definition of a community
According to psychoanalyst Jean-Pierre Lebrun, "community is that symbolic place where the individual experiences a sense of belonging that gives meaning to their place in the world." Far from being a simple audience or a marketing segment, a community is a living system, made up of rites, codes, implicit statuses, and shared emotions.
Anthropologist Victor Turner, for his part, describes community as a moment of intense and egalitarian cohesion between individuals, outside of classic social structures.
Like the gangs or Californian motorcycle clubs of the 1970s, sports communities are also governed by codes, implicit or explicit statuses (influencers and athletes) and above all by the judgment of peers, amplified by social networks and performance applications.
1.2 Mechanisms of influence
Before going any further, I can only recommend the book by Serge Moscovici and Claude Faucheux: "Theoretical and Experimental Social Psychology," which helped me write this article. There are three mechanisms of social influence: normalization, conformity, and innovation.
Normalization expresses the pressure exerted during an interaction to adopt a scale acceptable to all individuals, or to accept a neighboring position on this scale. It is the establishment of group rules and scales.
Conformism defines the behavior of an individual that is determined by the rule of a group or authority, in order to ensure the concordance of opinions and judgments.
Finally, innovation refers to the proposal and adoption of a response model that can override the group's predominant social rules or codes.
1.3 Operation and dynamics
How does all this work? It's easy to understand that the group will tend to conform to a status quo or something close to it, due to conformism and normalization. These mechanisms translate into real or induced social pressure, a fear of being judged by others, or even exclusion.
The experimental realization of the Asch effect clearly shows how an individual will primarily conform to the opinions of the group, even if this means giving incorrect answers compared to their own perception. Thus, social pressure from the group could lead a member to reject something that they perceive as positive for them, if the group does not have the same perception.
Similarly, a group member who feels weakened will have a stronger tendency to conform in order to feel secure. This is particularly the case for beginners in a new activity, who will first seek to achieve a certain status and feel secure within the group.
This social pressure exists with varying degrees of intensity depending on the group. More than 10 years ago, I was conducting tests on motocross riders, particularly on their outfits, with a view to improving their performance, measured by lap time. The riders rode in ski suits. The result: significant improvement in lap time, better riding comfort and mobility. But this innovation was too far removed from the codes of the time, too extreme. It's worth noting that since then, the outfits have become significantly closer to the body, particularly thanks to the Seven brand.
When will innovation or a new idea break through? And how did successful brands do it? This is what we're going to explore.
2. How to innovate within a community
2.1 The Resolute Leader
Leaders or individuals with high status within a community are best able to break free from standardization and conformity (Kelley and Shapiro). Indeed, due to their social status and the trust granted by other members, it is easier for them to face the social pressure linked to innovation or the proposal of innovation.
These leaders or high-status individuals are the athletes, influencers, heroes, explorers of the community.
Obviously, they must be convinced of the merits of the innovation and have the will to promote it within the community, thus agreeing to face objections. We are therefore talking about a resolute leader.
2.2 The consistency of the message
Consistency of message and behavior is also an important factor in influencing communities. Thus, an individual who disagrees with the majority will eventually influence it. Similarly, a single person with a consistent message will have more impact than a minority with divergent messages. Indeed, divergent messages lead the majority to return to and cling to familiar benchmarks.
2.3 The weak fracture of dogma
The community's dogma is fragile: it only takes convincing one individual to change their mind for those around them to begin to doubt. Thus, like any great journey that begins with a small step, the spread of an idea within a community begins with the conversion of an individual.
Consistency of message and behavior will therefore lead to regular conversion within the community, until acceptance by the entire group.
3. What to remember to innovate within sports communities
Of course, there are other methods and levers of influence to innovate within communities, but we will focus on these elements to build methods for launching innovation.
3.1 The conversion diagram
We can consider that in the sports environment, at the community level, there are three groups:
A favorable minority (10-15%): convinced and consistent
An unfavorable minority (10-15%): resistant and determined
A silent majority: neither for nor against, waiting to be convinced
The challenge is therefore to find the favorable minority and to help or encourage it to convert the silent majority.
The favorable minority is often made up of innovators or early adopters, individuals who have a very active need that the innovation addresses. They are not necessarily leaders or influencers. Like the layers of an onion, they will have to convert individuals step by step until they turn the silent majority around.
Without resolute leaders, without consistency of message, the favorable minority can also convert to the opinion of the silent majority.
3.2 Identify purposeful leaders
In sports, choosing leaders won't be based solely on their ranking or number of followers. They'll also need to be evangelists, influential within the community. Spoiler: the top of the ranking isn't always the best choice. Your evangelist will generally be somewhere between the middle and top of the rankings, with enough seniority to have a legitimate voice in the group. The number one will likely have neither the desire to risk tarnishing their image nor losing their status to promote your innovation.
It goes without saying that the leader must be sincerely convinced by the innovation in order to promote it.
Here, knowledge of the community and its stakeholders is an absolute necessity to successfully launch your innovation, and not just to develop it. Solutions such as PRO PROCESS PRODUCT (a co-creation process with athletes) are perfectly suited to this type of launch.
3.3 Message Consistency and Go-to-Market Strategies
We've already discussed the importance of message consistency and behavior in converting individuals. Here, the go-to-market plan, particularly in terms of message delivery across various channels, must be rigorous and strict.
If you have limited resources, you are not particularly affected by this problem: it is quite easy to align the messages of a few people. But if you have significant resources, you can hire many athletes and influencers whose messages will need to be aligned, as well as different media outlets in different countries, who will then have to spread the same message.
And what about competition? If you have a competitor launching roughly the same innovation as you, make sure you harmonize your pitches! I know, there was a first one, and there's a second one trying to differentiate itself, but this is counterproductive and the best way to make both fail.
Who remembers compression for technical clothing? Twenty years later, the discourse on the benefits of compression remains unconventional among the various stakeholders, due to the brands of the time, which overwhelmed consumers and stakeholders with divergent narratives. There's no consensus, and therefore no conviction.
3.4 Medium-term strategy
Launching an innovation in a community is necessarily a medium-term strategy that must be sustainable over time. Consistency and time are a winning strategy, but they cost money and weaken short-term ROI.
Of course, things can be accelerated: more communication, more athletes, more ambassadors and influencers. However, the costs of this acceleration can quickly mount, particularly in terms of synchronization. Furthermore, some communities will feel like they're being "bought off" if we push the pace too fast, which can lead to greater resistance.
Conclusion
Here's an innovation launch strategy that will maximize your chances:
Prerequisites : acquire in-depth knowledge of the community, its codes, its leaders, and how it operates.
Create an innovation that strongly meets the needs of a group and, if possible, in co-creation with this group
Ideally involve committed leaders in co-creation
Test with the favorable minority but also with the silent majority
Start gradually from the inside with the favorable minority
Drive message consistency and the spread of innovation within the community
Beyond the product teams, two key players in the success of your launch will be the team managers and the go-to-market managers.
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