If the recent events in football have shown us anything, it’s how important it is to take your fans with you when things change, ensuring they understand what you mean by innovation and progress.

‘Fans not customers’. That was the slogan plastered across the demonstrations as passionate fans showed their anger and frustration at not having the perceived benefits of the new European Super League explained to them.

The key to keeping any fan is to let them share your vision. To show how the changes you make enhance their lives and give them greater benefit. Yes, the consensus is that these Super League plans were built purely on greed, but let’s consider the other side of the story.

Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez, the first ESL chairman, went out on Spanish TV late on Monday night claiming the clubs were “doing this to save football at this critical moment”. 

Now, like most other football fans, I find it incredibly hard to square the actions of these clubs with Mr Perez’s words, but it does clearly demonstrate that the key to keeping your fans is sharing the same vision, passions and ambitions.

BPL has worked with many brands in the technology and software sectors who have products that are hugely innovative, created by people who are absolute experts in what they do. But if those innovations don’t translate into simple consumer benefits, all that effort is lost, because the real issue comes when they start to sell these products onto consumers.

In a recent survey by Globeweb Index, 24% of customers said they did not understand technology, and this number has grown over every one of the previous 6 years. Plus, given people’s reticence to say they don’t understand something, this figure is likely to actually be much higher.

Brands, and particularly tech brands, are very good at making things more complicated than they need to be, introducing jargon and pseudo-science into the customer journey. This is usually done to show how innovative and clever they are, but often forgets to relate the benefits to customers.

If we are to carry on the football analogy, this is a huge own goal.

At BPL we believe in keeping things as simple as they can be to create fans out of consumers. We help companies talk to consumers not about features and technology leaps, but about the benefits they provide in the real world… how they enhance everyday life.

We call this Powerful Simplicity, and we would love to see if we can help your brands create a bigger and more profitable fan base.