No function of a sports organization has changed more in the last decade than communications.
That’s not a bold statement, it’s just facts. In the earliest days, the newspaper reigned supreme, and ‘public relations’ emerged to facilitate and encourage newspaper and magazine stories. After print came radio and TV coverage. Then the internet and social media arrived — teams, leagues, and even fans had their own platform. Many leagues have their own TV networks to go along with the countless websites, social channels, and apps that teams have, coexisting with third-party and fan-led media platforms. It’s a lot.
With that evolution, PR became strategic communications, which coalesced into integrated communications — every department connected. Everybody’s in marketing, everybody’s in communications; every tentacle of a team or league has a story to tell and a platform to tell stories.
But just like the old aphorism that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (‘synergy’ for the buzzword-inclined), the inverse is equally as important, and not in a good way. The communications leader, with whatever title they’re toting, must serve as the conductor of a well-oiled orchestra, bringing harmony to form a cohesive, cross-channel story.
“What I’ve learned over the years is if comms needs to be the central clearinghouse for everybody’s going to do to support a particular thing — a news event, an announcement, a campaign — that’s great, we’ll be the scribe and we’ll put it all together, but we’ll make sure everybody is aware of what other people are doing,” said Jon Schwartz, a veteran of sports and brand communications and marketing, with experience at NASCAR, the NFL, Mastercard, the XFL, and more.
“[Nowadays] you’re seeing these efforts to put messaging and campaigns out in the marketplace are through the lens of integrated marketing and communications and the use of the PESO mode…PESO (stands for) paid, earned, shared and owned. So everything sits under that from marketing communications to lead generation to podcasts like this, to brand journalism like we just talked about, to earned media and community service and co-branding and shared media.
“It’s never been more important than it is now that all of these tactics work together under a codified plan that’s actually on paper.”
Schwartz was on the front lines of the rapid evolution of communications strategy; he had an up-close view and played an active role in seeing it through. NASCAR, the country’s leading stock car racing league, has been a success story of that new archetype of an integrated marketing and communications practice.
NASCAR was (and continues to be) one of the strongest sports leagues in the US, but it had to modernize in some ways to keep up with an increasingly diverse and aspirationally national audience. The organization has an incredibly loyal fan base, the most impactful corporate partnerships in sports, a growing social media operation, and strong media relationships and returns. So when it came time to take on something of a brand transformation, NASCAR succeeded because it was firing on all cylinders (yes, pun intended! Vroom vroom)
“For years, NASCAR did a fantastic job making it easier and more convenient for journalists to cover the race. And there was massive coverage…But ultimately NASCAR needed to evolve and it did….,” said Schwartz, who was Managing Director, Integrated Marketing Communications for years at the motorsports juggernaut. “We really ensured we had stakeholder relationship groups — we had people working on the digital and social side, we had somebody focusing solely on business, someone focusing solely on our work with the media networks, solely on sponsorship and really making sure that comms was embedded in every function of the business.”
Sports is unique from most other industries, though, because the producers of the product, the labor — the athletes — have individual and collective platforms themselves that rival or surpass that of the teams and leagues employing them. That’s ultimately a good thing for sports, but it adds another layer to the integrated strategy. If the athletes aren’t aligned, even the best marketing and comms strategy is rendered relatively feeble.
Schwartz had a front-row view, and indeed an active role, in seeing that scenario play out at the NFL, too. The league’s most important employees, the players, worked with some internal NFL social media staff to produce a video in which they stated in no uncertain teams that they felt the league was not doing enough in the Black Lives Matter moment and movement. It could’ve been a communications crisis, but for Schwartz it represented a lesson-learning moment and, indeed, an opportunity to help steer the NFL’s powerful platform in a direction for societal good.
“I think [it was] a lesson about how much the voice of employees matters…It was a moment I think of the people and it really underscored the importance of listening and responding,” said Schwartz of the video and the narratives that followed. “The league [had been] doing really good things with Inspire Change, its social justice platform, before that, but it really doubled down with it afterward.”
Schwartz gave illustrative examples, recalling how an integrated strategy came together to create meaningful results, specifically citing an initiative around LGBTQ+ support, which he’d volunteered to lead.
“I was able to get a few people together from marketing and advertising and the NFL Network and NFL media and the social media team and we created a really cool campaign…“The big KPI was doing it. Just doing it. Just the NFL getting behind a campaign for LGBTQ+. We didn’t expect the kind of impact, we didn’t expect a huge number of social media impressions. We didn’t expect to be able to pull off a public service announcement with Rob Gronkowski. We didn’t expect anybody to say yes and a bunch of NFL current and former NFL players did…
“A year after that, Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player to come out. And this year they’re doing a big merchandise collection with a big fashion brand around pride. So, yeah, it was an interesting time, but I think it reminded everybody of the importance of listening to the voices of employees.”
The connective tissue throughout Schwartz’s career, even amidst all the challenges and changes, is relationships. Forming relationships, sure, but also fostering them over time, and understanding how we’re more powerful together than we are alone. That’s ultimately the underlying foundation of all of this talk about integrated communications and marketing, about multi-faceted and cross-channel campaigns. Call it whatever you want, but it’s just appreciating that each of us brings something unique to the table and when we work together — actually work together — we can achieve incredible outcomes.
