Social media was once the province of the intern. Heck, that an intern was running the team’s or brand’s social accounts became a running trope, even as years passed and organizations recognized the increasing power of the platforms.
Even today, while social media channels are integral platforms for the team — for marketing, for brand building, for fan development, for revenue — the primary leaders behind these channels are rarely given a seat at the proverbial table.
The disruption to the paradigms that prevailed in sports for so many decades elevated social channels more quickly than organizations could (or cared to) evolve, but the way Millennials and certainly Gen Z and younger want to interact with their favorite teams and consume content has necessitated a new mindset, and forward-thinking leaders are starting to adapt. Bill Voth didn’t and doesn’t run away from change, quite the contrary, he embraces the new and novel (and ‘scary’ things he may not be expert in). So as he straddled the line between the old and new worlds of sports media and content, he recognized the key role he could play as he was brought on to the Carolina Panthers to usher in that evolution of fan engagement. For Voth, it meant providing leadership, but mostly getting out of the way.
“One of our jobs as creative leaders is to let the creatives below us, the real creators, the ones who are doers — I’m not a doer anymore, I used to be…to empower them,” said Voth, who was the young disruptor himself as he adopted social media before many of his older sports broadcasting colleagues and counterparts logged on. “There’s all this red tape above them in these organizations, there’s all these meetings and all this other stuff, and it’s your job to deal with all that stuff, to figure it out and to not micromanage them, and to let them go create and be. I think that that’s going to continue to be that way in this business for quite a while.”
To embrace emerging channels was just logical and, by the time Voth got to the Panthers, social media and team-produced original content was already a growing part of sports team operations. But there was much more evolution to come, even if meant challenging decades-old conventions about what content teams should spend their scarce time and resources to produce. Everything became more measurable in the digital and social era and that made it impossible to hide from the stark truth the numbers often told — that the ‘traditional’ content inherent to sports team coverage wasn’t what a lot of fans, especially younger fans, wanted.
It could feel like blasphemy to uproot the typical content mix, with discussions of X’s and O’s and game previews and recaps. Producing such content requires time and resources (remember those are scarce) and it may not be what a growing portion of your fan base wants. Voth noted these realities, recognizing that not all sports teams and markets are the same. The content strategy for every NFL team doesn’t have to be the same, and that shouldn’t be a divisive stance.
“In Charlotte, I did not believe there was a big enough market or a place for 30-minute coaches shows or 30-minute highlight shows,” said Voth, who was the Carolina Panthers Director of Content and Broadcasting until departing in early 2023 to start Bill Voth Digital. “If I was doing content in a Cleveland or a Pittsburgh or a Green Bay or in Dallas there is absolutely a market for that type of content. It’s specifically to the Panthers fan base…
“I didn’t think that X’s and O’s content, by and large, really hit all that great with this fan base; I think being different and funny and fun — we leaned more on that stuff than, ‘Okay, the Panthers won this weekend, let’s break down what happened.’ You get a few people reading, a few people clicking, a few people watching, but the fan base isn’t big enough to draw on those numbers that you really want if you’re going to spend the time to make content like that.”
The numbers mattered. They may be imperfect at times, but they’re a signal for what fans actually want and, in turn, content that does good numbers represents an opportunity to drive considerable revenue. As social media evolved and quickly became THE most prolific channels on which teams could reach, develop, and engage fans, organizations sought to create a content flywheel. And quality content is the fulcrum of that flywheel. Voth saw this play out first-hand, and indeed had a role in it, as the Panthers grew their content operation and saw their partnerships operation extend into digital, driving more revenue, which begat more content.
“The more you can monetize, the more staff you can bring in, the more staff you can bring in, the better content you can do, the better content you can do, the better sponsored content you can do. And it goes around and around and around and it feeds itself,” said Voth, who also talked about the value of having a digital-focused partnerships person, to serve as a bridge between departments. “So I am a big believer in if you can do really great content and you can make a lot of that branded or sponsored content, and you can really build up your numbers, you can do even more branded and sponsored content, [and] you can make money. The content people are happy because they’re doing good content; you can actually do good sponsored content, not just check the box sponsored content.”
The culture of not defaulting to convention permeated the Panthers. It had to. They couldn’t just do what other NFL teams or what standard operating procedure had been for years; they had to iterate and figure out what worked for their fans and their market. This is easier said than done and requires a bit of risk taking and, as Voth emphasized, a willingness — heck, even a desire — to fail sometimes. This extended to the team’s voice on its social channels and its general approach to content strategy. If they wanted to be an exceptional NFL club, to stand out from their counterparts across the league and even in other sports, they had to, well, stand out.
“I think it’s having an ecosystem of try stupid things, try fun things,” said Voth. “And when you have people like (former Panthers Social Media Manager) Amie Kiehn and (Panthers Social Media Coordinator) Angela (Denogean) who are like, ‘Okay, let’s go play in the sandbox and let’s try this, let’s try that’, a lot of times that content is going to hit and you can set trends. And that is definitely one of the things we tried to do for years with the Panthers.
“It was, okay, if a team is doing something, like, I automatically didn’t want to do it,. So I didn’t have a hard and fast rule — don’t use The Office, don’t use SpongeBob, don’t use talking heads like Max Kellerman and all this stuff, don’t use L’s, but was very much like, ‘Hey, can you try and not do content with that stuff because everyone else is doing it?'”
There’s a little bit of ‘get comfortable being uncomfortable’ ethos to such a strategy, doing things no one else is doing, testing the untested. It’s not easy for leaders to adopt this mindset, let alone to hand over the reins to employees who may not have several decades of experience, but instead have years of experience in newer platforms and culture that their more senior supervisors do not. It takes humility to recognize that, yes, there is still a lot of sagacity to pass down and guidance to provide, but no one ever did anything extraordinary while held back on a tight leash. There IS disparity in knowledge and experience and skills — but the point is that the disparity and asymmetry goes both ways. And it’s when leaders have the foresight and courage to humble themselves that the extraordinary can be achieved.
“I think social folks, social media managers in particular, still need to be in the room more. I think it’s come a long way where, as you and I started getting into this digital and social, we were never included in conversations,” said Voth who then alluded to a viral, secondary schedule release video produced by the Tennessee Titans in 2023. “…[The Titans] posted two videos during schedule release. The main video they dropped at 8:00 was a wonderfully produced video. I’m sure whether they did it internally, whether they used an agency to do it, I’m not sure, I think they probably did it internally, but it was wonderful.
“But then of course they posted the ‘Man on the Street’ video that was just a couple of social people saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we try this?’ And that’s the magic that can happen when you listen to your social folks.”
No one will question the power and importance of social media these days, let alone leave the reins of the platforms solely in the hands of an untested intern. Some of the first full-time dedicated social media pros at sports teams now bear titles like VP or SVP, so the evolution is happening. But it’s about more than job titles and a decade of experience earning a seat at the table and a voice. It’s recognizing that those in the trenches every day, consuming, engaging, and creating with and alongside fans have valuable, esoteric insights that decades of experience and advanced degrees can’t match. All you have to do is invite their input and listen.
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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BILL VOTH (a lot more!)
