Category: Social Media

General Sports Business, Social Media, Sports Media

Insights: How Ben Koo and Awful Announcing Navigate the Changing World of Sports Media (and Media in General)

It’s a tough time for the media business. You may have heard. Headlines of layoffs and closures or consolidations in the greater media industry appear way too often. Amidst the ebbs and flows of news and media brands over the years, Awful Announcing has continued on, serving a sports media and business niche, even as competition for attention and the whims of social platforms change the game.

I recently interviewed Ben Koo, CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and primary owner of Awful Announcing and its sister site The Comeback. I often hone in on a theme or two in podcast interviews in these posts, but Koo covered so many interesting topics, let’s touch on a handful of big subjects:

  • Surviving as Social Media Platforms Discouraged Outbound Traffic
  • The Polarization and Hot Takes that Social Media Encourages
  • Understanding Public Sentiment When a Minority Drives Internet/Social Content
  • Measuring Success in the Multi-Platform Media World
  • Content Aggregators and Mooches
  • The Present and Future of the Media Industry

Surviving as Social Media Platforms Discouraged Outbound Traffic

Social media was a boon in the early days, a significant source of referral traffic (I’m old enough to remember going to ESPN.com and browsing for the best stories to read). Then the platforms realized the best way to drive revenue was to keep users on their sites or apps as much as possible. The trend has only gotten worse for publishers and now some algorithms even penalize posts with outbound links.

For sites like Awful Announcing, each algorithm tweak and drop in referral traffic can have a meaningful effect on their business. Koo and his team have to figure out how to balance feeding the platforms with content that’ll drive engagement while still giving fans a reason to click through to the site.

“We’re trying to do more in video,” he said. “We’re trying to be smarter about headlines where we get people interested, but we don’t give away the full story; we’re putting out the most interesting thing about what it is [while] hoping that people want to see more…

“Since Awful Announcing is creating content for a specific audience who’s thirsty for more details it’s not as big of a problem. But it’s still kind of discouraging because we think more people want to [discover] our content, and when it’s being throttled down, just because of new initiatives algorithmically, I don’t think it’s serving the users of those social platforms who have opted in to see our content but are randomly seeing, like, the For You page for Twitter [full] of crypto bots and what have you and Facebook meme pages. I hope it’s a trend that reverses.”

Awful Announcing knows they produce unique content and there’s an audience out there that wants to consume it. It may be more difficult for that audience to discover them and their content, but AA knows if you reach them, they will come (a bastardization of the old Field of Dreams quote, eh?). Koo said their originality, cultivating relationships between the writers and readers, and dedication to expanding their platforms are all key to continued survival in this new era.

Here’s Koo: “I think original content and original voices and being accessible on more platforms, which is something that we’re slowly kind of prioritizing more and more, really good quality voices, and being on more platforms, whether that’s a TikTok, Instagram, we’ve been promoting our content a lot more on Reddit, because I think some people have kind of moved from Twitter to Reddit in terms of content discovery…

“We’re putting in a lot more energy into trying to be at the places where people are because the existing traffic mix has decided that it’s not good for them for other people to drift away from those social media platforms. So we need to be on more platforms. We need to have more original voices. We need to have direct relationships, not only from the site to people, but also writer to readers — so more people following their personal accounts. It’s a major effort and it’s going to affect everyone in media, so we’re trying to figure out the best we can.”

The Polarization and Hot Takes that Social Media Encourages

Social platforms and their prioritization of engagement to reach users have also profoundly affected media across all mediums. Content that elicits a reaction tends to get amplified, and we’ve seen that theme translate to countless debate shows and the rise of hot take artists, with some viewers/readers questioning the authenticity of such dedicated devil’s advocates. It would be easy for Awful Announcing to lean into it, but taking polarizing stances just for the sake of ‘engagement’ is not something Koo and his team want to be about.

“I think it would probably be long-term negative if we were just trying to be dishonest with our opinions for the sake of chasing it…,” he said. “People like to kind of chirp a little bit that we have favorites or this and that, but I just don’t see that. I think our reputation is generally neutral to positive with some nitpicks here and there.

“But we write so much content it’s impossible [to avoid]. I mean, we pissed off Stephen A Smith at South by Southwest. He said last night we should kiss his ass. And then he says Awful Announcing, first off they do good work most of the time, and then he went into [it]. But it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him complain, and it just comes with the territory. I think we do a pretty good job having opinions, covering the space, but not succumbing to the temptation of just hot takes for clicks.”

Understanding Public Sentiment When a Minority Drives Internet/Social Content

Awful Announcing still does lots of work related to its eponymous theme — identifying the bad and good (and otherwise notable) in announcing and sports broadcasting. But talk to any social/digital media professional and they’ll remind you that the vocal minority on Twitter and other social platforms and forums are just that — a loud minority. So while we may get seduced to think a couple dozen comments, let alone a single anonymous commenter, represent the opinion of the masses, the vast majority of the public is not expressing their opinion on these platforms. And even those who do speak up are predisposed to a polarizing take (you generally don’t go on Yelp to give a slightly above-average review, it’s either because you loved it or hated it). Awful Announcing can uncover some of the truth by watching trends and having diverse individuals and perspectives within their ranks.

“[Thinking about] where does the real sentiment lie — one thing is it’s good to have a good group and a diverse group in your own newsroom and on Slack. Kind of like, ‘Do we all hate this person? Oh, there are 3 or 4 people who don’t, and seven people who do, that’s interesting.’ So that is always helpful. I think if we were to put a Twitter thread or a Facebook poll or whatever on just about anyone — Tony Romo, Gus Johnson, Joe Buck, you’re going to get a big cluster of people who are fans, a big cluster of people who are some type of neutral and a big group of haters.

“Announcing is super subjective…Having a good newsroom with diverse opinions, being fair when we do write an opinion piece or critical piece, or putting other people’s comments — like people hated how this person called the end of the game. Another thing is just trends. So sometimes we do polls and we get 4000, 5000 replies and we’ll say ‘Rank the four NFL A booths that are not Amazon.’ So ESPN, ABC, CBS, FOX — which one’s your favorite? And if you saw Romo and Nantz a few years ago when that thing was at 40%, where there are four options, and then a few years later they’re in second or third and they’re at like 20% there’s a trend that we can kind of talk about that more people are getting annoyed with Tony Romo.

Measuring Success in the Multi-Platform Media World

Everything gets more data-driven with each passing year. Writers once were (and at some publications still are) beholden to page views and subscriptions from their individual stories. That’s what pays the bills, and paying the bills, at the end of the day, is pretty much all that matters. There is some nuance for Koo and Awful Announcing, and metrics have evolved a bit for them to define successful content. As someone who loves a good long-form Wright Thompson article (and who lives with data in my day job), it’s good to see the value and insights in different types of metrics for Awful Announcing where, yes, page views matter, but it’s not always that simple in the chase for continued success and revenue.

“We are making investments in video and hiring and whatever, but we are probably more locked in to page views because that’s just what keeps us paid,” said Koo. “We do like front page home page traffic as a big indicator where someone either typed into their [browser] AwfulAnnouncing.com, or they read a story and then clicked on the logo or the home to see what else they could find. Pages per visit is always encouraging to see if we’re doing better there. Time on site helps us with advertiser retention and higher programmatic ad bidding. When people see that people are on here, they’re seeing your ad units for 45 seconds or 2 minutes or three minutes as opposed to 17 seconds.

“[On social media], retweets, impressions on Twitter — how much did this tweet about an article or a piece of video get seen? Generally, as long as we’re profitable and growing, we’re happy. And I try to not have our team too focused on a million different statistics, but I think for us, we’re a little bit different because we’re not part of a larger entity.”

Content Aggregators and Mooches

We’re in the age of aggregation. There are lucrative newsletters based on aggregating headlines and summarizing articles. There are countless social media accounts making hay from lifting a notable quote or anecdote from a robust story by a publication (not to mention the Dov Kleimans of the world, mostly just reposting others’ content). News breakers like Adrian Wojnarowski and Adam Schefter are as well-known as ever, but their ‘bombs’ are merely the first spark for a conflagration of derivative articles, columns, podcasts, and posts. Some question the ethics of professional aggregation, but the bigger issue may be how it affects the ROI of putting resources into original reporting. This excerpt represents a small portion of the discussion with Koo about the themes within aggregation (including a great story involving the Bishop Sycamore story and subsequent documentary), as he touched on how the existing paradigm affects his business decisions around original reporting.

From Koo: “I think as long as you’re referencing where the quotes are from, that’s kind of fair. You’d like to see some links if they use it in an article…

“[Original reporting] doesn’t monetize that well. Every once in a while — we did this story about Kevin Brown, the announcer, getting suspended by the Baltimore Orioles. That story was great. We got a lot of traffic, [and] we do have 2 to 5 original reporting stories, where we’re trying to scoop something, per month, I’d say. Some of them get not that much traffic at all…Whenever we think we have something, we go for it, and as long as someone’s interested and wants to do the work, we go for it. But is there a monetary return on that work? You know, that’s where it’s good to have institutional backing, subscriptions, stuff like that. Because from an advertising standpoint, it’s hard to justify. But we do it because it’s important.”

The Present and Future of the Media Industry

Awful Announcing is nearly 20 years old. In this media environment, that might as well make them a gray-haired lady. So Koo and his team have surely been doing something right over the years. Sitting at the helm of the business for most of the site’s lifetime, Koo has seen much of the media crumbling around him while Awful Announcing keeps going. So it was interesting to get his take on where the greater media and publication industry is headed and what will separate the survivors from the rest in the years to come.

“Niche things that have subscriptions and events seem to be doing well. I think what hasn’t done well is scale for the sake of scale, and that’s like BuzzFeed merging with a bunch of things. I think Vox Media got really big. Complex just sold to a new place…you have basically seen all of these jobs that have been taken away and infrastructure at companies chasing scale for people who were not creating content. I look at us and every dollar that comes in, almost every dollar, a huge percentage goes to people creating content.

“I’m not seeing media as a great investment…even the successes in our space, which are few and far between, if you look at the price tag and what they thought they were going to be, they don’t really [turn] out as big successes, to a certain degree. So yeah, content’s going to be in an interesting place because it definitely helps to have money given to you to become something big and notable and influential, but do the economics work for investors to get their money back? A lot of places have come and gone…”

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Thanks to Ben for his thoughtful and articulate conversation on several compelling topics! The media paradigms may be evolving, but there will always be stories to tell, conversations to start, and content to consume, no matter your interest.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BEN KOO

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Content Strategy, Social Media

The Science and Art of Social Media and Engagement in Sports

Marketing and ‘engagement’ used to be an exercise in faith. Maybe you judged the success of content by word-of-mouth from one’s immediate network, from positive feedback and write-ups by the press and marketing Illuminati, or by an uptick in bottom-line metrics that you surmised came as a result of great content.

Then digital media came along, followed a decade later by the more engaging (there’s that word again) social media and all of a sudden there was a tangible measure of success, a scoreboard that told you whether that fire content was also deemed great by the consuming audience.

The leaders in social media were, and largely remain, the stat stuffers. They mastered the system, making game plans that would light up the scoreboard, creating the foundation for what defines successful social media strategy and results today. Aaron Eisman was young in his career when he got to witness, and became part of, one of those early leading organizations — Bleacher Report. There, Eisman picked up lessons that still serve him today. In a recent conversation, he reflected on how, with every sports account activating around the same major sports storylines, B/R stood out.

“The Social Moments team [at Bleacher Report] was the viral meme team, I guess you could say,” said Eisman, who also worked with Turner Sports and the NFL Network before starting his agency, Eisman Digital Consulting. “It was a team of 10-12 people literally sitting in a room a couple of times a week and they would just think of viral moments or they would create an idea before it happened. Like, if the Cubs are going to win the World Series, what are we going to do social media-wise to make it look really exciting and dope?

“We were playing chess and we were always steps ahead of the competition. We were always getting ready to do checkmate while they were just starting their chessboard.”

So much of social media strategy is being ready for anything and everything. Planning to be extemporaneous. There’s a place for timeless content, to be sure, alongside the real-time, reactive, opportunistic content. As the industry matured over the years, everybody began to think more like chess, trying their best to anticipate two or three moves ahead, the circumstances that would play out — all while keeping in mind the ultimate goals and mini objectives to achieve along the way.

“Ultimately when you think proactive, reactive, evergreen, breaking news — any of these other creative metrics and things that you think of in your head about how the content should be or what it should be, then you’re going to really advance as a social media team, and just think ahead of the curve,” said Eisman.

The final destination — the definition of success — is not the same for everyone. But the scoreboards on the platforms all read the same, we’re all reviewing the same box score, context notwithstanding. The metrics do serve as a feedback mechanism; is great content really great if not enough people see it? As long as the dominant social media channels continue to dominate, you’re largely playing by their rules. And, what hits on those channels tends to influence user behavior, consumption patterns, and preferences in general.

All that’s to say that social media strategy, while not slave to the metrics, is certainly influenced by them. It’s a feedback loop that leads a strategy to success.

“If the strategy is building out the right content, then the content should hit, and if the content should hit, then the numbers should prove it,” said Eisman, who has run Eisman Digital Consulting for nearly five years now. “The numbers don’t lie, so the analytics should tell you… the analytics should reaffirm or adjust the overall strategy. So it kind of works in a cycle almost between those three aspects.”

It’s tempting to get swayed in the silo of individual posts, to be seduced by the serotonin of a post’s objective performance. But it’s important to appreciate the forest for the trees, too (a cliche, but it’s apt here!). The success or failure of individual posts, of a day in the life of a social media strategy is fleeting. The half-life for the majority of these things is so short. That’s why it’s integral to understand what we’re doing all this for — what are the goals, what should the short-term strive to add up to in the long-term?

In an evolving world where overnight success is possible, where a single TikTok video can catapult an account from 1000 to 100,000 followers, it’s important to articulate the actual goals. Sometimes it is more followers, sometimes it isn’t. Eisman and his team encounter a diversity of stated goals working across clients for Eisman Digital and strategize accordingly.

“People want different things: to help grow their social media account or grow other goals they have. So how we get there is you want to figure out the goals of the person or the client you’re working with then you figure out the strategy of how to get to those goals,” Eisman explains. “And some of it’s not overnight. I mean, one of my biggest clients right now is a golf training app and they more care about the process of what the content looks like.

“If it takes time for us to create the great content, it’ll take time, but we don’t need to push out a great post every day because sometimes it leads to more followers, sometimes it doesn’t and we’re accepting of that.”

As social media has matured over the years and long ago transcended the remit of the archetypal ‘intern,’ social media strategy is now part of the bigger picture, expected to deliver against the organization’s true, bottom-line goals. So social media cannot and does not exist in a silo. It often works in tandem with all of the organization’s other marketing and engagement channels — there’s, umm, synergy (sorry, had to use that word). So whether you’re leading an in-house social and digital media team or running a social/digital media agency like Eisman, it’s critical to step out of those siloes.

Eisman expounded on the subject: “There are different forms of marketing, social media is one of them, but do you want to do a newsletter or do you want to do ad placements on Google? Do you want to do paid social or does your organic post that does well numbers-wise deserve to be boosted and put money behind it? And influencer marketing, there are just so many forms of marketing these days when five, ten years ago, probably more ten years ago, it was your general marketing people, your public relations people, and maybe you had 1 or 2 social media people ten years ago, and now it’s completely changed into social media needs to be a beast for organizations.”

While we marvel at the exponential growth in importance and power of social media in the last 10-15 years, it’s just as necessary to understand that social media is not the answer to everything. It’s not a magic pill. So as Eisman, or any social media leader, works to set and execute against goals for a given company, part of that is understanding where social media has less influence on the ultimate outcomes. There are plenty of precision holes to pick, but, generally, the promises that we want social media to proselytize need to be kept on the other side.

“There are some KPIs and metrics that social media can hit very easily and we can go after those growth metrics and stuff and those engagement metrics and those impression metrics and all that stuff, reach metrics, whatever you want to call it,” Eisman explained,” but sometimes we can only accomplish so much on social media. It’s got to be the product that has to sell…it has to be good.”

It’s true that we now have a better understanding than ever of what works and what doesn’t work. But with that greater insight comes more complexity as the new challenge is connecting all those disparate dots that comprise the bigger picture.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH AARON EISMAN

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Content Strategy, Digital, Fan Development, General Marketing, Social Media, Social Media ROI

Key Themes and Opportunities for Sports Organizations in the Year Ahead

2023 was a great year to be a sports fan. Most of the traditional measures of fan interest increased, more emerging sports rose up, the platforms of sports did some good in culture and society, and it was another year of growing understanding that the future of sports business and fan engagement will be molded, if not led, by those managing the digital and social channels that comprise the majority of time spent and touch points between sport and fan. 

There may not have been paradigm shifts in the greater smsports world, but the roots for such massive evolution formed and there’s more recognition than ever that originality wins, meaningful connections matter, and that sports and athletes are the gateway to so much more than the game on the field or court.

With that in mind, something of an annual tradition building off close observation of the space and countless valuable conversations, here are ten areas of interest and themes at the top of my mind in 2024 for the greater sportsbiz industry.

Fan Identity (online and offline)

So much of fandom has been, and continues to be, about identity. One declares themselves a fan of a given athlete or team and therefore does the things that fans do — follow their social, consume content involving them, wear merch showcasing their fandom, and maybe insert it into their avatar or username or profiles. And the notion of identity, in digital and IRL environments, remains paramount. But there’s more competition than ever to own pieces of one’s identity, so the challenge for sports organizations is to foster and reinforce elements of identity, empower fans to showcase it and find emerging and original ways to do it. One more way to tap into fan identity is to align with their other interests and passions, such as our next item…

Creators, Influencers, and UGC

Fandom is contagious and we’re seeing more collaboration and strategy in direct work with online influencers (and ‘traditional’ celebrities) and creators who are already fans themselves. These mutually beneficial relationships benefit all parties when they’re authentic and it’s why you’ve seen teams and leagues in the last couple of years create full-time positions to oversee and execute influencer marketing and relations; others are rolling the remit into social media roles. It’s not uncommon now to see titles like Director of Social Media and Influencers on the staff directories of teams and leagues.

This is not just about direct partnerships, it’s also a larger theme playing out in sports business as the industry begins to appreciate more and more the value of earned media. Earned media — from fans posting about a game, a team, a player — is not new in sports; traditional B2C brands would kill for such organic earned media. But as teams add a strategic layer, that’s where the fun starts. Facilitating creators with content and access, fostering UGC and showcasing to create a positive feedback loop, monetizing it directly and indirectly. The organization of this ecosystem is only just beginning, which leads us to the next theme…

The next phase of Collab

If we had the data, we could probably see a chart showing the growth in the % of Instagram feed posts that are Collabs looking something like 📈 in the last year or so. Mutual relationships are getting mobilized more frequently, whether it’s league and broadcaster, team and player, league and brand. Alongside the Collab posts, the platforms are also productizing the behavior in other ways, testing true collaborative content, with multiple parties each contributing to a single post.

My job often entails ideating around maximizing such organized orders of parties for a given sports or entertainment property. As the fences get more easily traversable and the collaboration being offered by platforms more widespread, it will lead to more frequent, more creative, and even opportunistic collab content taking off. Too often the power of relationships that transcend the field gets taken for granted, which indirectly leads to our next item…

Relationship platform

There are a lot of answers to the ‘Why do we love sports?’ question and a lot of them are correct. But at its core, past the inherent storytelling [and, yes, the wagering] the group dynamics that sports fandom cultivates is the beating heart. Sports fandom offers an opportunity to plan a social night out with friends or family, it can jumpstart a dormant group chat, fuel endless conversation at the bar or the dinner table, and it can lubricate meetings with even total strangers, providing an instant ember of relationship.

So how can sports teams lean into this superpower even more in 2024? We’ve seen the move to smaller group engagement across social platforms, whether it’s on Discord or IG or WhatsApp or elsewhere — sports provides the connective tissue for much of it. Teams and leagues can create more synapses, more opportunities to foster friendships or even initiate new engagements. If sports can master their position as a purveyor of relationships and pastime, there is a helluva opportunity to further enhance the next item…

Direct to Consumer

The trend of leagues and teams developing and prioritizing their owned and operated channels, often with an app and a CRM at the center, is not a new one. But the climate has only hastened these pursuits — the dilution of precise targeting with digital ads is one and more recently the gradual decline of the regional sports network (RSN) business. If all of a sudden teams had to rely on monetizing their live broadcasts one fan at a time, many realized it sure would help to have a direct line to more of them, especially those not already in the database because they’ve attended a game [but still watched a lot of your games/content].

The apps are getting more competitive — they have to. Teams and leagues are asking themselves (and being pitched by vendors) ‘What can we do to entice more fans to spend time on our owned platforms’ (and what value prop will convince them to register/sign in with their information)?’ There’s the low-hanging fruit of mobile ticket/account integration, but beyond that relatively ‘free space’, there’s a plethora of ideas out there, from interactivity to exclusive content to novel features, and lots more. But one area picking up steam for sports and beyond is our next topic…

More gaming

There was an article recently in Vanity Fair about the New York Times’ big bet on games, facetiously stating the Times is becoming a ‘gaming company that also happens to offer the news.’ Meanwhile, the NBA recently introduced ‘NBA Play’, a collection of games in their league’s app. As the competition for time, attention, and true (registered) membership for fans keeps heating up while simultaneously becoming more important, games represent a sticky, engaging, shareable opportunity to capture all that.

Depending on which stat you stumble upon, something like 90% of Americans regularly play games, whether they’re into Call of Duty, Words with Friends, Immaculate Grid, or even an old-school crossword or Sudoku. So it’s no wonder that investment in games is one with a big TAM for teams and leagues. They can be pretty simple, too (see: Wordle and all its variations). With built-in fandom, the games can simply align to general mechanics — challenging but not too challenging, sticky/consistent, talk-worthy, and, well, fun. Keep an eye on gaming, it may even become a growing direct revenue stream as sports organizations start to realize how much their IP can truly be monetized, which brings us to our next subject area…

Premium content, Passive Monetization, and Content Libraries

There are investors that focus specifically on acquiring YouTube libraries. With just a few tweaks and optimizations, archives of YouTube videos can generate a decent amount of revenue from years-old videos. Meanwhile, that documentary you just watched on Netflix was made in 2018 — and most of the content was pieced together from decades-old archives. That long opening aside, the point is that each piece of content a team publishes, cuts, or produces (or even if they don’t and it’s sitting in the cloud storage) is an asset. And those assets can deliver dividends in direct and indirect ways.

Many conversations you have about sponsored content now bring up that their organization saw the light in the last 1-3 years. The pandemic was a big part of it, but so were tailwinds from marketers across brands diverting more of their marketing spend from linear to digital channels. Sports content, from highlights to documentaries and the reality series that The Last Dance and Drive to Survive accelerated in demand, and while many teams already have the capability in-house to produce great all-access pieces, they’re starting to act more like a media company now, bringing in additional help or hiring more to up their volume. Because it brings in money. It brings in sponsors and can provide lasting value through time spent on an app or lucrative YouTube rabbit holes, or through pre-programmed social media ‘archive’ accounts, and maybe behind a paywall for your in-house RSN subscriber (if that comes to be). The number of permutations and options to piece together reams of old highlights, interviews, and B-roll is virtually endless. Especially if you consider our next item…

Generative AI

Generative AI had already made its way into sports well before ChatGPT launched and introduced the masses to the awe-inducing results; companies like WSC Sports already permitted you to ask for ‘All of Nikola Jokic’s dunks from his rookie season in 2015-2016’ and get a highlight package (assuming the big man dunked at all his rookie year). But the acceleration in 2023 was remarkable and does not seem to be slowing down as 2024 begins. It won’t be long before a video producer can use detailed prompts to significantly reduce the time it takes to produce premium content, optimized for algorithms and viewership. Maybe fans will even be able to create rough cuts of such content themselves (perhaps not in 2024).

The highlights-driven generative AI has been novel, but is mostly packages of a player’s top plays or all the ‘x’ from ‘y.’ As emotion and storytelling gets woven into these creations, the content banks are going to build up more and more so that fans may be consistently flipping between Hulu and their league or team’s app when deciding what to watch before going to bed. The relationships fans can build with their favorite shows or podcasts or creators are hard to truly measure, the metrics models are still catching up to digital interaction that’s so prolonged, invested, and sticky. So let’s talk about the next topic…

The evolving nature of engagement

We’re in the middle of the engagement era. Valuation models are often based on engagements (some include impressions, too), but as metrics and real-life results get more scrutinized, for the first time in a while the industry is reconsidering what really matters and, conversely, what just makes all sides look good to their bosses. As platforms evolve, owned channels get prioritized, and more mediums emerge, the old-school paradigms of engagement and engagement rate will evolve, too. If an impression means they walked by your store (excuse the shopping analogy; it works well here, but team platforms are not ‘storefronts’), engagement could mean they stopped and stared for a moment, they took a peek inside, they came in and browsed for a while, they came in and tried something on, they left with a purchase, they never came in at all but looked it up later, they never came in but after seeing a couple Instagram ads they added something to an online cart, they didn’t buy anything but brought a friend to the store — this list can go on and on with so many more variables and behaviors considered.

The point is that the way we think and talk about engagement is getting smarter and more thoughtful. In an industry like sports, where the longtail is so powerful (but more challenging than ever), sports organizations have to get better at understanding what is not just capturing the casual fan’s attention but what is capturing their heart and mind. The lifetime value of a fan is immeasurable, especially when their fan evangelism is accounted for, and as tempting as it is to chase the trees amidst the forest, we have to balance the casual engagements with the deeper fan touches. Expect to see innovation in measurements — not all will stick, nor should they — as we reconsider KPIs like time spent, frequency of engagement, retention, a fan’s connection tree (to other fans) and their potential k-factor, their propensity for high LTV curves, the number of platforms they engage on, and so much more. While we all love the idea of a Joe DiMaggio-like hitting streak when it comes to repeated social media success, moneyball is making its way into the industry as we consider slugging percentage and game-winning plays. That brings us to our final topic…

Eventizing across digital/social

Routine and its less-appealing stepsibling monotony are an inherent part of sports. Especially for sports with longer seasons and vast quantities of games and star players taking maintenance days, it’s hard to make every game matter. (see: The NBA In-Season Tournament as an effort to alleviate that) And that’s okay; in fact, it invites innovation. Teams and leagues are finding more ways, through brand and creator collabs, through theme nights that echo across content and social, through gamification, and more avenues to give fans a reason to consume and care — whether that means attending, watching, or just paying attention on social and digital channels.

These manufactured ‘events’ that try to break up what could otherwise feel routine are also opportunities to capture casual audiences. If you not only accept but embrace that not every piece of content and every campaign and event and game needs to try to reach your total addressable audience, organizations can hone in on specific audience cohorts. (See the appreciating engagement section). Your Hispanic Heritage activations and creative on social don’t need to go viral, but if that content can be really cool for a certain audience, that’s a win.

At the more macro level, it doesn’t take a genius to see the increase in tentpoles produced and propagated by leagues, with the NFL and their schedule release content jumpstarting the practice. What are all the opportunities for a team, whether through organic parts of the league calendar or manufactured events by teams/leagues themselves, to make it feel like a big deal to fans? Get the right partners involved to justify the investment and make the campaigns feel big and exciting, and that slugging % can go up. Other trends in this piece will make activating and executing such ‘events’ on digital/social and beyond more feasible and valuable, too.

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A common refrain for years posits that all brands are media companies, and vice-versa. Sports organizations embody this duality more than ever, with generational brands and an endless fount of valuable IP. Developing new avenues to monetize and actualize it all is top of mind for the year ahead. The pluripotency of sports is unmatched and we’re just starting to realize what that means.

Content Strategy, Digital, Social Media

Why Social Media Needs a Voice at the Table in Sports: ‘Magic can happen when you listen to your social folks’

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!)

READ THE SNIPPETS

College, Social Media

Inside /r/CFB — the Subreddit where College Football Fan Engagement Thrives and a Community is Sown

There’s unbelievable breaking news or a crazy game just ended — if you’re a sports fan, what do you do?

There are a number of options and many larger platforms have come and gone over the years (remember Facebook Stadium?). Some will go to their intimate group chat on iMessage or maybe Insta, some fans will tweet into the noisy timeline, maybe you’ll go and comment on the Instagram post from a news outlet or comment in the Bleacher Report feed — but some of the most engaged sports fans reside on Reddit.

This article is not a recommendation to drop everything and prioritize Reddit for a social media strategy; it’s a look at one of the most engaged sports communities everywhere, a subreddit that is just outside the top 250 subreddits in terms of subscribers but is often right near the top in average comments per day — /r/CFB, the college football community on Reddit.

In such a tribal sport, why do over 2 million fans subscribe to ‘The Internet’s Tailgate’ (as the subreddit calls itself) and what’s it like to manage and moderate such a vibrant, vehement community? Bobak Ha’Eri is part of the team behind r/CFB and has been there since the early days of the subreddit, helping to oversee the community as its growth has made things more fun, but more complicated. The result today is a thriving subreddit (and a brand that has extended to a Twitter account with hundreds of thousands of followers) that has had to professionalize, in some ways, but remains as irreverent and funny and entertaining as ever.

So what does happen when news breaks? When it does, Ha’Eri and his r/CFB co-moderators have to be ready for the tsunami coming.

“If you don’t moderate a website at all, you have total chaos,” said Ha’Eri, who had experience in message board moderation before /r/CFB, but on a much smaller scale in comparison. “With a college football section, one of the weird things that we get, which isn’t involving offensive material, is everybody’s going to try and post the same story as soon as it happens…”

The criteria for the /r/CFB when it comes to managing the deluge of content that 2.1M+ subscribers can bring, Ha’Eri explained, is: “Does it add to the conversation? Then maybe we’ll allow another one in. But it’s to also manage what I know most users would like. What we learn, because we sometimes will churn out surveys [asking] users what they want to have, and what they like about r/CFB is a variety of stories, including kind of the squirrely ones that people hadn’t thought of or heard of, is either a wacky thing at a minor school or just some kind of aspect…”

With a subreddit that big, it becomes necessary to have a more formalized approach to moderation, a framework that can guide the decision-making of the team of moderators that ultimately direct the traffic on /r/CFB. Ha’Eri has a legal background, so his mind sometimes thinks in such terms when considering moderation choices. The team behind /r/CFB has also organically developed an approach to leading the community and the brand. Because when you’re that big, there is power to wield. And, as someone once said, with great power comes great responsibility.

“[You] kind of trust [Reddit’s upvote/downvote] system, but at the same time, we have to play a more parental role,” said Ha’Eri, who fell in love with college football as an undergrad at USC. “And again, I’m really belaboring this, making it academic, but from a legal analogy, you know, that’s what the judge’s role is. The judge has to say, is this case enough to move forward to a jury? Is this enough where we’ve stated something that is a question that the law provides a remedy, so it isn’t quite that mind-intensive to be a moderator.

“We’ve always had that level of trying to keep some sort of level of equality between all of us with some respect for seniority and understanding. So then we created an executive committee of more senior moderators who always end up making the bigger decisions like should we move forward and make an LLC? Should we move forward and make that? So we’re not forcing [things] because I mean, you know, you might have up to 20 or 30 moderators [and] that can be onerous to try and get everyone on the same page. And also sometimes you need to move quickly.”

Even with a soft layer of oversight, it’s primarily the users and their upvotes and engagement that drive r/CFB. It is quite the cosmopolitan community; spend a few minutes browsing the threads and you’ll quickly have counted dozens of different college programs represented. Fans that make their way to sports bars IRL to watch the Saturday games will often go to the ‘Michigan’ bar or an ‘Ohio State’ bar, where they can be surrounded by fellow fans all sporting the same colors. And online, there are plenty of team-specific message boards and communities for college football fans, so why do so many eschew those more insular places in favor of the mixed town square on /r/CFB? It’s an interesting question posed to Ha’Eri, because college football is so tribal; it’s that passionate patriotism that makes the sport so special. But r/CFB has thrived because of, not in spite of, the melting pot.

Ha’Eri once found himself on USC message boards, but he’s come to recognize why so many fans flock to /r/CFB, often leaving their segregated communities behind. And it’s that intermingling that has made r/CFB so special.

“They have their own peculiarities oftentimes,” said Ha’Eri of the more team-specific platforms and message boards. “it’s a very concentrated community and they sometimes see feedback loops…Sometimes you get irrational views and it becomes an echo chamber, and that echo chamber feedback loop can be an issue. And frankly, sometimes you’re like, these people, I’m a fan, but you all sound crazy….

“r/CFB did something that’s hard to do,” he continued, “which is have a college football website that caters to all fans and can keep the peace…I think people like hearing from other fan bases. They like hearing news…”

As Ha’Eri noted in discussing the vastness of the /r/CFB community, there are over 130 FBS teams in college football, each with their own dedicated fan bases. Some fan bases are bigger than others, rivalries can get fierce, and power users can dominate the conversation if left unchecked. Ha’Eri and his colleagues know what makes r/CFB so special, though, and to hear him tell it is to understand that there’s, well, at least something of a method to the madness — underlying objectives that guide how they want to govern the community.

“Our official mission statement is ‘We’re a welcoming community that celebrates fun, camaraderie and creativity in all of college football,’” he said. “Because that is what we’re really about…r/CFB offers that kind of like, here’s all the news items that are kind of hot right now. Oh, but the fun thing is, here’s a community of people that love to make, usually jokes or interesting commentary and sometimes worthless commentary. But that’s what the the voting arrows are for…”

Beyond the mission statement, the alternative moniker of r/CFB feels so spot on for anyone familiar with the community. Because if Twitter once proclaimed itself as ‘the biggest virtual sports bar in the world,‘ /r/CFB really does feel like ‘The Internet’s Tailgate.’ A place where this plenty of passion and shouting, to be sure, but also the jokes and witty commentary to which Ha’Eri alluded.

To keep the analogy going, and to try and understand why so many fans go to Reddit, of all places, to expound and vent, there’s something special about the communal nature of r/CFB that stands in stark contrast to the noisy nature of shouting into the void on Twitter. Comment trees sprout branches upon branches on /r/CFB, conversation builds with others more so than the hordes of individuals ratio’ing the tweet of a team or reporter. Fans aren’t just seeking an outlet to scream, they’re seeking other fans. I’ve noticed, at eventful times, fans going to Instagram and commenting en masse on the team’s most recent post, even if it’s from several hours ago like a photo of the team in warm-ups. That’s the pull that Reddit offers. Because whether it’s the game thread or the postgame thread, the r/CFB ‘tailgaters’ go to their college football town square to say their piece, knowing others are waiting to do the same — and react and engage with others.

“Some people, I swear, have been sitting back as the game is going on and [thinking] like, I know what I’m going to write in the post game,” said Ha’Eri, who has helped grow the @RedditCFB Twitter account to over 330,000 follows, partly by sharing some of the best /r/CFB posts and comments. “They’ll write something and happily hit F5 [to refresh] over and over again the moment it appears…Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s hilarious, sometimes it’s a lot of frustration. But it provokes conversation because the way the comment section works is they’re all comment trees based off a top level comment.”

As fans come back week after week, game after game, day after day, something starts to happen — community forms. Ha’Eri and his moderator team mostly sit back and let fans start conversations and go back and forth with each other. It’s seeing that play out which is so heartening to Ha’Eri and why all the (unpaid) work that goes into keeping it going is worthwhile. Because while there may be biting jokes, maybe even some name-calling — it’s all fun at the end of the day and it’s a community that transcends any differences in team colors, accents, and borders. There’s something life-reinforcing about that, at the risk of hyperbole, reminds us about the inherent power of community that sports embodies. That’s the magic one can see in r/CFB.

“It’s a part of the [college football] culture. We’re used to ranting at each other or making funny comments,” said Ha’Eri. “We found our strength is a community and the users that come to us and what makes them useful is that people bond over the sport.

“Sport is is beyond politics. It’s beyond [this or that]. It’s joyous, it’s fun, and if you hopefully have a healthy relationship with it, you know, ultimately it’s silly and frivolous.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BOBAK HA’ERI

READ THE SNIPPETS

Social Media, Sports Media

How the Sports Reporting Profession is Evolving and One Journalist is Paving a New Way

The sports reporter is an endangered species.

It at least sometimes feels that way with the all-too-frequent news of layoffs at even the biggest publications that dominated for decades. But the reality is that the sports reporter is more powerful than ever. As the superstar era plays out in pro sports and the creator paradigm penetrates social media and marketing, so is the sports journalist able to stand on their own and develop a fan base loyal to them, regardless of where their byline appears.

David Alter has lived through the rapidly evolving career of a sports reporter, surviving and transforming himself and cobbling together a community of fans and a content strategy that allows him to pay the bills, create content, write stories, and even fund his own road trips, oftentimes, traveling to cover the Toronto Maple Leafs beat. The line between creator and reporter isn’t completely blending, but the professions are starting to have more in common than the layman would realize. For Alter, while he does work with Sports Illustrated via The Hockey News, he’s partially independent and autonomous, making it on his own. Such an endeavor is not without ample challenges, but the Canadian journalist is winning credibility and repute through persistence, engagement, and taking advantage of every opportunity.

“Part of the issue of being independent, too, is you don’t have legacy brands where a lot of a lot of places don’t even know to reach out to you that they’ll reach out to you on Instagram or social,” said Alter, discussing how to get on and stay on the radar of publicists as an independent reporter. “Like [Maple Leafs defenseman] Morgan Reilly had this thing with Kellogg’s for media to attend and I didn’t even know about it, but the PR person who is in charge there reached out to me 2 or 3 days prior. I’m like, Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for doing that and keep me on all your lists. So you have to kind of build and do things organically.”

Developing things organically has guided Alter as he’s built up his personal brand and business as a sports reporter. He appreciates that monetizing audiences on digital and social means engagement is the key metric and the KPI that brands hold dear when evaluating where and with whom to spend their marketing dollars. And while Alter drives good, consistent engagement just from his quality content and hockey coverage of the Leafs day-to-day, he also wanted to create additional engagement opportunities for his fans through the kind of interactive activations often backed by sponsors.

So Alter did something creative, a sort of ‘fake it til you make it’ initiative, though it was really about giving fans a reason to have fun and stay engaged with the game, regardless of the score. He created a contest to have fans guess the time on ice of a specific player (the amount of game minutes and seconds a certain skater is on the ice during a game) with the closest to the mark winning a Starbucks gift card. The tweets would get a ton of replies from fans putting in their guess and fans would be checking box scores and updates throughout the game. This wasn’t a Starbucks promotion, though (nor did Alter make it seem that way), it was just a small reward Alter paid for out of his pocket to incentivize fans to participate and engage with him and each other.

“When I did that in 2021, that was more so a way for me to give back to fans who couldn’t be at games because I felt bad that I have this privileged situation where I’m at games with an empty arena [due to COVID] and can see it in person,” he said. “Even if it’s not the same experience where people at home are kind of stuck, especially in Ontario, where it was really shut down compared to any other state or province in North America for the longest time. For me, it was just kind of a way to keep people engaged in the game, even if it was a blowout or a meaningless game.”

Soon brand deals started coming organically. Alter even told of a physical therapist trading his fees for their services in exchange for shouting them out to his audience on social. Alter continued to seize opportunities to engage and entertain the audience, even beyond hockey. The life of a sports reporter, especially one that travels with the team they’re covering, is full of interesting sights and sounds and experiences — content. I’ve often written that the ordinary is extraordinary for fans, and Alter has seen that borne out with something as simple as capturing the media meal served to the press at NHL arenas. NFL broadcaster Ross Tucker turned his own ‘Tuck Spreads’ showcases of press food into a sponsorable asset and Alter has surprised himself with some of the initial virality of what is a very ordinary part of the life of a sports reporter.

“Even when I’m on the road [during the season], I review the media meals now and just things I see on the road that people would not normally see,” said Alter, who noted that MLSE’s Head of Culinary even caught wind of Alter’s press food content. “And reviewing the media meals became this big thing that kind of took on its own life because I looked at TikTok and saw what’s popular on TikTok. Okay, food, celebrity sightings, random stuff. So I started it with food where I’m like, okay, here’s the media meal. And like, that thing would get like 30,000 plays. I’m like, Why? Like, it’s just a meal for me. But people are into that stuff, so I did that…

“The Leafs are a niche and I love doing that stuff, but I do like the broad appeal that multiple people can kind of factor in and enjoy as well…It’s just kind of just keeping your eyes open and just not being afraid to try different things and do that. And, you know, you’ll get ridiculed along the way; I have for sure. But I’m like, Hey, people are into it. If they’re into it, I’m going to keep doing it.”

Creating content that will engage an audience, seeking broad appeal, understanding what’s resonating and popular — these considerations could just as easily describe a professional ‘influencer’ or creator as they fit for Alter’s occupation as a sports reporter. They’re all in the business of audience growth and audience engagement; the means may be different but the desired ends look pretty similar. Alter appreciates the value of his audience, his fans, and their continued engagement over time. No matter how the sports media paradigm continues to evolve, that fan base is his job security.

“On my Twitter, I think today I have 42,500 followers,” he said, “which, you know, as far as Leafs reporters or Leafs enthusiasts that cover the beat, it’s not the highest by any means. But I would argue that my engagement rate is as high, if not higher, than most on the beat for the reason that those people are loyal, coming back to me and are repeat customers in terms of clicking on my links, in terms of getting their information firsthand from me or whatever the case may be. So I look at that and I kind of go in that regard where I’m trying to grow things organically that way.”

As long as there is sports, there will be reporters delivering news, access, and insight to fans. But reporters no longer must be beholden to media publications with the biggest bank accounts and logos — they own their audience and they can make their own way.

LISTEN TO MY FULL INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ALTER

READ THE SNIPPETS

Brand, Content Strategy, Social Media

The Anatomy of Brand Building in Sports — Why It Matters, What It Means, and How It Looks in Action

Too much of social media looks and sounds the same. Brands and individuals exhibiting the same personality, trolling with the same memes, and trying to shout the loudest in hopes of standing out in increasingly cacophonous, homogenous platforms and feeds.

But what is a brand if its primary distinguishing factor is simply the volume? When every team repeatedly tries to out-savage the other or invokes the same well-worn tactics, all of a sudden it’s the black and white cow that stands out amidst the herd of purple cows.

This is not a call for blandness, merely one for purpose, for values, and for giving fans a reason to believe in you, not only to be entertained by you. Jess Smith has been enmeshed with distinctive sports brands throughout her career, appreciating the balance of amusement and aura that the most powerful, lasting brands exhibit. Everybody will say that maximizing engagement is the goal, but that’s oversimplifying things. A couple of slices of pizza may get you the same calories, and more quickly, than a plate of lentils and vegetables, but overdoing either of those meals, regardless of your macros, is a recipe for bloating or blandness. Jess says it better than my nutritional meandering:

“I think not all engagement is created equal,” said Smith, who is Vice President of Brand and Digital Strategy for the Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR team. “…I always tell the team there are certain things that we’re going to have to tell the story about or initiatives that we’re going to have to talk about. It’s probably not going to be the most engaging, but our job is to figure out how we take it and improve engagement, and build upon it…

“There are some things that are core to the organization, core to our partners, core to values and we have to do them…So I think just understanding that from a team standpoint and I always tell the team, as long as we take care of the foundation, then those fun things that we know are going to pop and are kind of silly and maybe are more of a fan engagement [play], then we can do that.

“But I think it’s just making sure that the team understands what the purpose of it is, and even though it doesn’t hit those engagements, there’s still a ton of value to it.”

Teams would do well to do their meal prep and allow for cheat meals — okay, we’ll skip more food talk, but Smith did discuss the structure and organization it takes to manage a brand and content strategy these days. There are too many demands, too many channels, and miles of monotony interrupted by unexpected detours of urgency and opportunity. One of the more unique characteristics of planning and strategy in sports is that so much of it can end up being all for naught. In a split second, a triumphant victory can turn into an agonizing defeat — but you better be ready to capitalize on the potential win because those are the fleeting moments when outsized returns and results happen. Such preparation is why just about everyone who has worked in sports will know what it means to have a folder of tears (what I called it), a virtual graveyard where the best-laid plans and content remain, having never seen the light of day.

But you still have to be ready. And there are ways teams can be ready for the big moments and also ready for the times when strategy has to be pivoted or executed more quickly than a NASCAR pit stop.

“I feel like in sports you actually have to plan for the unexpected,” said Smith, who spent time with the New York Yankees and New York Rangers prior to heading to Stewart-Haas. “So you know when trade [season] starts to happen, you have to build all the templates and think of all the different scenarios that could happen. I feel like you have to be anticipatory and plan for the things that might not happen. That’s hard because sometimes you might put in work on something and it might not ever see the light of day, but if you don’t plan for it, the team’s going to be in not a good spot. So it’s all about planning for what you can plan for and being prepared for the unexpected.”

It’s easier to be ready in real time when the team knows its brand and knows its identity. Decisions aren’t made in silos, but instead backed by collectively recognized frameworks that keep everyone driving in the same direction (left turns only — NASCAR joke for you). But brands and frameworks can’t be constrained or overly rigid, lest they remain tethered to patterns that shut them out of conversations or even entire platforms where their presence could be relevant and where their existing or potential fans want to engage. There’s a level of flexibility inherent in the most successful brands now, appreciating that their fans want them to color outside a set of lines, at times, as long as they remain true to distinctive guiding principles. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary, to keep relationships burning hot and growing.

“My perspective on what fits within a brand box has evolved over the years,” said Smith, who also writes wonderfully on her blog Social ‘n Sport. “I feel like early on I was overly strict, it was brand above all else…I do believe there’s a brand foundation and you have to do the work that matters.

“So you have to understand who you are. You have to understand your tone. You have to understand what you won’t do. I think that’s really important. Always outline what you won’t do. But the media landscape has changed so much. People, I feel like, consume to take a break, it’s entertainment [and] every brand needs to loosen up a little bit. You have to figure out what that line is for you.”

Stewart-Haas Racing knows who they are and what they stand for. Smith helped tease it out and bring it to life more than ever before, and it was remarkable to hear her articulate the SHR brand, how organic it feels, and how it guides what they do and don’t do, who they seek to engage and not, and, well, everything. This is where conceptual meets practical, where the dreamers must also be doers. It can be easy to put up a few PowerPoint slides outlining a brand, but it takes the next level to translate that brand into everyday execution. But once you can identify the north star, it illuminates and enlightens, making where, when, and how to be active across platforms feel relatively simple.

For Smith and SHR, one of their most important content pillars is the fact that their team is, as she put simply, ‘a bunch of racers.’ Racing is in their blood, across the organization, and it’s that passion for the racing that they want to instill in their content, their passion, and their fans.

“While that seems like just basic marketing speak,” Smith explained,” everyone across the organization — like our fabricators are spending their weekends at Millbridge local dirt track, racing a dirt [race]. It’s true to our DNA. So ‘bunch of racers’ is one of our pillars. We want to show how all of our drivers, most of them race outside of NASCAR. They’ll do dirt racing, they’ll do modified. Kevin [Harvick] tonight is doing SRX, like they love racing. So that’s going to show up.

“That pillar is never going to change; if it changes and it’s not core to our DNA, but how we tell that story needs to change year to year.”

The guiding principle for SHR also helps them stay in the right lanes in their marketing and digital strategies. Brands that try to be everything to everyone often end up so convoluted or confused, with nothing for fans to latch onto or hold dear; they’re inconsistent. Smith articulated how SHR knowing who they are ensures its brand is strong and distinct, recognizable from the rest.

“When you think about that pie [of all potential sports fans], you think about NASCAR, I think we have to be really intentional about who we are or we’ll dilute ourselves and then we’re competing against a bunch of noise and almost don’t stand for anything,” she said. “Of course we want to bring in casual fans, but I think that where we do our brand a service is focusing on those casual racing fans and trying to bring them into the fold.”

As more brands succumb to the temptation to be whatever helps them achieve the biggest engagement numbers and viral growth, it’ll be those that remain distinct that stand the test of time. Everybody loves the jokester, people pay attention to the troll dropping savage lines and memes, they can’t help but look at the absurd and unhinged — but real relationships, backed by emotional investment require something more than surface-level gambits meant for a quick laugh. Well-rounded exposure and engagement matters. You can aim to attract attention for a day or strive to gain unconditional love for a lifetime.

One more thing…

Jess offered tremendous advice for people in leadership roles and I wanted to include an excerpt of that because it’s too dang good to leave out of this post. Listen (or read) the full interview below!

“One piece of advice — I think that you owe it to your team to give feedback and [to give] feedback often. When I first stepped into a management role, it felt like feedback sometimes was not, I don’t want to say a negative thing, but I was uncomfortable giving it. And as I learned, if you don’t give feedback, no one can read your mind. So it’s important for you to make sure that you give feedback, you give it often, you’re direct, and you also have candid conversations about your style. Like I’m going to give feedback, it’s not a negative, it’s a positive because I’m trying to help you. So I think the first time you step into management, just learning to give feedback, learning your style is super important because it helps your team and I feel like if you’re not giving it, you’re just doing a disservice to everyone.”

*******

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH JESS SMITH

READ THE SNIPPETS

Brand, Content Strategy, Social Media

How the Seattle Kraken Found Their Voice and Formed a Social Media Strategy Their Fans Can Feel Good About

Brand building used to be a one-way street. Something cooked up by the Don Drapers of the world. And, sure, brands were conceived and conveyed such that they’d appeal to consumers, but it was much more of an ‘at’ thing than a ‘with.’

And then social media came along and didn’t just disrupt the paradigm, it reinvented it.

Brand development is increasingly common in pro sports, as league expansion introduces new teams seemingly every few years. And the changed nature of relationships between consumers and businesses, between fans and teams — compounded by the increased demands from fans that the teams they support uphold certain values — has made the process all the more complex, but potentially powerful.

It was into this dynamic environment that Savannah Hollis stepped when she joined the Seattle Kraken to lead the initiatives on the front lines of fan relations — social media. The most recent National Hockey League (NHL) expansion team, the Kraken didn’t even have their name when Hollis came on board, let alone a voice, personality, and point of view. Amidst COVID and the widespread Black Lives Matter movement, the team had to confront important questions and issues long before they had a roster, let alone games or a logo.

“We started really thinking about as an organization, like, who do we want to be? “Who are we and what do we stand for?” said Hollis, who spent time with the Nashville Predators, Texas Stars (AHL), and Florida Panthers before joining Seattle. “I think one of the coolest things about us is from the very beginning, even prior to a lot of that, we wanted to be a little different. We wanted to make the game more accessible. We wanted to show that it doesn’t matter who you are or what your background is, what color your skin is — we want you to feel like this is a place that you could be and you could relate to and you could succeed in…

“One of the things that gave me hope to kind of go through was how we grew as an organization and some of the stuff that we did within the community and the storytelling and that engagement and the awareness and it’s just it’s been really cool and it set a really strong precedent for us…”

Championing approachability and accessibility carried through to the Kraken as a hockey team, too. Because if the team is truly a part of the community, that means just that — they’re a collaborator, not a dictator. So as the team tried to figure out where they should put their resources and who they should become, they asked questions and then sat back and listened.

“We really did want to engage the community,” said Hollis, whose role for the Kraken is Senior Manager of Social Media. “The amount of fan listening groups that our CEO and (also) at that point our head of hockey ops, who was Dave Tippet [did] — they would sit down and they’d do these fan focus groups. They’d talk to people, like, ‘What do you think about this? What do you care about? What do you want to learn?’…

“You’ll see we actually are getting ready to do this here in a couple of weeks, but once a year we try to do these fan content polls; we want our fans to help dictate what we’re doing because they’re the ones engaging with it. Like if you pay attention you’re going to see that stuff, but you also want to empower your fans to build a positive community, because I think the worst thing any brand can do is just be like, ‘No, we know what’s best’ and turn into that really corporate account who doesn’t actually engage or listen to their audience and then becomes irrelevant.

“The more you engage, the more you listen, the more you work with them, the more positive of an experience it’s going to be for everyone.”

That dedication to open communication continued on for the Kraken, too. Because the best thing a brand or business can do when they make important decisions that affect their customers (their fans) is to let them in on the process and explain their thinking. Noticing a theme here, yet? It’s one thing to say the organization is committed to being accessible, but while many preach it, fewer practice it.

So on the big day when the Kraken officially unveiled their name and brand, following months of speculation, focus groups, polls, and stories, the next step seemed obvious — invite the fans in.

“We were [thinking] like, okay, once we do the name, then what? And I was kind of like, ‘What if we did like virtual breakout sessions?'” Hollis described. “And our marketing team, our comms team took that, ran with it, and we had this really cool thing where we did deep dives with Adidas and the designers, we had our community team join on, we had hockey [ops] join on — it was so cool, all of these things that went into it that made it so successful.

“Because not only were we announcing this thing, but then we are offering people this really intense look into why we did it, what to expect, and really we showed them why they should care.”

So what does all this mean for social media? How does that philosophy extend to the club’s strategy on its social channels? For Hollis and her team, it meant thinking about how fans could feel represented within the team’s social media content, too. There’s still plenty of room for the heavily produced content featuring effects and sick dangles, but sometimes the best content instead zooms in on the fans experiencing the intensity and emotion. It’s palpable, it’s contagious, and it’s real. Hollis offered perspective on the content strategy framework.

“I mean, gosh, you could have this beautifully polished video that you’ve spent years working on and the concepts are awesome and it performs okay,” she said. “But then you have this raw video of like someone just screaming after an amazing goal and that outperforms anything you do the entire year. And it’s because it feels real. It feels raw and in the moment and it allows fans to to really connect with it. The other stuff, there’s still a place for it, it is still impactful, it still matters, but you’re starting to see a shift in what people care about, and a lot of times it’s authenticity.”

Authenticity is a buzzword, but there’s a difference between paying lip service to it and actually embracing it. That’s not to say teams should follow the lead of some of their more vehement fans lamenting a loss, but it does mean exuding optimism while at the same time acknowledging realities. Expansion teams aren’t supposed to be big winners right out of the gates. And while the Vegas Golden Knights broke the mold in their inaugural NHL season, the Kraken experienced a bit more of a typical debut, with losses more common than wins. Many teams still today, for better or for worse, will just type out ‘Final’ after a loss along with a score graphic, and then shut the proverbial laptop and walk away. The Kraken were determined to do it differently, though, to stay there alongside their fans, offering a positive outlook while still empathizing in addition to emphasizing the desire to win.

“I told [my social/digital coordinators], I was like let’s never just say ‘final’ [after a loss],” said Hollis, who noted the team leaned into humor that first season, too. “Let’s find a way to do something else. Like, if we have a bad game, is there something that we can do to still build up a player who performed well? It’s just something to do to poke fun at ourselves or to acknowledge that it sucks, right? Losing sucks. No one likes it and the team shouldn’t pretend like it’s okay.”

The honeymoon, and expected struggles, of that first season faded away as the Kraken began their second season, though. Hollis and her team recognized they couldn’t just run it back, that their fans, while still as excited as ever to have an NHL team in their town, would become more competitive and expect more. Year two for the Kraken’s social media would represent an evolution, too — still being the fun, lovable presence they were as newborns, but with an added edge that left no doubt — they expect to compete and to win.

“Going into year two we were kind of like, I don’t know if that’s going to fly for two years in a row,” Hollis recounted. “You kind of have to think about fan response because now fans are starting to get it. We made some moves in the offseason and we had (highly touted rookie) Matty Beniers coming in for his first season. The pressure was a little higher, the stakes were a little higher. So we still wanted to incorporate the tone and the lightness, but we wanted to also have fans recognize that we do have high expectations for ourselves, too. We’re not okay with being at the bottom of the standings. And I think we did a really good balancing that.”

And the team did start to win. The Kraken went on to make the playoffs and even took out the defending Stanley Cup champs when they defeated the Colorado Avalanche. As teams start to win nowadays, they often evolve their social media voice in a similar way, trending toward snark and savagery, putting more effort into highlighting their opponent’s loss than celebrating their own team’s win. But while Hollis and the Kraken recognize there is room for such snark in the strategy, they prefer to default to positive vibes, focusing on cheering the victory instead of highlighting the other team’s defeat. Such behavior conveys an example for fans, setting the tone for how this fan base wants to be in general and especially when they’re winning.

“There’s a time and a place for [savage and snark] for sure, but I think our big thing was we would rather build ourselves up instead of tear others down,” said Hollis. “There are certain teams where maybe we have good relationships with the [social media] admin so we can plan some fun back and forth or some fun banter. But at the same time, we want to focus on building our team up.

“Again, there’s always a place for the spicy comment here and there, but it’s not the focal point of our strategy.”

Hollis continued, explaining the long-term thinking that went into setting that strategy.

“So when we’re talking through this, we’re planning all this stuff, that was one of the big things that was kind of at the forefront,” she said. “Like, let’s find a way to keep building this up because this team is special and, you know, we’ve got it now, we don’t know if we’re going to get it again…So a lot of it was just let’s focus on building it up now, building these relationships now, building the goodwill now so that we have that kind of there [and] we can start forming those connections with our fans and really continue to grow them in an environment that is really positive.” 

There’s no one way to build a brand, no one-size-fits-all for every team in every market. But certain relationship principles tend to prevail for the teams that drive lasting, unconditional connections with their fans. There’s symbiosis, a feeling of unity and community that makes fans feel they’re part of something, that their relationship with the team gives them positive energy, that life just feels a bit more lively because they’re together.

The Kraken may not have won the Cup (yet), but they went from an unnamed idea to a team and a distinct brand with a distinct fan base. They won something bigger, they won over a community, building connections that can last for generations to come.

LISTEN TO MY FULL INTERVIEW WITH SAVANNAH HOLLIS

Content Strategy, Social Media

The Rise of Team Social Media ‘Hosts’ and How They Give Fans Unparalleled Glimpses at Games and Players

You peer at the footage on your device, squinting to try and make out the chorus of the song. Sure, you could look up the band on YouTube and hear it perfectly, but something about seeing this video sent from your friend at the concert makes it…different, special.There’s no logical explanation for this strange but perfectly normal behavior. But the same thing plays out for sports — a mobile shot from your buddy in the crowd adding a flavor that the official highlight on Twitter simply cannot. There’s a vicarious element to it, that even though you’re not there, you’re living through somebody else — a friend or, increasingly, a team’s social media “host” taking fans along for the ride on IG Stories and TikTok (and, years ago, Snapchat).But the idea of putting a face in front of a club’s social media presence, a guide for the fans, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was a new idea altogether when Aviv Levy Shoshan became the conduit to the club for FC Barcelona fans around the world in 2018.”They were really the first club who made a decision to hire a host, specifically for the Instagram channels, to cover all the first team trainings and also all the first team matches,” said Levy Shoshan, who would become as recognizable to fans as many of the players as the club traveled around the world. “Now you go to any second-tier team, to any random team channel [and] you click on a match day and there will be a guy or a girl hosting on Instagram, which is bizarre thinking about it. But back in the days like five, six years ago, it was not very common. You had the traditional presenter or host for the club TV [content], but not a social host. And now it’s very hard to think away this social figure.”He was a fly on the wall — until he wasn’t. The content became that much better, the experience that much more (here’s that word again) vicarious when the previously backgrounded character became an active participant in the content, the fans enjoying his POV as if it were their own. In hearing Levy Shoshan describe the experience, one can easily close their eyes and picture the kind of content that’s become so common in sports social media today.”I always really liked as raw as possible…It’s just, clicking play and seeing how the players would interact with you,” said Levy Shoshan, who is today the social media host for Dutch club AFC Ajax in addition to leading Double Tap, the agency he founded. “Because at the end of the day, if you are behind the camera, you’re behind the camera, no one needs to know, but once they interact, they interact with your direction. “So we had a lot of times that the players would come up to us or coming out of the parking and walking to the locker room and we would be there just filming and they would just come for a fist bump, you know? And now you see every team in the world [their] social media team is receiving fist bumps from their players. But I think it kind of started somewhere around there. And players also would start realizing like, ‘Yo, if I don’t fist bump [him], there’s no chance he will post me [on social]. So you at some point all 20 players would just walk past you and fist bump you.”That kind of eye contact and second-person (but feels like first-person) interaction is the stuff of magic for fan engagement. But anyone in and around social knows that such participation from players requires trust and doesn’t happen overnight. Levy Shoshan has worked alongside the biggest football players in the world for whom any misstep could blow up. So the best thing the social media person can do is, over time, ensure players know that not only will they be protected in the content, but that it will make them look good. Because social media is a conduit to the fans and by being active participants in the content, a player’s star only shines brighter as fans feel closer and more endeared to them.”I think it all comes down to respect at the end of the day,” said Levy Shoshan. “So what you said at the beginning, they know I make them look good. So there was a good proof of concept.”I was there for a few months, [the players] were all pretty cautious with me at the beginning, like, who is this new guy? What’s he filming? Is he going to post some stupid things? Is he going to make us look bad? [There is] a lot of cursing around the pitch, is he going to pick up on that? Is something going to leak? Then you see after a while that I’m completely clean and always make them look good no matter what, and [they] say, ‘Okay, he’s one of us.'”All of this comes together in remarkable fashion in the rawest of moments on the pitch. Levy Shoshan had the enviable experience of being a pitchside content creator during the World Cup, following Argentina as Leo Messi and La Albiceleste captured the title. He also played an active role when Antoine Griezmann celebrated a goal with a toss of confetti that mimicked LeBron James’s well-known chalk powder toss. As the magic moments compounded, with Levy Shoshan being the eyes and ears for fans at home — their ‘friend’ that just happened to have a great view of the show — the power of this content showed itself to be undeniable. The polished broadcast highlights are great, but they’re just not the same.”Of course you can see the goal on TV, but it’s nicer if you see it from someone filmed by phone, right? It’s because it feels like you filmed it or you interacted with it directly…,” said Levy Shoshan.He continued, describing a dramatic goal at the end of an epic FC Barcelona match: “[So] we’re losing 2-0, make it 2-2, Pique scores in the very dying minutes and he comes to celebrate in front of my face again. So there was screaming, there were these raw emotions that you cannot capture through the camera of a TV.”People want to live it like it’s their own phone, you know, it’s way more relatable than a TV camera.”Maybe we forgot about what makes social media special somewhere along the way. Sure, it’s great that broadcast replays arrive in the timeline in seconds, but that was never the point of what has become this social media industrial complex in the first place. It’s sharing the experience of others, feeling like you’re in their shoes, and having a ‘friend’ that’s there and taking you along for the ride.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH AVIV LEVY SHOSHAN

Brand, Content Strategy, Social Media, Social Media ROI

How Sports Teams Can Craft a Strong Brand Narrative One Social Media Post at a Time

Think about one of your favorite sports teams to follow on social media. How would you describe them? Which traits do they embody as an overall brand, which adjectives come to mind, what are their values, and what differentiates them from other sports teams?

In a time when consumers care what the brands they patronize and support stand for and how those brands come off, sports fans are also cognizant of whether their favorite teams and athletes mesh with their personal identities. And social media, in all its forms, is the most powerful mechanism teams have to develop and activate an identity. Every one of the hundreds of touchpoints teams have on these platforms with fans each week, every graphic and word — it all coalesces into how fans perceive the personalities and values of the team.

By the time Kurt Gies arrived at the Philadelphia 76ers, the team knew who it was and how to express it on social media. Luckily for Kurt, the brand of the 76ers was ‘Philadelphian’ and Kurt just happened to be a born and bred Philadelphian. So when he took over the keys (the social media posting) for the Sixers, he appreciated what his predecessors had built and sought to grow it further, along with the emerging personality of the team as embodied by its charismatic players.

“That [Sixers] account is not talking in just this plain voice, it’s talking as if it’s a Philadelphian, and Philadelphians appreciate that so much,” said Gies, who today is the Director of Social Media and Influencers for the LA Rams. “You look at the makeup of the team too…Joel Embiid especially in his early days was such a personality and it was like how do you take that huge personality and try and replicate that? Because at the end of the day, if you’re a sports brand account, you probably want to take on the voice of the people on your team…

“So having somebody like Joel Embiid is a huge piece of that and [the Sixers social media managers before me] did a great job emulating that and it just really opened up the doors for me as he started to play and become even more popular of like, ‘Hey, Joel is trolling people, we’re going to troll people too’ or we’re going to take on that similar voice.”

The Sixers were (and still are) one of the more distinct voices in social media and sports, and their originality and success continued, whether it was people named Max, Sandro, Kurt, Alli, Andy, or others behind the keys. It felt so organic for the Sixers when Kurt was there, and having guys like Embiid fueling the fire only made the direction all the more logical, sensible, and almost facile. So it was a new challenge when Gies left the comfy confines of the city of brotherly love to head to the LA Clippers, which had its own distinct brand identity and goals.

The Clippers were in the midst of a reinvigoration. The brand had been ascending, but with the arrival of newly acquired NBA stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George coinciding with Gies’s arrival, there was a salient opportunity to mold the brand and perception of the Clippers and its newly bedazzled roster. But to seize that opportunity meant paying attention to every detail, to ensure those hundreds and thousands of fan touchpoints all furthered an intentional narrative, Gies explained to me.

“When [his Clippers colleagues Sandro Gasparro and Charlie Widdoes] started they didn’t have Kawhi and PG [Paul George], but they did an incredible job of crafting that narrative and sticking to that narrative to help build that brand up from what it used to be,” said Gies, who had connected with both Gasparro and Widdoes from their time at the Sixers. “And then, you know, you get somebody like Kawhi and PG and you’re title contenders and everything was very calculated.

“That was probably one of the biggest I learned of many things from working with those guys. But that’s something that I always go back to, just there’s always a why behind what it is that we’re posting and what it is that we’re creating, and making sure that it’s achieving what that narrative is.”

Gies went on to describe what, exactly, that narrative was the Clippers sought to build. The ‘why’ to which every piece of content and post should connect.

“For the Clippers, it was, ‘Hey, we’re a blue-collar team. We’re a gritty team. We’re not this superstar team,’” he said. “So we want to show that we’re always putting in work. We want to show that we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves and here are the specific players that we want to highlight and the keywords — so just really calculated and determined what it was that we were highlighting in the content that we were creating.

“We weren’t just creating things to create them. We were creating things and crafting copy — there are so many things that go into it. But we were doing all of this with meaning behind it.”

 Thoughtfully crafting a brand doesn’t always equal virality. Sure, it’s great for every post to hit big numbers and social media teams will always try to convey the desired meaning or value in the best way possible. But when it comes to activating different aspects of the brand, it may mean not every post will ‘blow up’ on social. If every post were to go viral, it’s probably a sign that the narrative is not well-rounded, the full brand picture is not being presented. Gies talked about the importance of balancing trying to win the internet with content that connects back to organizational goals, and did so more eloquently than this author ever could.

“Focusing on engagement, that doesn’t necessarily mean that can’t hit both [goals],” he explained. “Saying something that’s like, ‘Hey, this is a meme, but that still ladders back to a goal,’ which could be engaging in internet culture because that’s going to help hit fans that aren’t fans of the Clippers; or the complete opposite of that of like, ‘Hey, community is really important and showing what we’re doing in the community is really important for our narrative,’ but that stuff might not necessarily perform that well. There are ways to make it more creative, but that’s still really important to our narrative. 

“So understanding that sometimes things that you’re doing might not necessarily be for the engagement or for the impressions but are still really important in telling that story.”

Our reputations and personalities are the sum of every micro-interaction and impression we have with others. A perception is neither formed nor changed with a single engagement, let alone a single social media post. Over time, everything adds up and it’s integral that every word, each creative piece, and every post has purpose and precision. Brands aren’t built in a day, but they can last a lifetime.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH KURT GIES