Cleveland's three major professional sports organizations—the Indians, Cavaliers and Browns—have launched a number of cutting-edge social media content strategies in recent years, many of which have been adopted by sports organizations around the world. At the 2011 Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland, communications and marketing leaders from each franchise shared their most compelling content initiatives that have helped them draw in and keep fans engaged, even during losing seasons.
"What If?"
The 2011 Cleveland Indians were written off by many before the season began, and were projected to finish 22 games under .500 by Sports Illustrated. One month into the season, however, the Indians had shocked the baseball world and played a league-best 18-8, good enough for the organization's best April ever.
To capitalize on the team's early success, The Indians' communications and marketing staff wasted no time in launching the "What If?" campaign. To capture the exceeding of expectations and rehash the Indians' history, the "What If?" campaign was a rallying cry to support the team through nostalgic videos and social media engagement around the #whatif? hashtag. "In the last year we came up with a 3-5 year brand vision campaign of creating memories and remembering history to get people connected with the Indians," said Curtis Danburg, the team's senior director of communications.
"It's amazing how much public relations is now integrating more and more with marketing to make sure we're consistent," said Danburg. The biggest thing, from a communications standpoint, Danburg said, is that messaging is streamlined and consistent from top to bottom, whether it's through tweets or on a radio broadcast.
"Our approach to social media is that everyone on the team tweets, but also knows the rules and regulations of how we want to represent our brand," Danburg said. Despite running a daily risk of inflammatory tweets from players due to the high emotions of wins and losses, the Indians have implemented a strict time schedule for players on Twitter that allows for cooling off after games.
Tweet-and-Meet with Cavs Fans
Tad Carper, senior VP of Communications for the Cleveland Cavaliers, said the organization has been successful in social media thanks to its commitment to realism and its direct interaction with fans. "We wanted to send the message that social media was not just a one-way communication concept," Carper said. To unveil its new uniforms for the 2011 season, the Cavaliers became the first team in professional sports to use a "tweet-up." Team owner Dan Gilbert sent out a tweet about the event on his personal handle—@CavsDan—and all of the team's communication assets on the Web were used to alert fans that Gilbert's tweet-up would take place downtown at the Cadillac Ranch in Cleveland.
"We were concerned that the mainstream media would scratch their heads about us not sending out a press release and handling the event the conventional way," Carper said. "Our feeling is that doing communications through social media is going to become the traditional way of talking with our customer—and this was the beginning of that movement for us."
Carper attributed the Cavs' social media popularity to interacting in a manner that appears to be uncensored and not wrought with marketing. "In looking at our Web traffic and social media stats, our ability to provide an uncensored forum for fans to engage us and one another was critical for keeping fans involved with our brand," Carper said.
With uncensored communication, there is inherent risk, and Carper said that when criticism came against the team—which didn't take long—he'd remember that the emotion driving the responses is what creates the best fan, so it was welcomed. "We represent brands that have such a deep emotional fabric that people want to be involved with, and while not every brand enjoys that, every brand has the responsibility to listen more than it markets," Carper said.
Crowd Content Creation: Fanographies
Brett Reynolds, VP of marketing for the Cleveland Browns, said that, "In sports, we work with such powerful brands, and we have to keep challenging ourselves to create more opportunities for fans to engage with us." To meet that challenge, the Cleveland Browns launched its "Fanographies" campaign in 2011 by leveraging fans to help create content that captured their passion through short video clips and fan profile articles.
The Fanographies campaign, built on authentic, user-generated content and distributed through social integrations, was a calculated risk for the Browns organization. "You've already let go of control of your brand—whether you wanted to or not," Reynolds said. Using a losing season in sports season as an example, Reynolds said that if an organization is open and transparent, it can still respond and interact with fans. "In social media and on the Web, you have to take chances of integrating content right away thats aligned with your 3-5 year goals while always being authentic and transparent with your content."