Brad Stevens may very well be a coach on the rise in the NBA, but basketball has always been a team game. The 30 franchises that make up the league have generated a revenue pie in excess of $5 billion. The digital age has enabled this game to reach its worldwide audience anywhere, anytime. Teams can build up their own local fan base through the sundry of platforms available.
Much like our #NFLTechSeries, this time SportTechie delves into the digital strategies–from web, social media, mobile apps, and any other technological connection–of each team and analyzes them, including insights from some of the digital executives involved. Today, the #NBADigitalSeries 2013-14 continues with the Boston Celtics. Stay tuned to SportTechie this month for ongoing coverage of the #NBADigitalSeries.
Since 2000, Boston teams have dominated the sports world by winning more titles than any other city. In this time the Red Sox and Patriots have won three times and the Bruins and Celtics each added a championship of their own. Combine this recent winning with decades of sports history and you have arguably the most passionate and sports-crazed city in the country.
All four of the Boston teams are an integral part of the history and personality of the area but none more so than the Celtics who have the most championships in the NBA. As a result of this success and status, the Celtics had a great fan base to build off of when the social media times that we currently live in began.
As you can imagine, trying to represent and engage a storied franchise like the Celtics is no small task. But as seems to be the case with all Boston sports teams, the Celtics’ social media team is the class of the league.
The Celtics’ social media efforts are lead by Senior Director of Digital Media, Peter Stringer. Earlier this year the Celtics were the local winner in the large following category in the American City Business Journals’ Social Madness competition. This is a big honor for a sports brand to compete amongst product brands in social media and a testament to the job that Peter has done with Celtics digital channels.
Overall, the Celtics have one of the largest digital followings in the sports world; and it is a constant challenge to appeal to such a passionate and knowledgable fan base. Stringer has been successful so far because he uses social media to build a story around the team by “selling the personalities of the team.” He also works hard to make sure the content he shares with fans is original and informative, giving fans further incentive to engage with the Celtics’ digital channels.
In the Q & A below, Stringer has offered us a wealth of knowledge about the strategies he uses to engage Celtics fans. He touches on the challenges of digitally marketing a young team in a rebuilding phase with a storied past and what it is like to work with this young team that has grown up during the social media boom. Peter also explains the importance of the overall tone he takes when sending out messages via the Celtics’ social accounts.
There is a lot of work that goes into running the social media channels for one of the most illustrious sports franchises in North America. Fortunately, Peter was kind enough to share how he makes it all happen. What follows is digital marketing gold and should be read carefully by all aspiring social media and digital marketers.
SportTechie: Congratulations on winning the large following category in the American City Business Journals’ social madness competition. Do you find that a sports team would have an advantage over a normal business in engaging fans because so much emotion is invested by fans into their favorite sports team?
Yeah, I think that’s a pretty fair assessment. I mean obviously fans wear the jerseys, they go to the events, they get attached to the players and the teams. There is a natural bond and attachment there that passes down a passion from generation to generation that very few brands get to enjoy.
From a sports standpoint, kids are brainwashed at an early age to follow their favorite teams from their parents. And that is something that doesn’t exist in most brands and companies. So yes, I think it does put us at a distinct advantage over things that people just aren’t as passionate about. Some people might be passionate about a car they drive or something specific but the level and the passion that a sporting team can evoke is from it being such an experience based product. In some ways, it makes my job a lot easier than it would be if I worked for a consumer package good or something along those lines. If you’re Clorox you have to work a lot harder to manufacture interest in your product beyond just the fact that it washes clothes.
SportTechie: Is it more difficult to sell the personalities of a team that seems to be in a rebuilding phase? Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett are gone, and Rajon Rondo is coming off of an injury…
Yeah absolutely. It’s our jobs to build up these young guys and get our fan base to understand who they are and tell their stories and develop that attachment. You got a guy like Pierce who was with the team for 15 years and so our fans watched him grow up when he came out of school in Kansas. Now we’ve got a bunch of younger guys with Rondo being our most established player. So we’ve got young players now who aren’t household names. Rondo is the biggest name we have and if you are not a college fan then we have a young new coach who a lot of people probably haven’t heard of.
My job is to foster that attachment with our fan base and really tell a story of who these guys are. Show what they are like on and off the court and really try to bring their personalities out. We will be spending a lot of time this year generating content around those athletes and the team and really trying to let our fans understand who these guys are and why should they care about them. And it goes back to having the advantage of having a people driven brand that gives you an ability to grow an attachment.
I look back when we did the Kevin Garnett deal several years ago and we had young guys like Ryan Gomes and Al Jefferson. Specifically, Jefferson was kind of a young star and we had a lot of fans at the time who didn’t want to make that trade because he had so much potential and he was drafted by the Celtics and people want to see these young players grow up with the team. So a lot of fans didn’t like that trade and were passionate about Big Al and didn’t want to see him go but obviously we turned around in a year and won the title with KG.
To me that is something that we did a great job of marketing because the fans were so wrapped up in the personalities that they didn’t really understand what was coming back on the other end of the deal because they didn’t know Kevin Garnett. You know, they only saw Garnett play twice a year if you’re only following the Celtics. So hopefully when the day comes down the road when there is a trade on the table and we might have to trade one of our younger players for an established superstar I would hope that our fans don’t want the deal because they are attached to those guys. And that tells me I’ve done a good job.
Here is a really in depth video interview with Peter speaking with Marketing Land Editor-In-Chief Matt McGee from the Search Marketing Expo last fall.
SportTechie: With a relatively young roster that for the most part grew up in the time of social media, are there new opportunities in the digital space to promote the team and each player that didn’t exist before when you had a more veteran roster that did not grow up with social media?
Maybe, you know, it’s interesting. Garnett was never into social media really and frankly he didn’t need it. A guy like him who is so established as a super star in the league and a multiple time All-Star doesn’t really need it necessarily. The younger guys have all grown up with it and so if anything it’s kind of second-nature to them.
The players are generally not on Twitter to support the team as much as they are to build their own brands. So even though our brands are intermingled we don’t really control what they do on social media. We try to give them guidelines to make sure they don’t make any mistakes and put things out there that maybe they shouldn’t but in general they are not really trying to push the team’s agenda or help us promote certain things like ticket sales or corporate partners.
It would be great to have them doing that but that’s not really the way they’re using social. They’re using it to connect with fans and stay in touch with the people they know. In a lot of cases, they went to colleges and used Twitter to talk to their friends and that’s how they maintain a lot of their relationships. Social media is a different thing for them than it is for the team.
SportTechie: How exactly do you give fans an inside look that they wouldn’t normally get? Is this as straight forward as having behind-the-scenes pictures being posted on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter? Or do you have unique strategies and routines for giving fans an insider’s view of the team and franchise?
Sometimes it’s a little calculated in terms of if there’s a certain event that we know a player is going to be at or appear at or something along those lines. We will be there to capture the moment. But the best stuff comes from organic moments.
One of the things that stands out in my mind is from a couple of years ago in the playoffs and we were up 3-2 against the Heat in the conference finals and we were getting ready to fly down to Miami. On the white board in the locker room one of the assistant coaches had written “pack for a week.” Meaning, if we had won that game in Miami we would be heading to Oklahoma City to play the Thunder in the finals. That message was clear and it’s the kind of anecdote that’s been around since the 80’s with Pat Riley telling the Lakers to pack for a week for the cross country trip in the finals and it’s kind of one of those things that’s been around the league for a long time. I saw it in the locker room and snapped a picture of it and put it on our Instagram and it became one of our most popular Instagram posts.
So you know, with that kind of thing, it’s one thing to tweet it and say that the white board says to pack for a week but it’s another thing to kind of just see it posted there and it’s clear what it means to your passionate fans. Stuff like that is nothing we can calculate and it kind of just happens. I happened to be there in the locker room and understood the significance of it and shared it with our fans. We can’t share everything obviously, there should be some sanctity in the locker room with some things staying in house.
Doc Rivers was back in town at the Garden recently for a charity event he does every summer and I got to talk to him a little bit and thank him for all of the access he allowed me to have with the team from time to time and he thanked me for not letting things get out that probably shouldn’t have gotten out when you’re around a team. And I certainly wasn’t with them 24/7 all the time and didn’t travel with them throughout the season in a lot of cases except for playoff trips and things of that nature but you know, you hear things and see things that need to stay in-house.
We tried to really strike a balance and make sure that we weren’t just putting everything out there and revealing too much about the guys’ personal lives or injury information. In having that filter of kind of knowing what you can and can’t put out there is a big piece of getting that access and being able to provide nuggets for the fans.
SportTechie: With one of the most storied franchises in the NBA and pro sports in general, is there a certain tone you take when tweeting or posting Facebook posts on behalf of the Celtics? Do you feel the need to try and appeal to as many people as possible or do you look to fill a unique niche and relate to the die-hard fans?
You think about North American team sports and you got roughly 120 teams between the four major sports plus all the minor league teams and we are one of the biggest brands out of all of them and worldwide. From my standpoint I feel like many teams are looking at social in different ways, whether it’s to reply to fans or take cheap shots at other teams and be snarky and try to be funny. But really I can think of maybe two or three occasions where we tried to crack a joke on the team’s twitter handle and only in situations where it was absolutely clear that it was a joke and wouldn’t be misinterpreted. But generally anything that is on our Twitter account is tantamount to a public statement.
It is our responsibility for any tweet to stand up on its own as a public statement and kind of be a voice for the head coach, Danny Ainge, the organization and anything we put out there representing the organization. So from my standpoint it’s not about taking a cheap shot at the other team or trying to be snarky or something along those lines. There are professional teams that do that and they think it makes them successful and they like to pat themselves on the back for it when they think they’re funny but I’ve just never taken that approach to it.
There are some times where you can be a little looser with stuff but I think ultimately it’s a reflection of your team, management, and brand. I’ve always felt like if we wouldn’t put this type of stuff in a statement then it shouldn’t be on our twitter feed. Obviously, there’s a lot of different things you can use Twitter for whether it’s photos or links back to your website or just quotes from the coach but I’ve always felt like the voice from our digital marketing should really be echoing the message that our team, players, and coaches are trying to send out and really having us be an amplifier for that. I always tell people that we’ve got sixty plus years of history.
The Celtics were founded in 1946 and we have seventeen world championships with a lot of history and we’ve got a lot to lose. I don’t want to be the one to screw that up because we made some snarky remark on Twitter that ends up going all over the place. That tradition means a lot to me. I grew up with it as a child and am fortunate to work for the team and be a part of that as an adult and I don’t take that lightly and I think it’s important for people to understand that you are representing a brand that so many people have poured their life into.
Whether it’s Red Auerbach or all those great Celtics legends, that tradition means so much to so many people I’d hate to think that I would have some sort of part in tarnishing that in any way. It’s very meaningful to me and other teams don’t necessarily have that tradition or pride to kind of hold them back and don’t have as much to lose by being sarcastic. They have less to lose so they can take more chances in regards to trying to get attention. But ultimately at the end of the day, you have a funny tweet but now what? What does that really mean? Is that going to sell tickets for you? That kind of thing to me is kind of hollow and is all downside.
SportTechie: Do you have anything new in store, in terms of digital outreach and fan interaction?
I really can’t talk about anything new that we are doing but I will say that every year we give our fans better experiences, better access and better information to get them more excited about following the team and obviously we want them to come to the games and be invested throughout the year. We have a younger team now and less star power so I think we are going to try that much harder to make sure we are keeping fans dialed in.
I think the trick is to try to replicate the experience that fans have at the Garden and try to replicate that on social media. And obviously you can’t perfectly duplicate being at a game but what we try to do is carry that experience across digital and try to approximate that through access, information or sights and songs.
So much of our fans are not near the arena and they never actually step foot in the arena and some of them never have access to the game or they’re stationed overseas and they’re listening to the broadcast and really the social media can be a life line for them in terms of keeping them current on what’s going on from thousands of miles away. So our role is to keep fans connected to the team no matter where they are. So we are always looking for new ways to do that and we launched our mobile app last year which has been pretty successful and we continue to make that a focus. We will have a bigger emphasis on video content this year as we go forward but we are always looking for new ways to bring our fans closer to the team.
A big thank you to Peter for providing great insights and knowledge. Be sure to check out his work across all of the Celtics’ social channels.