Anthony Davis may very well be an NCAA Champion and NBA rising star, 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 New Orleans Pelicans. Stay tuned to SportTechie this month for ongoing coverage of the #NBADigitalSeries.
One of the most intriguing teams to watch this season are the New Orleans Pelicans. The offseason acquisitions of Jrue Holiday and Tyreke Evans have expedited playoff expectations. Anthony Davis’ development substantiated the growing belief in success before his recent injury. Yet, this latest derailment provides a moment to take a step back and evaluate everything organizationally.
The hoopla surrounding them may have bit too much, too soon. Rebranding the franchise’s nickname from Hornets to Pelicans has been a catalyst towards this hyperlocal movement. Just like the city of New Orleans itself, the team is more of a startup than an upstart. Their digital strategies up to this point mirrors the former than the latter stage.
As mentioned during SportTechie’s #NFLTechSeries coverage of the New Orleans Saints, Doug Tatum serves as the Executive Director of Digital Media for both the Saints and Pelicans. He’s in the unique position to oversee the digital direction of two franchises simultaneously. There’s opportunity to cross-pollinate some tactics and data insights that the Saints have established to the Pelicans. However, the differences and challenges to market the Pelicans online are vast, particularly to craft their own identity within the community.
Starting with their website, the New Orleans Pelicans maintains a layout and user interface common across various NBA teams. Right underneath the main tabs of the site there’s a banner display to purchase tickets, which highlights Davis and a “Take Flight” slogan. The player’s image suits the marketing purpose, but lacks a call for action or hashtag that intertwines with social media.
Also, an interesting design facet within the tabs section is that a video hub called “Pelivision” stands on its own as oppose to being featured under the “Connect” multimedia tab. This content would perhaps be better off under the latter, especially to keep consistency and navigation in order for the user. And the most notable unique content present is a blog written by Ryan Anderson; where the first post details his food taste around the city.
With respects to social media, there’s a subtle, underlying issue that’s unclear why it exists. The most important branding element is the username or account’s name. As much time and thought are put in for clever hashtags that’ll captivate fans to use them, the team’s account name should resonate with fans a great deal. The Pelicans can be found as “PelicansNBA” across their social platforms. A city like New Orleans takes a lot of pride in their heritage; yet the team neglects to completely personify its home–it’s no different than the Nets using Brooklyn. The team already promotes “New Orleans” on both home and away jerseys. And taking away the “NBA” tag in favor for the city’s name would also help in digital search purposes.
On Facebook, this medium offers the largest volume among the team’s social networks with 453,000. They understand the basics that visual posts are imperative to capture engagement, despite little original branding with them. The tone of the copy is quite generic and leaves more to be desired. Hashtags are used sparingly; when a lot more could be helpful to draw traffic and target the residents with ones such as “#NOLA”, “Nawlins”, or “#NewOrleans”. There hasn’t been any activations through third party applications to really generate interest. At least Bitly links are utilized to measure traffic.
As for Twitter, the Pelicans’ feed is quite similar to how they handle Facebook. They have close to 200,000 followers, which isn’t bad for a small market but the Saints possess more than twice as much with 410,400. The team would clearly benefit from some cool cross-pollination efforts between these accounts, especially since they control both of them. It’s pretty informative by nature with very few retweets or interactions to truly create a social experience. There’s glimpses of an excitable tone during big moments of a game. A distinct voice should be crafted that New Orleans can relate to and embrace.
Outside of social media, they recently launched their first official mobile app. The three main menu options featured are news, Twitter, and a calendar. The news feed is articles directly taken from their website. The schedule and game tracker features seem a bit redundant; the only difference being able to view by month as opposed to the next game. They ensured the ability to buy tickets is accessibility in four different avenues. The team’s store is available to purchase apparel and merchandise, but the user interface isn’t friendly or tailored to mobile quite well. Videos and photo galleries aren’t currently present, which leaves greater opportunity to create truly unique content all together.
Overall, the New Orleans Pelicans are a work in progress. There’s plenty of areas that could be better addressed digitally in order to engage this fan base. The on-court product is quite compelling to not draw interest. The rich culture from the city of New Orleans should be promoted in some fashion to really penetrate across different screens. Plus, the Saints established presence should be an angle to tap into going forward. NBA All-Star Weekend will bring the spotlight back to Bourbon Street, but the Pelicans need some of their own homegrown spice to be transparent through the digital sphere.