Digital Sports Summit Kyle Spencer Warriors

First up as Digital Sport Summit was Kyle Spencer Executive Director Team Marketing at the Golden State Warriors.

Kyle took us through some of the key growth stats for facebook and twitter.

Medium	2009	2010
Twitter	75 mil	175 mil
Facebook	350 mil	700 mil

Biggest increase has been mobile – 50% of twitter usage is via  mobile and over 200mil youtube views on a mobile every day.

By 2014 the expectation is there will more web browsing via a mobile than on a desktop/laptop computer.

Facebook has become one of the top 3 refers to the Warriors website – after google and the nba website. It is integral to their success.

With new ownership, Warriors had a rebranding exercise but found the new brand was being leaked. To mitigate this they held an online scavenger hunt to find the Warriors logo two weeks before the launch, with a piece of the logo being unveiled at each point. 

The final prize was a season ticket which would be announced at the draft party – one of their key sales driver for that period.

They condensed their website to a splash page during the promotion and had clues across the various social media to engage fans. Data was gather which gave them warm leads for the draft party.

They knew the game had to be fun and engaging, utilising all social media and video clues to generate web traffic during this time.

Over 6,000 people registered for the game and over 4,000 attend the draft party – their most successful.

Kyle stressed gaining followers/likes is a strategy to move people into customers.

Tweedia Day

This was an initiative undertaken by the Warrior to engage with sports bloggers and social media journalists.

It gave these people access to areas the same as traditional media such as

·         Covering practices

·         Attending shoot outs

·         Game day access

·         Locker room access

These people were seen to have a different spin to traditional media and create hype in a new sphere with increased credibility.

Each person had to submit an application to gain a media pass for one of the games.

This helped in a number of ways

·         Bloggers and social media commentators don’t have ‘space’ issues like traditional media

·         They  brought a different spin to the ‘media coverage’

·         Created a relationship with the bloggers

·         Bloggers are now more likely to check facts with media department before publishing

Facebook Places

With the relationship the Warriors have with Facebook they have been able to increase their mobile presence.

Referrals from friends is one of the most powerful and people showing they are going to a Warriors game

Offering deals to patrons to check in on facebook places during a game. Offers such as

·         10% off merchandise,

·         Exclusive experiences such as meeting players /coaching staff after the game

Sport has the ability to offer once in a life time moments to people few other industries can.

Kyle stressed you still have to heavily promote check-in before the game and at the game with booths set up at each game to help people to check-in and get access to the offers.

Key limitation is the network capabilities for people to check-in but they average around 750 per game.

Four of the top six grossing merchandise products for the Warriors were featured in their facebook deals.

In closing Kyle stressed

1.       Need to get go of the conversations and accept negative comments will be made

2.       Take on board the negative and action them were possible

3.       People are having conversations with or without you – be part of those conversations

4.       Have fun with social and digital – you need to have a brand personality

5.       If a social media campaigns fails – don’t worry too much take it on board and try something else

6.       Know each social media channel and it’s strengths – use twitter to break stories, facebook only post occasionally