Sport-Fan Connect » Service Providers

Video Interview: Kathleen Hessert – Sports Media Challenge

Mike Olaski — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:10:31 +0000

As our sports tour has continued to lead through the S.E. USA, we found our way to Charlotte, NC and had the pleasure of speaking with Kathleen Hessert (President of Sports Media Challenge). We discussed the different ways Professional, Semi-Professional and Collegiate athletics are approaching social media and she shared some insights into how some of her clients have implemented social media into their communications strategy.

You can truly see the passion that Kathleen has in working with her clients and helping them understand and implement social media education, training, monitoring and strategies. Kathleen is constantly on the road, so, if you want to get in touch with her over the next few months, you can find her at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas from Oct 15 – 17, the 140 Characters Conference in LA on Oct 27 – 28, the 140 Character Conference in London, England on Nov 17. Or, you can follow her and all the great products and services that Sports Media Challenge has to offer their clients at the following addresses:

Twitter: @kathleenhessert
Website: http://sportsmediachallenge.com
Blog: http://buzzmanagerblog.blogspot.com/

Mobile fan engagement at NJ Devils game

Mike Olaski — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:20:28 +0000

Between periods at the New Jersey Devils vs Philadelphia Flyers game, we came across a promotion run by Verizon Wireless called “Battle Text”. The participants were handed verizon cell phones and were told to battle head to head on timed trivia questions about the Devils.

Great idea, but again, I couldn’t help but wonder why they don’t employ this concept on the Big Screen during intermissions. There was literally no fan interaction during these intermissions within the arena (aside from the organ playing tradtional hockey songs).

Imagine if they picked 5 random people in the crowd, gave them each a Verizon cell phone and had them compete for their section to win a prize. They could encourage all the other fans to help with the answers because it would all come down to who is the fastest at texting the answer. To take this idea another step further, they could also supply all the fans in the winning section with an offer to visit a unique URL on their website to take advantage of a special offer for new subscibers.

Again, it is exhibition season in the NHL still, so it’s likely that we are not seeing the Devils newest and best Marketing efforts. But, if they are not thinking about tying together mobile contests with the live game experience (Big Screen), they should be.

Aside from all the signage around the arena, Verizon is missing out on an opportunity to create an engaging campaign that would have fans thinkin about their brand and using their service during the game and in turn, driving traffic to the online marketing efforts.

Washington Nationals Experience

Mike Olaski — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:57:22 +0000

After a few days of running around, battling traffic and trying to get organized, we have finally settled into Washington for a few days. We rolled into town just in time to catch the Washington Nationals vs LA Dodgers game at Nationals Stadium last night. As I mentioned in a previous post, the game experience at Nationals Park was great. Unfortunately for the Nats though, a good chunk of the fans were wearing the Dodgers Blue & White. Regardless, you could tell that, even though the Nats have only been in Washington for a few years, they have a loyal fan base that is itching for a winning team.

Nationals Fan Experience

As you may have noticed on the website, we uploaded a number of photos and tried to tweet regularly to share our experience with everyone. I wanted to write a bit about the In-Game experience and promotions we noticed between eatin peanuts!

Racing Presidents

One of the In-Game promotions that most people would be familiar with is the “Racing Presidents” sponsored by Geico. This promotion has received alot of attention due to the fact that one of the famous presidents (Teddy Roosevelt) has never won a race. Rumor has it that the reason he has never won is more “political” than one might think…..but I’m not going to start any rumors or political scandals Unfortunately, Teddy did not run in the race during this game – apparently due to a pulled hamstring. You can follow Teddy Roosevelt’s struggles for that elusive first win Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/Teddy.Nats and on Twitter – http://twitter.com/Teddy26Nats.

Big Screen Promos

As in every major sports stadium, the majority of the fan engagement is focused around the Big Screen located in center field. There were a few promotions that we noticed that were promoted on the Big Screen including the following:

Random Acts of Red (DC Lottery) – The branded “Red” theme seems to be common in Washington sports. Throughout the game, the Nationals gave away prizes including a Lucky Seat Upgrade
Free t-shirt giveaway – the first 10,000 fans into the stadium received free “Screech” t-shirts (Screech is the Nationals patriotic mascot)
Pizza giveaway (Papa John’s) – we were in the right section, but unfortunately, were on the wrong side of the isle, so we never didn’t get a shot at the free pizza.

I guess in summary, there were a number of In-Game promotions that were displayed up on the Big Screen in Nationals Stadium. However, considering that we are advocating that teams should start to incorporate their online marketing (website, social sites, etc) with their offline marketing (Big Screen, give-aways, etc), it was quite obvious that none of their offline marketing tied in social media in any way. There was no mention of their Facebook accounts or Twitter account and from what we noticed, there was no interaction with the thousands of fans in the stands that had mobile phones in their hands. I think there is a huge opportunity being missed here.