Well, I am a sports fan and my boyfriend's a crazy sports fan; by crazy I mean when most people check their Facebook page, he checks the Score Center app on his phone. But sports fans are all enthusiastic about their teams, who isn't? You get excited and scream when your team scores; you are frustrated and maybe angry (very angry in my boyfriend's case) when they lose; you buy their jerseys, caps, or other souvenirs, and you most likely have at least talked about them once on social media.
Living in New England, of course you need to root for the Bruins, Patriots, Celtics and Red Sox! I went to a Patriots' game last month and when I was posting on Instagram, people around seemed to be posting onto social media too. That got me thinking about sports teams' social media marketing or management. Then this caught my attention:
The Red Sox's Dollar Beard Night campaign totally got me! I don't know since when, but Red Sox players all seem to have beards now. Beards have become a Red Sox icon! They even have names for each Red Sox players beard:
Having beards as one of their distinguishing features is definitely a good social media marketing branding move. After the #GetBeard campaign launched, they started comparing players to celebrities who had/have the same shape of beard and ask fans to vote "who wore it better?".
So far, 2061 people have made their virtual beard pictures and tweeted them. Imagine how many likes these funny photos would gain from others. And in a world of mouth, these photos spread the word for the Red Sox's #GetBeard campaign better than any advertising!
The only thing that I wished they could do better is to produce interactive video commercials for this campaign. They could simply have the star players on film for a couple seconds each to first attract fans to participate (they will, because most fans are enthusiastic!), and collect fans' video showing their similar-to-the-player beard, then edit the videos by beard categories. That would definitely get more attention. After all, this is a visual world and a good youtube video could easily go viral.
Yet still, this is a good and interesting social marketing/branding campaign for sports since it not only got Red Sox a buzz on social media, but also energized their fans. Although I really wanted to go, I gave up the opportunity to be a part of such a fun night for learning more in class. But according to my friends who went, this campaign definitely made Fenway wild. Some have even postulated that the beards gave the Red Sox luck and the winning record. #GetBeard! Go Red Sox!
Yeah,sports is always a hot topic among people, especially guys. But honestly in my previous experience I didn't realized that the super sports stars could let their fans feel that they are so close to them. However, after reading your posts, I guess I got some ideas from you. Through the using of social media, these enthusiastic fans could get a lot of pleasure and fulfillment with their favorite sports team and become loyal fans afterwards. That's quite intriguing!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the beard is a big marketing aspect! I am from San Francisco and a big fan of the SF Giants (baseball). One of their players (who recently moved to the LA Dodgers) named Brian Wilson had an iconic beard. Not only was this a marketing tool for the entire Giants team, but it also helped produce merchandise. You could buy signs, shirts, mugs, and bags that said "fear the beard" and you could even buy a replica of his beard that you could wear. It was amazing! I think that we see the faces of these players so often that the beard has become an important distinguishing factor of how we see each player, and the marketing team takes advantage of that.
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