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!
