Digital studio UnCommon Thinking co-Founder Bob McKamey (@BobMcKamey) remembers the firm’s first sports-related client -- Andre Agassi -- who decided to not use the website created for him. “We really couldn’t call it official, and his people knew about it and we talked with him throughout the whole process. But for whatever reason, they never claimed it as Andre’s official site. The first official site we did was for his rival, Pete Sampras.” But McKamey and UnCommon Thinking have come a long way since, adding the likes of Danica Patrick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tiger Woods and the basketball programs at Arizona, Duke, LSU and Marquette.
On differentiating content between similar clients:
They all have different ideas on what they want. We never share the private things with other programs, but it’s interesting the different takes that these programs have on what they want to get out there. There are a lot of similarities, but there a lot of differences. It’s more about what we can take from their cultures. All four programs that we have have different views and ideas that they want to get out there. You’d think they are similar, pitching to the same recruits. But they are different ideas from content to design to presentation.
Golden Rule of digital presence:
The biggest thing with digital and social is to maximize built-in content. All you have to do is look around your university or your program, or if you are an athlete, your surroundings in your sport. For example, built-in content is a starting lineup. You are always going to have five starters. A graphic for the starting five is obvious. You don’t have to think about is it already there. It’s not something new that you have to think about to promote the program. I have a long list of all the different things in support of football and basketball programs -- everything from pro days to choosing captains, 100 days until kick off -- it’s all around you. It’s up to you how creatively you can package that and present it to fans.
Drawing inspiration:
Other teams and designers and agencies. If they are doing something nice and cool, I’ll send it out to everyone here and say, “Check this out.” You can do it in sports and look at pro and college, but sports people need to look outside of sports because there are a lot of good things going on with consumer brands. I love the commercial Apple is doing with Cookie Monster. It is such a cool integration of the character and waiting for the cookies and Siri. It’s being resourceful.
Exciting trends:
Video. A lot of our stuff is static -- pretty straight forward, custom designs. Video ties into Snapchat and you have Facebook Live video, so everything is going to move toward that segment. The question is are you prepared to capitalize on it?
What you are reading:
It ranges from the more traditional ones like Ad Age or Adweek to the more digitally focused ones like Digiday. Most of our clients are in sports, but I like to look at stuff outside like Wall Street Journal, fast Company and Mashable.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at
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