Menu
Media

Social Studies: NHL Kings Digital Media & Production Dir Pat Donahue On Humor, Playoffs

NHL Kings Digital Media & Production Dir Pat Donahue (@patatack) started with the team as an intern in ’10, and a year later became a full-time employee. Since that time, the Kings have been among the teams leading the push to use social media. He said, “We’re lucky that very early on, everyone kind of bought in to the idea of being a little different.” That is not to say things always went as expected. “I’m probably on the record somewhere three years ago saying on the record that Facebook wasn’t going to do much for us moving forward, and now it’s such a huge part of what we do. Video on Facebook has really taken us to another level. It’s just fun that it is always changing,” said Donahue.

Freedom to do what they want:

SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-Follow: An account that makes me laugh is @EpcotCentre. It’s a fake account for Epcot in Florida. The guy who writes it is one of the funniest, incredibly witty, dry -- almost like a PR person running Epcot. It’s just off the wall.
Favorite app: Slack. It’s invaluable. From bringing on new employees, they are able to catch up quickly to even team bonding – us sending random things back and forth to each other, Slack’s been really helpful.
Average time spent per day on social media: At least five hours.

A lot of it, especially on social, is timeliness. I can’t have the hang-ups of an idea of what I want to do; getting it approved by three people and then have a conversation about it and then post. By then, it’s already lost most of its impact. Social is so fast. That quick response is everything. We’ve been given a relatively short leash to be on our best judgement and do what we want to do. It isn’t the same with a lot of pro teams.

Unique voice to Kings’ social presence:
The origin is in 2011 and 2012, Trail Blazers Senior VP/Brand Strategy & Digital Dewayne Hankins and I were the two digital people here and we kind of decided to have a more irreverent presence. We wanted to tweet like us rather than more of a press release. It really stemmed from how we talk, the language that we use and the jokes that we tell. It’s the stuff that we think is funny. We were doing it for six months or so, and when we made the playoffs in 2012, that was when everyone outside of the Kings fanbase took notice.

Cultivating a fanbase in a non-traditional market:
Especially looking back, the Kings hadn’t won anything. There’s a lot of competition. We wanted to stand out from that clutter. We wanted to be different and get people’s attention. Luckily, with two Stanley Cups in three years, the team was able to elevate itself and we were along for the ride. We just want to get people into our universe. If one of our social accounts is the reason that someone becomes a fan, certainly it’s a big win in our book.

Treating the postseason differently:
This year, the regular season was fun but we clinched almost a month ago. For everyone on our side, it was a long time waiting and we missed last year. These playoffs have a lot of expectations. I love playing a team six or seven times. Not only do you have the storylines on the ice that you can tell, but you have the stuff that you can tell online. It’s so much more fun than playing one team one time on a Thursday night in November. We have a lot of celebrities that are fans. So we’ll always try to talk to them and bring them to games and to tweet about us and interact with them online. Some of these people have three, four, five million followers so one tweet from them can be very influential for us. All of that added attention is great.

If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2016/04/19/Media/Social-Studies.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2016/04/19/Media/Social-Studies.aspx

CLOSE