WME-IMG's Kami Mattioli (@KMattio) did not wait to join the work force to gain her first valuable exposure to the world of social media. In the summer of ’10, just before her final year at Temple Univ., Mattioli became a hybrid columnist/social media manager for the school’s athletics programs. She then was a writer and editor with Sporting News before landing with WME-IMG, where she now serves as a Social Media Manager and is tasked with spreading the word about the ATP/WTA Miami Open, which the agency owns and operates. Mattioli: "This position has a lot more responsibility and it’s less front-facing than a lot of the other social media jobs that I’ve had. What I mean by that is we are involved in a lot of the long-term planning. We are on-call with the marketing and sales teams, because a lot of our company deals with live events that we own. We are constantly looking at balancing the public relations side with the tickets side, with the news side, so there’s a whole other aspect of that planning.”
On a career transition:
The biggest challenge for me was going away from journalism, where you are taught to say everything as succinctly as possible, not mince words and get your message across briefly. On the agency side, there are a lot more buzzwords and phrasing that you use, which can sometimes get very wordy. Learning that was difficult for me at first.
How WME-IMG tackles its corporate social media effort:
WME-IMG has a joint venture with AGT, a Swiss tech company, for a social media firm called Heed. It is a digital agency, and we have people who work on -- instead of specific properties -- content buckets. Within this strcuture, I work in sports and have pitched in on things like Pro Bull Riding and EuroLeague basketball in terms of ideation, copy and creative. It’s very much a team endeavor.
Agency’s influence on UFC social media:
It has been such a short period of time since WME-IMG assumed control of UFC that I don’t know how involved our digital team has been yet. They are still working out how that partnership is going to go.
Describe the WME-IMG brand voice:
The personality is based on the person who is running it, and the audience they are speaking to. So for the Miami Open tennis event, it was very PR-based when I took over and everything was a press release. I’ve tried to give it a fun voice and make it so we’re producing the kind of content and copy that makes people interested in the Miami Open more than just the two weeks out of the year that there’s actual tennis.
A platform the agency feels is crucial:
One that will always be a key platform for us is Facebook. The Facebook Ads feature or Facebook Live are reliable features and things we can turn to.
Noteworthy social media trend:
The removal of Vine as a platform. While some companies may not use it, it did have a lot of value for live replay. That will be a feature that will be lacking, especially with what the NFL did in getting rid of the replays. That is a space that is definitely lacking. Within the next couple of months, there will be some platform or platform add-on that will fill that void.
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