Gina Lehe came on board with the CFP in '13, managing media relations for the then-nascent playoff format as well as the final iteration of the BCS. She notes that at that point, there was not much of a social media presence in place: “In the BCS era, they had a Facebook page.” But starting from “ground zero” was not necessarily a bad thing: “We wanted to be clear that there was an ending to the Bowl Championship era and a start to the College Football Playoff era, so we started all of our accounts new.” That began with a presence on Twitter (@CFBPlayoff), Facebook and Instagram, with Snapchat later added to the mix. Lehe: “Starting something from nothing and trying to get followers was a big push for us.” She clearly had a solid gameplan in place from the get-go, as the CFP now has about 1 million followers across various social platforms.
Dealing with polarized fan bases: When people stop talking about the format, that’s when we’ll have a problem. The conversation is at an all-time high, and we now see that every day of the week. You used to see a peak on Sunday when the rankings would come out. But now we have games Thursday, Friday, Saturday, sometimes Monday. We have the rankings coming out Tuesday. So the conversation has extended naturally because of television. But we coincide our social media activation knowing that people are always hungry, and there’s no time limit for the appetite for engagement across social. People want content.
What selection weekend is like: Our activation strategy is to ride the momentum and make sure that we’re hitting at key moments, providing enough content for fan engagement, but not overdoing it or creating something that’s not naturally there. People are coming to our social for unique access and behind-the-scenes. We’re dealing with a room where the committee is sequestered and cameras aren’t really allowed in. We want to use social to help show some of the transparency and humanize the committee, to bring the curtain back.
Schedule-makers: The first CFP rankings of the season and the selection day are kind of our bookends. If you look at a calendar and see the numbers for website traffic and engagement across all of our platforms, those two weekends are huge. And the lead-in to game week (for the semifinals and title game), those are the three peak moments of our social activation. We want to be inclusive with our social strategy around the rankings, whether it's our first one or the final one. We've got a very comprehensive social calendar for all our platforms, understanding we also need to be nimble. We try to use the college football environment to steer that, knowing when conversation will be at its peak. We know when spring games are, spring practices, conference media days, even the NFL Draft. We really ride the wave of what's going on in the college football world and then plan around that.
Balancing act: We are very sensitive to the fact that we work for the conferences. Sometimes, people hope that we’re more team- or conference-specific, but we try to be fair and balanced. If we do an activation that features the ACC, we’re going to do a similar activation with the SEC. But we want to promote our platform and our brand as well. It's important for everybody to have their own voice on social. We will share, repost and like a lot of content from our partners, but we also recognize that they are activating their own strategy. So we never want to step on their toes. An important part of creating the CFP was that the bowls would not lose their identity. We carry that across to social.
For more about Lehe,
see SBJ's profile from this year's Game Changers.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com
