The Bruins today are launching an effort to "bundle all of their digital, mobile, and social online assets under one umbrella brand, so the team and its fans will more easily tweet, friend, and pin each other," according to D.C. Denison of the BOSTON GLOBE. The new Bruins Digital Entertainment Network will include more than a dozen properties, "including the team’s Facebook and Pinterest pages, Twitter accounts, a mobile app, and a YouTube video channel." The team is "also planning to use the network to better understand the digital habits of its younger fans, who are heavy users of the Internet and mobile devices, and to develop new marketing and sponsorship initiatives." Bruins TD Garden & Senior VP/Sales & Marketing Amy Latimer said, "We generate so much original content, on so many channels, that it makes sense to pull it all together." Denison notes the Bruins are "launching a campaign with the Heluva Good! food brand that shows how the network will work." The snack company will "sponsor a weekly 'Heluva Good Play of the Week' that will be shown on the BruinsTV channel on the team’s website." The video will also be "referenced and linked to from across the new network, from the team’s Tumblr blog to a Pinterest page that is written from the point of view of the Bear, one of the Bruins’ promotional characters." Latimer said that the new network has the "ability to record more" than 30 million impressions per month, and the team has "signed up with digital audience analytic company Umbel Corp., of Austin, Texas, to collect and analyze data from the network." Users of "any of the Bruins Internet and social media properties, such as Twitter and Facebook, are not likely to notice any changes other than more frequent linking" to other Bruins-related properties. The new network will "not have a single access point or hub; instead, it consists of a more tightly integrated and managed suite of Bruins-related online and mobile properties." It will have a "dedicated page on the team’s website that will highlight all of the channels within the network" (BOSTON GLOBE, 3/26).
