England-born Bulls Digital Dir Dan Moriarty (@iamdanmoriarty) has been in the U.S. for 7 1/2 years, but his position with the Bulls is his first in sports. Prior to joining the Bulls, Moriarty worked for London-based marketing agency MEC, Resolution Media and hotel chain Hyatt in digital strategy and activation roles. He said of transitioning to a career in sports, "There are some consistencies and there are some things that are very different. From a consistency perspective, what my role is really about is the same. There are a lot of people who work in digital who can do big, flashy things. But the people who are really good at digital figure how humanity and technology combine in a way that drives the bottom line of the business." Moriarty added, "The flip side is there is a weird tradeoff where you are dealing with much fewer resources. The budgets in sports are much smaller than with a traditional brand. Yet, the interest of your consumer base is a hundred times higher in sports."
Drive to produce original content:
One of the things we sat down and agreed upon was an overall broad digital mission statement. What we focused on was to drive digital impact was to keep the Bulls relevant in a rapidly changing landscape and establish the team as a trail blazer in the digital space. We didn’t want to do what every other team does -- the behind-the-scenes stuff -- we do that too, but we wanted to stay relevant. That’s where the short stories, or mini films, on Snapchat came from. We have to make sure we are not doing the same thing as the year before because you are going to have diminishing returns from an impact perspective.
Balancing domestic and international content:
A large chunk of our fanbase comes from international markets, but it’s not so skewed that we have to think about the individual markets. Ultimately, they are all Bulls fans. One of the considerations that we give is that not all content has sound overlays on it; some of it is just highlight clips. It’s really driven by partnerships: in what markets do we have partners who want to activate against our brand and how do we do something that’s relevant for us with that local fanbase and local partner at the same time.
Living up to NBA’s high standard level:
It makes it easier. One of the things that really excited me about working in the NBA was they give us boundaries for where they don’t think we should be playing, but inside those boundaries they really encourage experimentation.
Where the Bulls digital team turns next:
There are a few areas we have our eyes on: VR/AR and second-screen. Those are areas that have been around for a while, and a number of teams have played with, including ourselves. We’re big on both of them having strong long-term capability, but we haven’t tapped into it in the most impactful way yet. The third for us is e-sports. With the NBA’s announcement of an NBA 2K eLeague next season, we’re exploring what that would look like for the Bulls to be involved and whether we want to be part of that league.
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