Menu
Media

Social Studies: NBC Sports Philadelphia's Josh Ellis Talks Pushing 76ers, Eagles In London

NBC Sports Philadelphia Social Media Manager Josh Ellis (@NBCSPhilly) recently returned from London, where the 76ers played the Celtics. Part of preparing for the trip involved leveraging relationships for mutually beneficial results. As part of that effort, Ellis reached out to EPL club Arsenal, and the two sides exchanged content. That included NBC Sports Philadelphia branding appearing on Arsenal's social media accounts and 76ers C Joel Embiid filming a good luck message that was played prior to Arsenal's home match against Chelsea. It also worked to Ellis' advantage that while in London, the NFL announced the Eagles would play there next season. 

SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follow: Old Takes Exposed. They'll take a hot take on social media, and if it's wrong, they come back and expose the person.
Favorite app: Gif Jif and you are able to make gifs with player face replacement.
Average time per day on social media: If you asked my wife, she would say 24 hours.

Humor:
Our philosophy is to have fun, but not to try to be funny. My thought process is I want to be the voice that people share. Instead of writing their own post, we want people to see our posts and say, “That’s exactly what I was thinking about posting.” We’re putting ourselves in that moment.

Achieving the desired voice
:
I don’t even know if we are there yet. It’s always evolving. Early on, it was kind of understanding who makes up our social media following. It’s really important to understand where you have your fans. Your younger fans on Instagram don’t have the same makeup as fans on Facebook, so maybe you use different copy to reach that demo. You are always evolving.

Presenting content from London:
We saw it as an opportunity to amplify efforts around this one game because of the stage that it was on. Initially, when it was announced, we all knew that it would be exciting. We did a graphic of Ben Simmons dressed as Big Ben. But the message this season for the Sixers wasn’t that they are going to London. It was a message around the culmination of the past four years of draft picks and trusting the process. London took a backseat through the first 40 games of the season. Then, leading up to the game, the process turned into what are people interested in seeing about this trip? How interested are they? What kinds of things will be different about this game than any other game?

Not focusing only on tourist spots:
Our approach was two-pronged. We wanted to do some content that we can do in Philly before the trip. We wanted to create stuff that we could push out to inform people, bring humor and just make the game and this moment a little bit different. We had a whole week without games, so we were able to make this game really shine. We’re always going to try to get as much good content as possible and once we have it, figure out which platform it’s going on. That could be our web site or social media or on our linear television shows. Then we turned to what can we create over in London? Why are we going? What can we get there that we can’t necessarily get here? How can we maximize our presence on the ground?

Player cooperation in London:
A ton of credit goes to the Sixers and their PR and communications staff. They were so welcoming to our team and content producers. They were reaching out and asking, “What do you need from us? What can we do to help you?” We were able to set up a quick one-on-one with Joel Embiid at one of the shootarounds. They were going to London Bridge and we got to go on the bus with them to take the photo. They were asking what they can do to help. That’s a microcosm of why the game has grown so much globally -- because of how helpful and how willing the teams are to get the word out and to help us service the fans.

When Harry Met Carson:
When Prince Harry got engaged, a big topic of conversation was how much he and Carson Wentz look alike. The joke was, ”Have you ever seen them in the same place at the same time?” We knew a lot of people wanted to run that story, so when we had the opportunity to go to London, it was something we planned on doing. We didn’t have it earmarked to post immediately. We just knew we wanted to get locals to talk about Carson Wentz. We got word that an NFL-Eagles-London announcement may potentially come, so when that happened, I was able to turn that video into not only about the Eagles going to London, but a funny Carson Wentz-Prince Harry storyline that has already started in America.


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/2018/01/16/Media/Social-Studies.aspx

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

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2018/01/16/Media/Social-Studies.aspx

CLOSE