The Portland Diamond Project formed in '17 with the intent of bringing MLB to the Pacific Northwest, and when it unveiled its T-shirts and caps, local fans went wild for the merchandise. Portland Diamond Project (@PDXDiamondProj) Media Manager Jen Beyrle, who also assists with branding and marketing, joined the group in June. She said, “Our logo and colors gave us an identity and people wanted to support that. People have asked if that’s what we are going to use when we get a team. We have absolutely no idea.” She said sales of the merchandise, for which all proceeds benefit youth organizations in Oregon and Washington, have been “insane” and aided by the opening of retail location across from Providence Park. Once the T-shirts became available, the organization challenged its supporters have photos of the shirt in all MLB ballparks. The mission was accomplished in 30 days.
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follows: I follow mostly sports figures on Twitter. One is kind of random: Mychal Thompson. He’s funny. Mike Leach is also a favorite follow of mine. He keeps it interesting.
Favorite apps: Instagram. I use it a lot for both the Portland Diamond Project account and my personal account.
Average time per day on social media: I would guess somewhere between six or seven hours. It’s scary.
Reaching out via social media:
At first, we didn’t have a real strategy for social media. When I joined the team, we went organically. First it was the really avid baseball fan who was so excited about what we’re doing. Now, since we’ve released an agreement in principal for the ballpark location, we’re really starting to engage with everyone in Portland and Southwest Washington and Oregon to get our message out to non-sports fans.
Evolution of messaging and tone over recent months:
Around the time I joined, we announced Russell Wilson and Ciara were joining as co-owners and investors. Obviously, that received national attention. That gave us a spotlight. We were like, “We really need to drive this home. We really need to take advantage of this announcement." We put Russell in an MLB PDX hat and shirt, and ever since then people have been dying to wear our hats and shirt to represent and support. We’ve had an insane amount of requests to start selling them. Not only did we grow on social, but we started producing merchandise, which we never thought we would be doing.
Collaborating with other prominent figures:
Dale Murphy is a local guy, he has come on board as a consultant. He has been great to work with and so supportive. (Former MLBer) Darwin Barney, also a local guy who went to Oregon State and won two national championships there. Also, Larry D’Amato, he is a 38-year MLB scout with Pirates, Reds and Yankees. Of course, our managing director is Mike Barrett, who has 25 years in sports broadcasting and did play-by-play for the Trail Blazers the last 17 years.
Reaction to ballpark renderings:
That was a really exciting day for us. That was the No. 1 question people had asked us: When is there going to be a site location announcement. We were able to point to it after the World Series. My phone was blowing up after the last out of the World Series with tweets and comments like, “OK, the World Series is over. We’re ready.” It ended up being late November. The anticipation was high, and we were so excited to show everyone what we had been working so hard on. We knew it was going to be a big deal. There were over 600,000 organic impressions from that first tweet we put out.
Interacting with teams, MLBers:
We want to be careful. In regard to Tampa and Oakland, we want their stadium situations figured out and resolved and we support them 100%. We want to be an expansion team, so we are rooting for those guys. At the Winter Meetings we ran into people from other teams and had conversations with them, but not over social media.
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