Every year, the Super Bowl is dissected for its play, halftime show and commercials. But what about the related social media? THE DAILY gathered a panel comprised of Pepperdine Univ. sports law professor Alicia Jessop, Bespoke Sports & Entertainment VP/Strategy Jonathan Norman and American Cancer Society Senior Dir of Sports Alliances J.W. Cannon to share their thoughts on the social media feeds of the NFL, Patriots and Rams on Sunday. Norman said when the NFL retweeted the SpongeBob account thanking the league for being included in Maroon 5's performance, it tapped into "something that goes beyond the halftime show." Norman: "The integration of SpongeBob shows the NFL recognizes they are a cultural icon, and by recognizing another cultural icon, it was an apex moment of the night.” Meanwhile, Jessop said the Rams “did a good job trying to reach out to their Spanish-speaking fans.” Cannon liked the now-deleted post from Mercedes-Benz USA, which said they were thinking about driving away from the Super Bowl because of the low-scoring affair.
What they liked:
Jessop: I don’t think either of the teams were super creative or really pushed the boundaries in the type of content they could have created and perhaps one-of-a kind experience. What the NFL did better than the teams was doing more personal content. What I mean about that, the posts that did the best were the posts of players with their kids. It’s showing them as fathers, it’s showing them as these people who have this life outside of football.
Norman: One thing I thought was interesting was Tide’s sponsorship of the “Countdown To Kickoff” and the use of single players. They had Tom Brady and Jared Goff underneath the logo of Tide. It was a smart play for them to align with the stars of the game in a very natural and endemic way. One of the other things I really liked: the Pats had a good mix of highlights and graphics on Twitter. They used #everythingwegot through the postseason and they switched to #wegoteverything after the win.
Cannon: The Patriots’ voice is so authentic. You hear about the arrogance the organization sort of has, and I appreciate very much, and frankly it’s deserved. The way they present content and the sort of braggadocios message -- that’s what I really liked. They stayed authentic to who they are, damn the haters.
What they didn't like:
Jessop: If you look at the engagement on all the tweets across the board, the Rams don’t even have 1 million followers. The Patriots have over 4 million. But by and large, the engagement on their tweets were very similar in a lot of places. What that signals to me is the Patriots’ digital strategy, at least for Twitter, is not optimized. If they have four times the number of followers and they are getting less or close to the same number of comments on their posts, maybe a few thousand more retweets -- but we are talking about 3 million more followers and it’s only producing a few thousand more retweets, in the grand scheme of things, something is not working.
Norman: There is an opportunity to do more branded content. Whether it is with your handset/wireless partner or, if there is one thing from a brand marketer’s perspective, there are more opportunities to integrate sponsored partners than what actually happened.
Cannon: With the exception of a lot of the postgame stuff, it didn’t really feel like a big game. I don’t know if there were restrictions on the type of content that they can post. I wasn’t really excited with basic updates and graphic updates. I thought I would have expected more out of the Rams during the game. After the game was much better than anything before the game and during the game.
Favorite piece of content:
Jessop: After the game and it came from the NFL’s account where, if you look at the most shared tweet in terms of retweets, in terms of likes, in terms of comments, it was the picture of Brady’s daughter and the confetti falling on her. It humanizes this man who is so good on the football field we forget he’s actually a great husband and a great father.
Norman: The Rams in pregame. It was Wade Phillips’ tribute to Bum, walking in the cowboy hat and leather coat. That spoke to me. With his handle being Son of Bum, it was a really poignant moment in a really busy day.
Cannon: If you have to look at the content from the teams and the NFL, there is a really great video where Julian Edleman grabbed the camera and was talking about how excited they were after the game.
Platform that exceeded expectations:
Norman: The Patriots’ Instagram story seemed to be in the right place at the right time the entire game. Bringing that sort of content shows the power of that channel and what properties can do to differentiate themselves.
Cannon: Instagram is everybody’s hot social platform. Most of the teams really did well there, especially as stories have grown and generating a lot of unique content. But a lot of that unique content was outside of the game window, leading up to it, showing behind the scenes with practices. I wasn’t really excited about any of it during the game. Once it got to game time, it was like a news feed.
Originality:
Jessop: One thing that was amiss for the Rams was they didn’t have a special hashtag for the Super Bowl. That was something the Patriots got right. The NFL is able to share that hashtag and give them greater impressions on it.
Norman: The NFL did a really nice job integrating additional handles. Where the originality came from was The Checkdown or the NFL retweeting NFL Officiating on key plays. From a diversity issue, the NFL really rose above. The NFL also used some really cool graphic packages. There was a pregame tweet where they used Backyard Baseball approach.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com.
