Digital Royalty activated a twitter contest for client Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Nearly 1,000 fans showed up to participate.
Digital Royalty activated a twitter contest for client Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Nearly 1,000 fans showed up to participate.
Background: A fan had been tweeting under Shaquille O’Neal’s name on Twitter, yet because this was occurring prior to Twitter’s rollout of a verification process for celebrities, Shaquille O’Neal couldn’t publicly disprove the credibility of his impostor. Not only that, but if Shaquille O’Neal did create an account on Twitter, how would he humanize his mega-celebrity status in order to thrive in a social networking environment like Twitter?
Approach: Digital Royalty trained the basketball superstar, @The_Real_Shaq, how to tweet both strategically and tactically on his “ShaqBerry” (as he likes to call it) so that he could tweet himself; authentically. Most importantly, to turn followers of Shaquille into friends and brand loyalists, Digital Royalty developed the concept of Random Acts of Shaqness. The idea behind Random Acts of Shaqness was that not only would followers get to interact with a virtual friend in a tangible, real-world way, but followers of Shaquille would be rewarded for following Shaquille and for how closely they followed his tweets.
Results: Shaquille O’Neal is currently ranked among Twitter’s top 10 celebrity users according to WeFollow.com. In addition to having a well-established presence, 2.5 million followers strong, the threat of imposters have been abolished. Not only is Shaquille regarded as an early adopter, but his tweets often become news – a testament to his credibility in the space. Additionally, Shaquille is a groundbreaker for furthering the idea that celebrities on social networking sites can be active participants of a community—engaging, responding and meeting followers. And since pioneering Random Acts of Shaqness, the concept has been adopted by celebrities of all types on Twitter who include Ellen DeGeneres, UFC’s Dana White, Lenny Kravitz and Chad Ocho Cinco.
Athletes and Social Media. It’s a hot topic. Traditional professional sports leagues have recently published their social media rule books which, in some cases, have earned new fan-assigned nicknames like No Fun League.
But contrary to the direction of their ‘No Fun League’ counterparts, The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a Digital Royalty (dR) client, has taken a different digital path. UFC brought the dR team in for a three-day strategic and tactical training session with more than 200 of their professional athletes. Below are some of what these athletes learned in the three-day event.
Strategic Training: Athletes learned how to use social media to monetize their brand, become their own media outlet and navigate through crisis communications situations. In addition, Digital Royalty taught this group of athletes that the connection with fans can be beneficial beyond their athletic career, and in lue of this, how to grow their brand by establishing relationships with new fans and strengthening relationships with existing fans.
Tactical Training: Account setup, optimization and use of handheld social media applications were also part of the presentation.
Background: Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a global mixed martial arts sports organization. Digital Royalty (dR) concepted and promoted various events leading up to UFC 104 in Los Angeles and UFC 106 in Las Vegas. Events that were scheduled leading up to UFC 104 and 106 events included twitter-centric scavenger hunts and autograph sessions with UFC fighters at Los Angeles-based and Las Vegas-based Kmarts.
Approach: Leading up to UFC 104 and UFC 106, a contest was launched exclusively on Twitter surrounding the series of in-store autograph sessions with UFC fighters. The challenge was to integrate two brands, UFC and Kmart, while raising interest and awareness for the contest/ticket giveaway. Digital Royalty facilitated the branding of the contest across multiple channels by establishing uniform hashtags, #UFC104Contest and #UFC106Contest. In addition, dR captured multiple videos, short interviews and photos for distribution to a base of more than 1.9 million individuals.
Results: More than 1,900,000 direct unique impressions were made in less than a week. Along with tweets co-branded with #UFC104Contest and #UFC106Contest hashtags and Kmart mentions, videos and photos were distributed by both UFC and Kmart networks. A total of two thousand fans showed up at Kmart as a result of the Twitter contest. Behind-the-scenes videos were hyper syndicated across the UFC digital universe reaching millions on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In addition, the winner of the UFC 104 Contest was able to locate UFC representatives, solely through directional tweets, in five seconds to claim his ticket prize.
Background: In October 2009, professional golfer Bubba Watson entered into a social media partnership with the nation’s largest independent tire distributor, Discount Tire. The agreement was to support one another over the two-week timeframe of the partnership exclusively on social media channels that included Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It also included a physical visit by Bubba Watson to a Discount Tire location.
Approach: The preliminary stages of the partnership included Digital Royalty naturally integrating both brand’s respective social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Next steps involved a viral video shoot, a Tweet-up ticket giveaway at a Discount Tire location, an autograph session at a golf tournament solely promoted through social media outlets, a Twitter based Q-and-A session and an online autographed card given away by both parties via social channels.
Results: With isolation of the two-week partnership, Digital Royalty was able to measure and compare Discount Tire’s audience share and fan engagement on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, to growth in weeks leading up to and following the partnership. Highlights of the case study included across-the-board ecosystem growth of Discount Tire and Bubba Watson’s respective ecosystems, positive sentiment increases, tapping of new audiences and interconnectivity represented in the percent-share of one another’s ecosystem.
America’s largest independent tire distributor and a PGA Tour golfer with a sense of humor formed a revolutionary partnership—a social media partnership. Enter Discount Tire and Bubba Watson.
The two social savvy brands bantered and supported each other entirely on social media platforms that included Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The result was that both Bubba Watson and Discount Tire grew their online presence by tapping into new consumer segments and strengthening their preexisting online networks.
The key to making Digital Royalty’s concept of a social media partnership a success was identifying touch points of natural integration versus forced interruption. The video above explains how this was accomplished.
Background: The Chicago White Sox organization wanted to set up a meet-and-greet with their fans and followers before the end of the 2009 MLB season. The result was that on September 18, 2009, Cellular Field in Chicago played host to the first official White Sox tweetup.
Approach: Amy Martin, Digital Royalty founder, drew from previous experience as creator and host of the Phoenix Suns first tweetup, as well as fan feedback to hone-in on what elements were necessary to make the one-day event a success. The 31-dollar event took place at a cordoned-off portion of an outfield patio where twitterers enjoyed all-you-can-eat buffet, a fan-designed tweetup t-shirt, a baseball game and time to mingle with the White Sox VP of Communication, Director of PR, mascot and baseball legend Ron Kittle.
Results: A contest for the design of t-shirt for the event was not only exclusively launched on Twitter, but also produced a follower-designed t-shirt for the event. Key takeaways were that tweetup attendees met and took photos with key figures behind all of the White Sox accounts, as well as supplied the vast majority of content that originated from the event. User-generated content was then hyper-syndicated by Digital Royalty across a multitude of channels. All White Sox account experienced a substantial increase in followers, but of particular interest was that Southpaw, the White Sox mascot who had just joined twitter, garnered 1,000 new friends (followers) during this timeframe.
Background: During the annual UFC Summit in Las Vegas, the UFC encouraged all of its fighters to setup accounts on Twitter. The result was not only that hundreds of UFC, TUF and WEC fighters were now on Twitter, but that the UFC had to identify each fighter, verify the authenticity of each account and inform the public of each fighter account. The challenge for the UFC essentially became the following: how do we show the credibility of authentic fighter accounts in lue of lengthy, official verification and publicize these accounts to fans?
Approach: Although Digital Royalty was in the process of having all fighter accounts verified by Twitter, we needed a way to have all fighter accounts that had been internally verified, authenticated for the general public – and quickly. The answer was to not only build a master list of UFC fighters on Twitter, but create this list on official UFC accounts (i.e. @DanaWhite and @UFC) and distribute the information.
Results: Forty-seven fighter accounts are now on the UFC Twitter list, and more than 200 non-UFC accounts on Twitter have in turn followed the “fighters” list. Having the official UFC Twitter account, @UFC, distribute the list via Twitter, added instant credibility to fighter accounts that before had struggled with imposter accounts and a lack of uniformity. One such fighter account that served as a testament to this success was Frank Mir, one of the UFC’s most well known fighters. Frank’s brand new official account, @TheFrankMir, was hard to distinguish from seven imposter accounts. But after @UFC publicized the ‘fighter list’, Frank Mir’s real account jumped from four followers, to 2,600 in less than 12 hours.
In the 160-character bio on Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter lies the six-world phrase ‘I perform Random Acts of Shaqness.’ Eighty-nine thousand, seven hundred results are yielded in a simple Google search of ‘Random Acts of Shaqness.’ But what exactly are Random Acts of Shaqness? And how did they originate?
It was one day with client Shaquille O’Neal that Digital Royalty (dR) founder Amy Martin thought-up the concept for her greater than seven-foot friend, with an equally as large personality. The strategy included performing spur-of-the-moment giveaways, phone calls to fans and general acts of kindness which converged the virtual world with the physical more-tangible world. And so was born Random Acts of Shaqness.
Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona and a 5’ & Diner in Phoenix were just two of the original locations to fall victim to Shaq’s Twitter-savvy self. Stops across the country along his NBA road trip path also became historic Random Acts of Shaqness landmarks.
Shaq’s followers not only enjoyed the idea in the 2008-2009 NBA season, but also embraced them. In some instances, the time between Shaq revealing his location on Twitter and followers showing up to meet the NBA-star was a mere five minutes.
Two million plus followers and a season later, Random Acts of Shaqness have become a namesake of Shaq’s Twitter presence. And appropriately, Shaq’s first act of the 2009-2010 season took place in his new home Cleveland underneath the iconic Lebron James “Witness” outdoor sign.
Since its birth, celebrities have adopted the concept of Random Acts of Shaqness and embraced its suitability to Twitter. Celebrities and musicians who include Ellen DeGeneres, UFC’s Dana White, Lenny Kravitz and Chad Ocho Cinco.
For more Random Acts of Shaqness be sure to follow @The_Real_Shaq.
