|
Click the image above to learn about the the @Cafe!
PROGRAM TITLE
San Francisco Giants: @Café
|
 |
OBJECTIVES
Virtually every team on both the major and minor league level is capitalizing on the advantages of social media, whether generated from the team or from the fans. Many teams are starting to implement a "social media headquarters" where they can control the tweets and pictures fans post at their stadium. But up until now, there haven't been any teams who have put an HQ actually inside the stadium, accessible to the fans as part of the fan experience.
Enter San Francisco Giants: the MLB kings of social media. The San Francisco Giants have expanded their strategy with a first-of-its-kind fan lounge where they have pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of their social media practices and let fans in behind the scenes.
Recently, we have seen the Giants dominate on baseball's biggest stage two of the last three years. And we're not only talking about on the field, but on an even bigger platform as well - Twitter! Garnered as one of the most socially apt teams in all of major league sports, the Giants make innovation their motto. Bryan Srabian, the Social Media Director in San Francisco, has taken his team to the top of the charts - as you will see in the results section below. "I don’t want [the Giants] to be just an average team, I want to be on top," said Srabian.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
|
Sitting and watching from the booth at AT&T Park, Srabian thought "How can I get the fans more involved and engaged? I have to think like a fan before I can truly give them what they want". By thinking like a fan, the @Café started to take form. After two years of hard work and lobbying with Giants management, Srabian got his wish and the @Café launched on June 17th during a home series against the San Diego Padres.
The idea is simple: a dynamic destination for all the social media gurus at the game to meet up and tweet/post together. The Giants wanted to create a place where they could aggregate all the chatter to and from the fans, in a cool spot to hang out. The @Café is decked out with six, 55-inch screens that can run separately or work seamlessly together as one giant screen, displaying trending topics on Twitter and Instagram about the Giants. Here, fans can hang out, sip coffee and watch their tweets show up on the big board. The Twitter and Instagram feed visualizations are just one way the Giants can display their social dominance in San Francisco, but we must remember, the Giants have reach around the planet.
The Giants used the @Café to capitalize on their 2012 title: World Series Champions! They created a unique visualization that is indicative of the world and not just those fans living in San Francisco. So, keyword "world" and take a look at the picture above. The screens display a map of all the continents - in orange obviously - with the pinpoints and locations of Giants chatter, happening across the globe.
|
Advertisement
|
Of course, there is the back of house social media command center where the "Orange and Black Attack" can approve and filter through appropriate tweets and pictures, but the fans are closer to the experience then ever. Having a physical place to hang out and post online with friends is much more engaging than posting from your seat. Fans are no longer tweeting TO an organization, they are tweeting WITH and organization.
Click above to learn more about the @Cafe!
PARTNERSHIP
Peet's Coffee is the beverage sponsor for the @Café, which is a perfect fit for the Giants. Coffee lounges have become the "place to be" for young social media hipsters and serve as a hang out locale while fans sip a latte and tweet about the game. Peet's also matches up with the fan base at AT&T Park in many ways. It's not a mainstream joint like Starbucks. Rather, they are a young and hip company that got its start 20 minutes away from AT&T Park in Berkley, CA. Try and get coffee there on a Saturday morning and you will see how popular they are in the Bay area.
As for the digital side, the Giants teamed up with Array Interactive based out of San Francisco. "We are a digital signage agency specializing in creating relevant and engaging experiences," said Kevin Story, Director of Digital Solutions at Array Interactive. The Twitter/Instagram visualization and feed layout were all created from scratch in-house at Array. "We are not a platform provider," said Story, "we crafted and customized this specifically for the Giants organization". To check out the video they put together for the launch of the @Café, click here.
RESULTS
What the giants have seen and heard from the @Café is incredible. Within two weeks of the launch, they were already talking with potential sponsors fighting over naming rights. Launching the program without a sponsor originally seemed scary, but it was obviously the right way to go now that they will be turning a big ROI. From the minute it launched, local and national news stations were covering the hot spot, only serving to further promote its ingenuity. The @Café has become a destination for both Giants fans and opposing fans wanting to check out the space. After all, it is the first of its kind.
It must be said that it helps that they have won a few rings over the past three years, but no other team has blown up the way Giants have after wining a championship. The Giants have more followers on Instagram than any other MLB team and are fourth on both Facebook and Twitter. Their Klout score - a score calculated for social media accounts ranking their influence from 1-100 - is a 99, the highest of any baseball team and tied for the highest score on Klout!
The intangible results are very important here. We all know how much the fan experience provided by a team can either create a fan for life or give people reason to never come back. It's a fine line to dance with. In this case, Srabian said, "We've created engagement and fans that money can't buy, part of the experience that makes a fan for life". Lastly, if we take a look at ticket sales over the past few years, we see that initiatives like this are working, as the Giants hold the longest sellout streak in franchise history and the one of the longest in the MLB!
LOOKING AHEAD
The @Café is definitely here to stay, but the sponsors may be changing hands. With opportunities for a title sponsor or multiple sponsors, this social media hub gives the Giants a chance to grow their partner revenues. Moving forward, there are many ways the Giants can utilize the space to nurture social media relationships with their current fans and grow the fans of the future. In a few years we wont be talking about where the @Café is going, but where it has come from!
CONTACT
For more Information, contact:
Bryan Srabian: Social Media Director, San Francisco Giants
@Srabe
Kevin Story: Director of Digital Solutions and Business Development at Array Interactive Inc. [email protected]
|
