By Matt VanSandt ('11)

When you've just raised awareness to over 10,000 fans in less than three weeks, your choices are nearly limitless.

That's the situation that presented itself to Pat Stack (’08) with one ECHL regular season game remaining in team history before making a playoff run. He'd just created a social media campaign that went so well, the entire AHL was watching in preparation for the team’s arrival next year. The Checkers, a minor league hockey team in Charlotte, was looking for ways to increase fan attendance and the size of its audience as it prepares to ascend to the American Hockey League in the 2010-11 season. At a time when the Bobcats were in the playoffs and spring weather was demanded fans time, this was probably about the time fans might lose interest in the Checkers. Through social media, Stack had other plans.

Termed the Facebook FANdemonium Game, Stack had a goal of increasing brand awareness and driving a fan information database through the popular social media platform Facebook. “If the Checkers AHL Facebook Fan page can reach 10,000 fans by March 29, the Checkers will give one ticker per Facebook fan for the final ECHL regular season home game on March 30.” 

This goal was more than double the amount of fans on the team’s ECHL fan page.  Was it too lofty? “We went from 0 to 11,000 fans in two-and-half weeks,” Stack said.   “We planned on a summer campaign to drive our Fan Page to be the biggest in the AHL but we had already exceeded the largest AHL page by 3,000 fans in this initial program!” With approximately 1,000 fans redeeming the coupons for tickets, the campaign attracted residents who had never been to a Checkers game before. 

“Three out of every ten fans that redeemed the coupons had never been to a Checkers game before,” said Stack. But that was not the most important benefit of the FANdemonium Game for Stack.

“We were able to capture the information of the people who redeemed the coupon whether it was through a TicketMaster link on our Fan Page or by printing off and bringing the coupon to the game, which contained spaces for their contact information.”  Going forward, Stack will use this information collected from the new Checkers fans as warm leads to generate sales for the organization. “The big thing for us is to drive sales and to take our social media assets to produce leads.  Using those leads, leverage them to generate incremental revenue.” 

Social media is becoming a mainstream platform for organizations to market through due to the cost savings. “That is what sparked the FANdemonium, its free advertising,” Stack claimed. “To try to get the same information, it would have cost $15,000 or $20,000 in advertising and we did it for free.  That was the power of it.”

However, this campaign should not be confused with others though as the AHL league office is now using the model as a best-practice representation for all other organizations.“It was honestly a perfect storm of really good things…We created a lot of goodwill with a lot of people,” Stack said. “And it was a great way to go out with a bang before the playoffs!”

So what’s next for Stack and the Checkers? “It’s all leading to more in-game social media components,” claims Stack.“Ultimately making the people at our games follow us on social media and taking it outside the game as well as during the offseason. We want our fans to visit our Fan Page and portfolio of websites to satisfy their hunger for Checkers content, but also look for the value that we provide them for being a fan.”

Good luck to the Checkers in the second round of the ECHL playoffs, go out with a bang!