It's not every day you see a NBA team capitalize on their social media outreach to enhance online PR and real-time interaction. Usually, it's the players that are likely to interact with their fans. But this scenario is about to change when the Philadelphia 76ers started a campaign for a new mascot where fans can vote.
Sixers.com has increased its traffic since the new mascot campaign began. Unofficial twitter accounts have been popping around and the Sixers' social media following have seen a big boost. Sixers CEO Adam Aron said that the organization is glad the mascot campaign is increasing user engagement across all social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The team's social media accounts are even crossing over to traditional media to increase awareness and to get more fans involved.
In an interview with ESPN, Aron said, "We're monitoring the sentiment. The ownership group has maintained from the outset that we would listen to our fans and we're certainly doing that via email, Web and our Twitter accounts. But we're also monitoring the volume of their votes, which reached over 16,000 in the first day. We had 6,500 responses for input about the team as a whole in a month, so clearly the fans are engaged and talking about the Sixers and the mascot."
The finalists are: B. Franklin Dog, Big Ben, and Phil E. Moose. All three have been considered irrelevant to the city of brotherly love. The only problem is: nobody in the Sixers organization have taken the initiative in creating Twitter accounts or Facebook fan pages for the three mascot finalists!
Photo via ESPN
Enter: Sixers fans Jerry Rizzo and Hunter Coleman. Two twenty-somethings that are hardcore fans who made Twitter accounts for @PhilEMoose and @BFranklinDogg. The Sixers have amassed 16,000 votes in a day with the help of Coleman and Rizzo's unofficial Twitter accounts. The next thing Rizzo knew is that the Sixers organization is telling them via email to turn over the passwords of the social media accounts they made. Rizzo refused to hand over the account details at first, but they eventually traded the accounts for free season tickets. As if free season tickets weren't enough, Sixers CEO Adam Aron offered Rizzo a social media position on the team. "I knew when I was doing the accounts that I was handling them in a professional way, but it wasn't for the purpose of getting a job or tickets or anything like that." Rizo told Mashable.
One of the top priorities of Aron was to improve the organization's online presence but there was no senior person who was dedicated in managing their social media accounts. Well, not anymore, with a young spitfire in Jerry Rizzo who knows his social media and has the initiative of a loyal fan, the Philadephia 76ers social media presence is in good hands. It only goes to show that social media is paving the way for customer-company collaboration and even more.