Dissecting the Big Baller Brand Model
If there is one brand/organization that has instilled itself in our society via social, marketing and purely personal brand development in the past two years or so, it has been the Big Baller Brand. If you haven’t heard of the BBB team then you must be living under a rock because founder of the company and father of the Ball brothers, LaVar Ball has made national headlines on several occasions. Not necessarily for the right reasons, but from a marketing standpoint, not necessarily for the wrong reasons either. The Big Baller Brand is a family affair composed of founder LaVar Ball and his three sons. The eldest Ball boy, Lonzo, was the second overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft and is currently a Los Angeles Laker. The other two are NBA prospects LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball currently playing professional basketball in Lithuania.
The BBB made a splash in the social media realm when youngest Lonzo started climbing the prospects charts playing at UCLA while sporting his very own BBB apparel. From shoes, shirts and hats for men, women and kids. Not only have they developed a successful brand but they have built this brand off social media, especially facebook. Individually, they all have their independent personas that they market on instagram and twitter via stories and strategic posts. To put it into perspective, LaMelo is only 16 years of age and has close to four million followers on instagram. He is predicted to be the best of all three brothers already and has been shattering records since his high school days in Chino Hills. An example of their marketing on social, Lonzo alone announces pop-up shops, promotions and giveaways, BBB emojiis, and he just released his first album Born 2 Ball which has picked up steam with no surprise.
What really launched my appreciation for what this family is doing and got me to “respect the hustle” is when they decided to start their family reality TV show via Facebook Watch. This was a very smart business move to raise their brand awareness by showing the warming family aspect of running this company and lifestyle. This show called “Ball in the Family” is now on it’s second season and has become one of the most popular shows on Facebook’s newly developed viewing platform. The celebrity status of the family has definitely given them an advantage in regards to exposure for the company but it is the first time we see a family with three athletes destined for the big leagues all while running a successful company. Talk about an entrepreneur.
Andrew Hutchinson from socialmediatoday.com outlined the six step strategic approach for Facebook ads that BBB uses:
“1. Installed the Facebook Pixel which is to embed a piece of code for your website that lets you measure, optimize and build audiences for your ad campaigns in order to see how successful their ads were, and how close customers came to purchasing an item from the Big Baller Brand online store.
2. Used Facebook Ads Manager to build and deploy ads on Facebook.
3. Created ads with a direct call-to-action, clean images that showcased specific apparel, and links that led the customer directly to the item shown in the ad.
4. Built Engagement Custom Audiences in Ads Manager to target known fans, such as those who have interacted with one of the Ball family Pages or have watched their videos.
5. Created lookalike audiences to expand the reach of the campaign to send new ads to people with similar qualities to those completing purchases on bigballerbrand.com.
6. Used dynamic ads to retarget fans who visited the online store, but didn’t complete a purchase.”
When the data came back, Hutchinson reports that the ad campaign drove close to 150,000 outbound clicks to the BBB website and 18% purchase increase. (Hutchinson, 2018)
This Facebook ad campaign is only one example of the many strategies the BBB has adopted and have used to promote their brand. By having three celebrities at the forefront of your business, there is a lot to work with to ensure success. The Ball brothers are also dispersed across the ideal generation right now with Lonzo catering to the millenials and LaMelo generation z. They are the trendsetters amongst their peers and will be the future of the NBA if they actualize their potential. The BBB has established a solid foundation by building their own command centre. The Facebook ad campaign is an example of creating a playbook along with Zo and Melo both dropping their “signature shoes” at specifically calculated times. Social listening is a vital part of their game plan as they thrive off driving activity on social and stirring up interest with what’s next for the BBB. An example of the BBB being flexible and adapting to certain situations came just this past year
when middle ball brother LiAngelo got arrested in China whilst on a trip with UCLA for shoplifting. If you remember, Donald Trump even got involved to get the team back to the USA and that is when LaVar made national headlines. Following this minor scandal, LaVar pulled LiAngelo from the NCAA and LaMelo from high school to play professionally in Lithuania because this would better prepare them for the NBA draft when their time comes. This is a contingency plan LaVar put in place for the betterment of his kids first and foremost and the company. This put the BBB on the map globally by expanding to Europe and hitting an untapped market. Finally most of all, it seems that at the core of this company, they are having fun. With LaVar at the forefront and if you look at their pop up shops, he is a fan favourite amongst their clients. He is an outgoing, eccentric character that is needed to keep this company running while taking attention away from his kids who are doing their thing on the basketball court.
Something else that the BBB has done very well is that they have been capable of establishing a solid channel mix. They have several channels where they can distribute content for the building of brand awareness and the personal branding of the Ball brothers. On social alone they each have their individual instagram accounts, snapchats and twitter accounts that are followed by millions of people individually. It is like having three times the firepower to get the message out to the right people. Also, now that Lonzo is in the NBA, he now has friends that are celebrities in the NBA and they interact with each other such as Kyle Kuzma which drives even more interest from fans. Other celebrities get on the same page as the BBB and “respect the hustle” which has a heavy influence on even more fans so this brand is only gaining traction. Ideally, they have managed to create an omnichannel strategy through all social, website, albums, apps and tv shows. This is supercharging your social media the Big Baller way.
A big part of the success of this brand has been its ability to storytell and relate back to the community they are trying to engage with. A prime example of this would be when Tina Ball, mother of the boys, had a stroke before the “Ball in the Family” release. This obviously came as a shock but when seeing how the community rallied around Tina and the family it showed the core values of the company. It is a family first organization that wants to see success and be surrounded by it which is reflected in the way they advertise themselves and their brand. The perception of the brand is what keeps it afloat and keeps attracting an audience and fan base. By having a positive perception this translates to having interactions with these clients by providing activities with these “idols” that kids look up to. When you take the time to spend time with the people who helped support and make the BBB to what it is now, it is inevitable that it will pay off in monetary value and popularity.
Another aspect that the BBB has benefitted from immensely and this is purely because of the Ball brother’s activity on social is that they have become rich when it comes to social currency. They have attributed so much credibility from their antics off and on the court because who doesn’t love a little brotherly love. Whatever they post online will gain traction immediately and has the ability to generate thousands of mentions and likes within hours. This therefore gives the Ball brothers the power to promote the BBB as they please.
BBB CEO LaVar Ball just launched the Junior Basketball Association which claims it will pay the best high school basketball prospects $10,000 to play in their league. This league is to essentially avoid the one and done rule and facilitate the process of going from high school to the NBA. “With the introduction of the JBA, allowing the NCAA to regulate and control the eligibility status of top basketball prospects will no longer be an issue. There is no need to partake in an institution that claims its purpose is not to help you prepare for your professional career.” (Sportsnet, 2017) With the creation of this league, this can take the BBB to the next level as a development program for young basketball talent across the USA. As advertised by LaMelo on Twitter and Lonzo,
they are having camps in Dallas, Houston and a few other cities to recruit talent for their league. These kids are redefining value because there is endless competition for their attention. They are the product which their father has managed to breed into athletes, entrepreneurs, celebrities and trendsetters. Some may argue that this is a controlling father but by the looks of it, I do not think the Ball brothers have any objection to the lives they are living right now.
The Big Baller Brand is build on a solid foundation that spans across several platforms and is so diverse and accessible. There are too many channels that this organization is based on to be able to categorize it in one basket. Spanning from social, music, apps, tv shows, clothing, shoes and now to their own basketball league meant to compete with the NCAA! It almost seems that the BBB is bitten off more than it can chew but so far so good. LaVar claims he has a masterplan and we are all witness to it. Personally, I think this man is a genius but people are putting a negative perspective on it. From ground up, this BBB is dependent on social and would be nothing without it and so far they have grasped the concept of building a brand and have done it so efficiently. A big part of their success they owe to social, no doubt. There should be a business-social template based on the BBB. Overall, I think the Big Baller Brand and what they have done so far with Lonzo already in the league as the starting point guard for his hometown team is admirable. They are swimming through uncharted waters and who knows maybe opening doors to a new avenue yet to be discovered. I just think that LaVar is the first to do this with his kids successfully and that is why he is being criticized. This can be a recipe or mould for future wannabe athlete-entrepreneurs. Time will tell.
Works Cited
Hutchinson, Andrew. “Facebook Marketing Tips from the Ball Family and ‘Big Baller Brand’.” Social Media Today, 18 Feb. 2018, www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-marketing-tips-from-the-ball-family-and-big-baller-brand/517322/.
Sportsnet, Staff. “LaVar Ball Reveals Plans for Junior Basketball Association.” Sportsnet.ca, 21 Dec. 2017, www.sportsnet.ca/basketball/lavar-ball-reveals-plans-junior-basketball-association/.
