Toronto Raptors (Final Assignment)

The Toronto Raptors is a Canadian based basket team that plays in the National Basketball Association, otherwise known as the NBA. The Raptors identify them selves as very cold dark edgy team, for example certain colors are used through out their branding schemes. The Raptors logo includes dark shades of black, grey and red, even when looking through their social feeds they tend to use very dark gradients to perceive an edgy feel. The Raptors also perceive them selves as out siders. By being the only Canadian team in the league the brand takes advantage of that. Recently the brand released a campaign called “We the North”. This pitch embraced the spirit with imageries of Toronto’s genuine basketball culture and the determined Raptors. From being the National basketball league’s only team that is set outside of the United States, the Raptors have embraced to become not only a team for Toronto but for all of Canada. Another strong element for their brand is addition of Drake. The record-breaking artist is also associated with the brand, as he is the global brand ambassador. Over the last couple of years the Raptors have hosted an annual game called Drake Night. The whole night is themed with Drake accessories, such as t-shirts. Also the Raptors jersey and logo is colored black and gold to set the theme. These types of strategies give the brand more of a personality and make it stand out. When seen through out the social media world it explodes, giving a mixture of sports and pop culture. There were the typical sports accounts talking about it, but then you had big companies like Rolling Stones and Billboard taking about it on social media. Combining sports and pop culture can be a very powerful tool to show viewers what kind of brand they truly are. The type of product they advertise is sport entertainment, which includes a wide range of accessories and merchandise. Tangible products include of jerseys, hats and other clothing accessories. Intangible product examples are sharing highlights from each game through out different social media platforms, or playing a live playoff game on a jumbo screen from out side of the ACC.The Raptors do a great job of make their consumers feel like they are a part of the team. On their wide range of social media platforms the Raptors are constantly updating their fans with highlights, injury updates, post game interviews, the list goes on and on. One of their major factors is keeping their fans updated with the players’ social lives. There is an online show called Open Gym, and it does a great job of simulating what the players are doing off and on they court. Both the consumer and the brand have common interest in being successful. When being a loyal fan to any team, you never want to see your team fail. The brand also feels the same way, more or less when winning they sell more tickets and create a bigger following. Through out their social media pages, the brand tries to get their fans connected. Especially on twitter, contests are held to who ever is following the Raptors. Usually different companies such as Ford will sponsor the contest, the contest contains of a question and if you guess it right you have a chance to go to a raptors game. They are also in game contest where you can win prizes at the game. Again another company usually sponsors the contest, an example would be hitting a half court shot to get a gift card to a store. When marketing Raptors try to touch on as many demographics as possible. We The North campaign was shown both on social media and TV. Newspapers, billboards and banners are also some example of marketing techniques they touch upon. They usually focus more towards the online aspects; it tends to catch more eyes globally. The Raptors use a wide source of plat forms such as Snap Chat, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Although each platform have there own unique functions the Raptors do a good job of understanding each one of them. They use Instagram for more of the basic visuals like highlights or funny moments. For example when Kyle Lowry hit a half court shot, they posted it and added a clever caption to go with it. They especially use Instagram to post short promotional videos such as the Go Daddy campaign with Jonas Valanciunas. Twitter focuses more or stats and conversations. Usually at the beginning of the games the Raptors will tweet out the starting line ups for Toronto and their opponent. Or they will Tweet out a questions to the fans to see what their predictions and sometimes tweet back to their followers. Twitter polls are also a strong element they use throughout their twitter account to see what fans like and dislike. Snap Chat is used for short fast video content. Usually the Raptors snap out videos of the players warming up before games or sometimes getting a snap of the players running out of the tunnel right before they begin to play. Again snap is used for more of the short content, so there isn’t a lot of information being shared, but it still provides a VIP look of the Raptor players. Moving on to the YouTube content, which is the opposite from the Snap Chat content. The Raptors organization uses YouTube for the longer lasting videos that provide the viewer with more in depth information. For example most post game interviews are posted on the website, also the behind the scenes show Open Gym is posted on YouTube. Open Gym is a behind the scenes look of the Raptors lives on and off the court. To engage and build a bigger following the Raptors organization hold contest via social media. For example on Twitter they ask questions and whom ever comes up with the most clever answer then the winner gets two tickets to the next raptors game. They’ve also done contest with Coors light. Where the objective is like a scavenger hunt around the city. And they winner of that contest got to go home with two court side tickets. The Raptors organization also does a lot of community work around Toronto to engage with their followers. Not to long ago Patrick Patterson was helping around the community by helping inspire young basketball players to achieve their dreams, and of course all of this content was posted on social media.When the season is over, the summer time really lacks of Raptors content. I believer there should be a better job done on social media through out the off seasons. I know it’s hard to capture good content when there aren’t any basketball games, but during the summer time there is a lack of social media content covering the Raptors. I think a great addition to their social media is to get the behind scenes content of the raptors working out during the off seasons. It would be great to see each player training and trying new things to make their game better. For example Kyle Lowry is getting better and better each year what if the Raptors community were able to see more off seasons content to see how Kyle improved his game. I feel this type of content would obviously work best on a visual aspect. Plat forms such as Instagram video/ story, Snap Chat, or even YouTube. I just strongly believe that the brand lacks content during the summer time, and they need to step up their game to keep their basketball fans filled with their product.Being in a league with 29 other teams, there tends to be a lot of competition not only on the court but off the court as well. Brands are always trying to get a bigger fan base than other teams. Although with Canada being the only outside team, I guess you could say that we are in competition with the United States. But that’s what makes us stand out. Teams are always trying to find unique content to post; from being an outsider team we always have different type of content from the other types of teams.Overall I believe that the Toronto Raptors do an outstanding job of understanding and running their brand. They understand who their audience is, by giving them what they want and what they need. Filling fans up with consistent well shown content, leaving them with updates, stats, highlights anything you can think of. Although I truly think they lack good quality content during the off seasons. They got everything down packed; I really think they should focus on what they should do when the seasons over. They shouldn’t just leave their fans dry for a couple mouths. They need to be constantly feeding them. Some content I think they should focus on is the players training. Show case what they are working on for the future, let fans in on what Kyle is improving on in his game. Other than that I think the Raptors organization does an almost prefect job of branding them selves of multiple different platforms.