Industry Series: Vol 1.3 — Andi Perelman, Director of New Media, Pittsburgh Penguins

Jack: What challenges do you have in working with corporate partners?

Andi: Sometimes we have difficulty in goal alignment. We talk about who you (the partner) is trying to reach, who are we trying to reach, and sometimes those things aren’t the same.

For example, we may have a partner tell us they want to use Facebook to reach millennials. We share that in order to target our millennial fanbase, you should consider looking elsewhere besides only Facebook. What we really see with Facebook is that the people that are engaging the most with the Penguins are 45–54 year old women. Let us be the experts in helping you reach our audience and collaborate together — find that common ground.

Jack: Outside of the Penguins, is there a successful social media activation that you’ve noticed?

Andi: Absolutely. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning both did a really cool promotion where they froze things in ice and put these ice blocks around the city.

Most people would think that this is not a social promotion — it’s a crazy guerilla marketing tactic!

However, the way they covered it on social by taking photos, showing people arriving, putting hashtags next to them and getting people to share the experience of being there was perfect.

I think Toronto froze signed jerseys and Tampa froze tickets. People were rubbing on the ice cubes to melt them, which is easier to do in Tampa than Toronto — ha!

It started outside of social but it was easy to share. It all goes back to what people are willing to share and how to make them part of your story.

How do you make your fans feel like it’s not just the Pittsburgh Penguins creating content, but a community of Penguins fans producing content and interacting with the team?

Jack: Let’s say you were named the head of social media for a Fortune 1000 company that has multiple professional sports team and collegiate partnerships. Within those partnerships, you have social media assets. How would you interact with the “Andis” at those teams? How would you activate those partnerships?

Andi: I’m in charge of this social media team that has social media assets in their partnerships?

Jack: Correct.

Andi: I go back to the foundation of our discussion — sharing content. What is your content that is getting the most shares? What is the content that is clearly working for your brand? I would be interested in learning these answers from the teams/properties themselves.

Some of this content may not have partner integration possibilities. It’s still good to know who these fans are and what they’re into, because you can adapt content.

Obviously, in my role I would know what’s really important to me and the company that I represent. Knowing this, I may target fanbases differently.

Jack: It’s interesting you mention you would start with the Penguins brand and asking those questions before coming to the table with your own objectives. You are clearly thinking about everyone involved.

Andi: A majority of brands know what’s best on their end and attempt to maximize their association with the Penguins. That’s the idea.

However, without first understanding who the Penguins are and who their fans are, you can’t be efficient. You can’t be effective. Your brand can’t properly utilize/activate the fanbase of the Pittsburgh Penguins and this avid, passionate, awesome audience that the Penguins have until you know who they are.

Jack: What are the strengths and weaknesses of social media for a pro sports team?

Andi: A major strength is that we are a powerful voice. We say something and it is taken very seriously. People have a good feeling towards our partners that are supporting us. They have a good feeling towards our content because of our fan avidity.

It’s easy to produce things that we know our fans will like. In professional sports, people are so passionate about their favorite team. It’s a big part of who people are — think about the clothes they wear and the things they do for fun — it’s very much related to their team. It’s not something that’s a passive choice.

People feel very strongly about their team and that makes social powerful. Especially for a brand like ours, a brand like the Steelers — any brand that has a rich history. Social is powerful.

That’s also part of what makes it tough, right? We say something and it’s a little off or wrong and we are still the Pittsburgh Penguins’ voice. It’s not Andi tweeting from the Penguins, it’s the actual Pittsburgh Penguins speaking to the public.

It’s not necessarily a weakness, but it’s an opportunity for error.

Regarding weaknesses, my initial thought is that maybe our players aren’t quite as active on digital and social as other sports. That’s growing and it’s changing for the better.

This is the first year I’ve gotten requests from players for photos and videos from events.

It’s been really funny because they all request in different ways. Evgeni Malkin will text our Sr. Director of Communications (Jen Bullano Ridgley) and she’ll text me and I’ll start sending things to her. Kris Letang DMs the Penguins account itself (@Penguins) when he needs a photo.

It’s great to be able provide help them to share content to their own fans. In the future, this will be a strength, but we’re not there just yet.

Jack: You live and work in a world of change. How do you and your team deal with change in the social media landscape?

Andi: Our VP of Marketing (James Santilli) told me “we like being early adopters.” We don’t necessarily need to be first, but we need to look at who’s first, see if they did it right, and then tweak and move quickly. To me, that makes sense.

When I started in this role, Snapchat wasn’t really around. The Eagles (Philadelphia) and the Capitals (Washington) were really on there early and we started to explore how they used this tool. What does this video look like? Are they taking a horizontal video? Are they taking a vertical video? Are they adding text? Are they writing text? What does this look like? Do we like it?

We made the move to Snapchat shortly thereafter. But we did have a strategy. We needed to find a way to make it more fun. All of the things we talked about before: Are we cute? Are we funny? How do we make it ‘wow’? How do we make people share it, with screenshots and put it on Twitter? It’s all tied into that same thought.

In general, that’s our philosophy. We look at what people are doing, analyze it, and then take action ourselves.

Jack: You mentioned that you graduated from high school in 2008 and the Twitter account for the Penguins started in 2009. I’m still intrigued with the fact that you were growing up with social media while it was in its infancy.

Andi: 2008 or 2009 — I’m not sure exactly what year the Twitter account was started. However, the tweet from when we won the Stanley Cup in 2009 was brutal. Brutal!

It’s the most generic, non-excited message. I’m not sure if you could post photos on Twitter at that point. There’s no photo. There’s no feeling. It’s just “Penguins defeat Red Wings to win Stanley Cup!!”.

It makes me cringe — how things have changed!

Jack: To that point, there is clearly going to be a different social media landscape in the future — whether that future is next week, in six months, or in five years. What’s your opinion on the future of social media?

Andi: It’s hard to know. Evan (Schall) and Jonathan from my team are big into virtual reality and augmented reality — they think both are going to be the next big thing.

I’m not so sure. I haven’t seen any real evidence of it being integrated into sports effectively just yet. People talk about it, but is it really the next big thing?

Previously, everyone was saying mobile was the next big trend. Everybody’s taking their eyes off their computer and focusing on their phones. I think that’s very clear at this point.

Facebook views are significantly higher on mobile than they are on desktop. People are looking at their phones while they’re watching hockey. It’s like a dual screen experience almost all the time.

It’s crazy that almost 80% of the time you’re watching sports, you’re also looking at your phone or doing something on your phone. I’m currently seeing streaming sports on social media, integrating social with that TV experience in a more seamless way being more prevalent.

Being able to look at the comments from people on social while you watch in the same place. We’re seeing tweets now on TV, in sports bars, on the news — even the President is tweeting. It’s crazy how much social media is entering into that TV experience because everyone has their phone and is engaging.

I think that will definitely continue. We do a PensTV piece on our website called Pens Trends where we look at what’s trending on social media. It’s a great way to inform people that aren’t on their phones all the time to tie everything together.

To confirm — mobile is huge. I think streaming is going to get bigger and bigger. I think the TV rights and streaming deals are going to increase.

I think eventually everything will be “a la carte” — you’ll be able to consume only the content you want. It should be interesting to see where things go.

Snapchat just announced that they’re letting you do augmented reality filters — maybe we’ll jump in! We could have fans dancing with Iceburgh on their Snapchat, or hi-fiving Geno. Anything could happen!