How the NFL Has Taken Advantage of Interactive Marketing Platforms and Captured the Attention of Gen Z



Hey there sports fans! If you love watching the NFL like I do, you must have had a busy Sunday sitting on the couch watching as many games as possible. American football is special to many people in the United States as its short season gives each game a high level of intrigue and intensity. However, recent events and scandals have had people questioning the ethics of the NFL. Between the CTE and domestic violence problems among its players, to the issues surrounding racial injustices, the younger generation, in particular, has started to question whether the NFL is something that is worth spending their time on. However, after an underwhelming number of Super Bowl television views, the NFL noticed that streaming viewership of NFL games has risen immensely. Assuming that these streamers are largely made up of younger people (Generation Z), the NFL is seeking to entice them even more by developing a new interactive social media marketing strategy. 
Photo: Wikipedia

Last September, the NFL announced new partnership deals with TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube. All of these social media platforms allow consumers to interact with the NFL in new and innovative ways. For example, the NFL began a #WeReady campaign to create hype around its 100th season last Fall. TikTok users loved this campaign, as #WeReady content reached a total of 1 billion views as of February 11, 2020. Creating viral content that Gen Z could interact with was a major step to the NFL further increasing its relevance among that audience. 


Photo: TikTok

But, the interactive marketing efforts don't stop there! The NFL's partnership with Reddit enables the league to connect users directly with its players and legends. This is made possible by a season of unique "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) threads. The AMA is not a new tool, as Reddit users have been able to connect with an abundance of celebrities such as Barack Obama and Keanu Reaves in the past. But that doesn't mean the NFL was too late to the party. The brand's official Reddit profile, Reddit NFL, has a community of almost 2 million users. 


Photo: Adweek

You might be wondering, though, how does the NFL engage its fans throughout the offseason? One of its newest strategies involves the use of dynamic content marketing via social media. The NFL has plenty of merchandise it wishes to sell throughout the year, including jerseys, t-shirts, sweatshirts, beanies, and much more. The league uses its @NFLStyle social media accounts to promote their products, as well as highlight the styles of many players around the league. Front Office Sports claims that fans generally tend to resonate with the content that features their favorite player around the NFL. This gives the league a tremendous opportunity to communicate with its fans through dynamic content marketing that engages them with its brand and officially licensed products.


Photo: Twitter

The NFL is taking the social media world by storm. Through its recent partnerships with various sites including Reddit and TikTok, the league is able to engage a Gen Z audience that is no longer amused by traditional advertisements. American football is still the most popular sport to watch in the United States, but that doesn't mean the NFL should take its foot off the gas pedal anytime soon. With the National Basketball Association using its platform over the past couple of months to bring awareness to social and racial injustices in the United States, the NFL has followed suit with its own awareness campaign to start the 2020 season. That being said, expect to see more creative ways in which the league interacts with its fans using social media in the future.






Comments

  1. Jiangjun XuSeptember 23, 2020 at 8:14 AM

    I like the way you tell it, this blog is very vivid and detailed.
    If an organization does not rely on online platforms to attract and maintain its customers and audiences, its visibility will decrease over time. As you said in the article, NFL uses the power of social media to give it enough attention During the off-seasons and generate more revenue.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Energizing Your Audience With the Groundswell

Image
Imagine that you're a marketing specialist at a company and you are looking to spread brand awareness. Some organizations spend heavily on traditional television advertisements while others utilize social media to listen and speak to their consumers. All of those options have their benefits and drawbacks, along with this next strategy which I am going to tell you about in detail. . . .  Energizing This strategy is a marketer's dream! Companies can tap into the groundswell to energize their fans to start spreading the word of their products and services.  Once their consumers are energized, the job falls on them, rather than the company, to market the brand.  Charlene Li  and  Josh Bernoff  claim in their book,  Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies ,  that w hen political candidates get their supporters riled up and spreading the word,  they are successfully "energizing their base" (p. 130).   Believe it or n...
Read more

Attaining Social Maturity With the Groundswell

Image
By now, it is safe to say that we as consumers have all embraced social media in its various forms. Whether we're browsing through Twitter or watching YouTube videos, we all accept our favorite social media platforms as part of our daily lives. Just like us, organizations around the world are striving to truly embrace social media, but this is not a simple task. According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies , companies don't go directly from thinking about social media to embracing it. Organizations must take creative action before they can reach "social maturity." Photo: Google Play Take The Home Depot as an example. The company decided to start its own home-improvement community back in 2010. The company already successfully embraced various social applications including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, so it was prepared to take the next step in further talking and listening to the groun...
Read more

How Chipotle is Fostering Brand Loyalty

Image
If you enjoy Mexican food as much as I do, then you have probably been to Chipotle more times than you can count. Chipotle Mexican Grill is an American chain of restaurants with locations in the United States, Canada, and several European countries. The company has been able to maintain a loyal customer base despite an incident in 2016 where two separate outbreaks of E. coli were linked to food served at its restaurants. How has Chipotle been able to do this? Yes, they have good quality food that is relatively healthy compared to other fast-food chains. However, their consumer base, which is primarily composed of Millennials and Generation Z, has become particularly engaged with the company through the ways in which it markets itself in new and innovative ways on social media.  Photo: 1000 Logos "Lighthearted." That is one word that can be used to describe Chipotle's social media marketing strategy. Being a food company, Chipotle is not exempt from receiving complaints ab...
Read more