Jul

22

Nike promotes “It’s About You” campaign

Filed Under Sports PR | Leave a Comment

Image Credit: puliarf

PR Week takes a look at Nike’s “It’s About You” campaign that they are promoting heavily during the 2009 Tour de France. If you have watched any of this year’s race, you will have come across Nike commercials supporting the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I receive e-mails from Livestrong.com as well as the Astana team and my fellow e-mail subscribers have been notified about what they can do:

  • By texting or using social media fans can send a message to Chalkbot, which will write their messages in chalk on the roads being used in the race.
  • Fans can also create public profiles on the campaign’s website, upload their cancer stories, and follow the progress of the race.
  • The website sports videos from a variety of individuals ranging from cancer survivors to celebrities like Patrick Dempsey to athletes such as Jon Lester and Lance Armstrong.

The Tour de France is the culmination of this campaign, which makes sense with the focus on Armstrong who returned to cycling this year.

“It’s a really new and unique way to allow consumers from all over the world to participate in the Tour de France,” said Derek Kent, US media relations director for Nike, which is partnering with the Lance Armstrong Foundation for this campaign. …

This campaign is all about the story, Kent said. “In our case, it’s an extremely powerful one featuring an iconic athlete, a major sporting event, a great cause, and a call to action.” In addition to Armstrong’s TV commercials, the digital video shorts are available on Nike.com.

Nike has partnered with Cohn & Wolfe to reach out to the media, which includes your sport media and typical daily news publications as well as consumer press and trade publications.

Jul

21

The dunk on LeBron & the media backlash

Filed Under Sports Media, Sports PR | 4 Comments

Image Credit: Imagine24

Before I want to get into the topic of this post, I just wanted to thank everyone for visiting SPRB last week during the Sports Blogging 101 Series. There was a spike in traffic, linking, and discussion — thank you SPRB readers for making it a success! Since the series was such a hit, I will start working on a few more series (career, skills development, and Sports PR 101). As a result, posting will be lighter this week as I create content for the next series. Okay, back to the topic at hand.

Two weeks ago, a sophomore from Xavier named Jordan Crawford dunked over LeBron James at LeBron James Skills Academy. Ryan Miller, a freelancer, caught the dunk on camera for ESPNU. After that scrimmage had finished, a Nike official confiscated Miller’s tape as well as another reporter. Miller lost a whole day’s work when his entire tape was taken rather than just the portion including the dunk on LeBron.

The story blew up and Nike found itself in a PR fiasco. If the tape had been released, I’m sure it would have done well on YouTube. By confiscating the tape, Nike simply made it much much worse. As word leaked out about Nike’s tactics, bloggers and reporters had plenty to say in the coming weeks. Here’s a roundup of what some media members had to say:

Pete Thamel of The Quad (NYT basketball blog):

But with one bizarre move, Nike officials sent a warning to campers and the news media –- what happens at LeBron’s Camp stays at LeBron’s Camp. Or, at least they make sure that it doesn’t end up on YouTube.

Channeling media tactics straight out of North Korea, Nike officials confiscated the videotape of a 22-year-old freelance photographer named Ryan Miller.

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Jul

20

NASCAR forms Citizen Journalists Media Corps

Filed Under Blogging, Sports Media, Sports PR | 1 Comment

Image Credit: Adamos Maximus

NASCAR announced the formation of Citizen Journalists Media Corps last month, but named the members of  this group in a press release on July 17.

“We have been overwhelmed by the positive response since our initial announcement to form the NASCAR Citizen Journalist Media Corps last month,” said NASCAR managing director of corporate communications Ramsey Poston. “More voices speaking about NASCAR is good for the sport and is fan-friendly. We intend to make the most of the changing media landscape.”

So what exactly is the Citizen Journalists Media Corps? It’s a group of 28 sites that will have the opportunity to apply for media credentials in addition to access to NASCAR media teleconferences and their media website. NASCAR still views traditional media as “the cornerstone of NASCAR news and information,” but they understand that they need to have other forms of media to supplement the traditional media to satisfy fans’ thirst for information.

The members were decided through a “lengthy review process, which included evaluating independent Web sites on professionalism, reporting and commentary, and use of social networking tools.” As I discussed in my recent developing a blogger policy post, it’s important to thoroughly investigate blogs and websites before issuing a credential because not every blog/site is the same.

As members at the SportsJournalists.com forum pointed out, some of the site members are actually run by former journalists on the NASCAR beat. They were laid off due to the struggling newspaper industry and decided to start their own independent websites covering the sport. This move looks like NASCAR saw the number of traditional media members covering their sport shrinking and wanted to take the initiative to ensure fans could still get the coverage they wanted.

What I find ironic is for many years NASCAR wanted no part in dealing with many of these sites, nor were tracks interested in granting them credentials — mostly for reasons that dealt with their “legitimacy.”

So now, we are to understand to be granted access, these sites will be reviewed for their “professionalism, reporting and commentary and use of social networking tools.”

Does anyone believe that these sites have improved recently in these areas, which prompts their invitation? Or is it more likely NASCAR’s definition of “legitimacy” among media outlets has expanded in proportion to the empty seats in media centers?

What do you guys think of this move by NASCAR? I believe we’ll continue to see more and more bloggers in press boxes and media centers in minor leagues, NASCAR, NHL, and any league/team that is not getting the media coverage they want and have room in the press box to credential bloggers.

Jul

19

Tips: Developing a blogger policy

Filed Under Blogging, Sports PR, Tips | 1 Comment

Today concludes our week-long Sports Blogging 101 Series by discussing how to create a blogger policy. Now when someone refers to “blogger policy,” they can be referring to one of two types of policies:

  • A policy about how your organization reaches out to bloggers (pitches, sending out press releases, leaving blog comments, etc.)
  • A policy that determines the credentialing process for bloggers

I pointed out an example for the first type back in my post about how to pitch to sports bloggers. It’s Ogilvy PR’s blogger outreach code of ethics post and I definitely recommend that you give it a read. But I want to focus today’s post on the second type of policy listed above.

Here’s a rough guideline on how to go about developing a blogger policy:

1. Look at your organization’s media coverage situation.

How many beat reporters does your team have who are writing almost daily? How often do national publications cover your organization? Do you have a full press box every home game? Are online outlets providing more coverage than what you’re getting in print publications? Do you have statistics showing you where most of your fans go to get news about the team?

2. Analyze the bloggers covering your organization.

How many are there? You can use my how to monitor blogs post to learn how to find these blogs if you are not already aware of them. I would also suggest trying to see how many blogs that cover general league news frequently talk about your team as they may be relevant to your policy as well.

What types of blogs cover your team? As I’ve mentioned before, there are three types of sports blogs in my opinion.

The first kind is newsy, journalist-like. They report news, follow a more factual bent, offer opinions on the subject, but don’t rock the boat.

The second type of sports blog is all about humor. They tend to be very popular blogs written in a snarky, witty prose. These types of bloggers are less likely to want credentials, but you can’t rule them out. While the bloggers may be professional bloggers in the sense that they make enough money to support themselves, they may not have a professional style of writing that would be ideal for your organization.

Finally, the third type of sports blogger is all about opinion — think of them like you would a sports columnist for a paper. They write in a more professional tone, but it’s heavy opinion and they will voice their thoughts whether it’s positive or not about your organization.

How many readers do these different blogs have? A blog may qualify as the first category of blogs listed above, but if it only gets 50 readers a day it might change how you’ll approach the blog. If there is a really popular blog that gets thousands or hundreds of thousands of readers per day but tends to be snarky in their writing, you still may be willing to overlook their writing style because of their online reach.

How involved and vocal are their readers? A blog that has its share of comments on every post shows an engaged community. Those are the types of blogs you want to reach because even if they aren’t the most popular blog out there, what they say will really have an impact on their readers.

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Jul

16

Tips: How to monitor sports blogs

Filed Under Blogging, Sports PR, Tips | 1 Comment

The Sports Blogging 101 Series continues with a look at how to monitor sports blogs for PR practitioners. In today’s post, I’ll help you know where to find the blogs covering your team or writing about something relevant to your product/service. Once you know where to find these blogs, you can then start to monitor them. But first, why should you monitor sports blogs?

  • You’ll know what one subset of your fanbase thinks about your organization. Think of it as free marketing research from a passionate section of your target demographic.
  • Bloggers may just be one portion of your fanbase, but they are very influential members. Their opinions are read by hundreds or thousands of other fans so what they say carries plenty of weight.
  • You may think that bloggers just talk about the on-ice, on-court, or on-field product, but they’ll actually discuss the organization’s marketing and PR decisions from the season’s slogan to in-game entertainment to ticket prices. These areas are of particular interest for PR pros.
  • You’ll see if the blog is reporting incorrect rumors or “facts” that you may need to combat either publicly or by preparing the appropriate parties in your organization (coaching staff, management, players, etc.).
  • You’ll better understand the bloggers covering your team. This will make it easier for you to pitch to them and start to develop a relationship with them. If there’s a chance that your team may start credentialing bloggers, it’s important to know what each blog talks about and which one(s) you can trust with a credential.

Before you start looking for the blogs covering your team, you need to figure out what type of blog do you want to find. Are you looking for just team blogs? Blogs that also have a league bent? Sports media or business blogs? Mainstream media blogs?

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Jul

14

14 tips on how to pitch sports bloggers

Filed Under Blogging, Sports PR, Tips | 6 Comments

Image Credit: kpwerker

On Twitter last week, I received a DM asking for any tips I had on how to pitch bloggers. Since I’m sure this is a topic more and more sports PR practitioners have to deal with, I wanted to discuss my response in depth on SPRB.

I e-mailed popular sports bloggers about PR professionals reaching out to bloggers and you can read what they had to say in an earlier post today. They said that they receive 3-75 press releases and/or PR e-mail pitches a day depending on the blog. That number doesn’t even account the number of e-mails they receive from readers and fellow bloggers. It’s safe to say that many sports bloggers are bombarded with pitches so to be effective, your pitch or release needs to be targeted, relevant, and unique to attract the attention of a sports blogger.

1. Be transparent.

Be upfront with who you are and who you work for. Lying will only make it seem like you’re trying to hide something. But in doing so, be brief. Don’t ramble on about who you are, but certainly don’t try to disguise it.

Do not tell bloggers to keep your relationship quiet, but encourage them to be transparent. If money is exchanged, this is particularly a big no-no (they need to mention this relationship then). As you need to be transparent while pitching, it’s important for the blogger to be transparent with their readers. If he or she opts to keep something quiet (when money or an exchange of products is not involved), that’s up to the blogger but it is not your place to require that.

2. Show that you’ve read the blog.

Don’t send out a mass e-mail to a bunch of sports bloggers because it likely won’t fit them all. One blogger may focus on statistical analysis regarding Detroit Tigers baseball while another blog talks Tigers news. The differences may seem subtle to you, but it means mass blanket pitches won’t work.

Scott Monty of The Social Media Marketing Blog further explains:

First of all, the reason I say a bad pitch is inevitable is simple: blogger outreach is not immediately scalable, so mass emailing is commonplace. But every blogger is different and needs to be personally courted. I’m not talking about a deep and abiding romance, but rather a simple relationship that is forged between PR executive and blogger, through genuine engagement and conversation between the two. It’s a matter of establishing a 1:1 relationship – of showing the blogger you understand his writing or that you care enough to respond to one of her posts.

And this is difficult to do when a PR professional – who, let’s face it, is used to mass mail-merging press releases and pitches – is trying to contact maybe 100 different bloggers. To spend a couple of weeks of lead time following, reading and responding is a major commitment. But I think it’s crucial.

Cater your pitch to that individual blogger after doing some research. Find a way to make a connection to them based on what you’ve read of their blog (and don’t just read the top two posts — go back awhile). A comment showing that you know what their blog is all about will help the blogger believe that your pitch may actually be a good fit for them.

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Jul

14

Sports bloggers talk about PR

Filed Under Blogging, Interviews, Sports PR | 2 Comments

I e-mailed five popular sports bloggers last week, asking them about their experiences with PR professionals for SPRB. The participants include Don of Hugging Harold Reynolds (HHR), Brian from MGoBlog, Jason at The Big Lead, Greg of Puck Daddy fame, and Natalie from Need4Sheed.

On average, how many pitches/press releases do you receive in a day? What percentage of those do you delete before you even open the e-mail?

Don @ HHR: We receive about a dozen business-based press release/solicitation-type emails.  For the most part I will read ones that are from infrequent mailers.  If there are names I recognize because I’ve received several from the group, and that I know the content doesn’t fit, I might delete right away, but for the most part I’ll at least take a quick peek.

Brian @ MGoBlog: From official PR people? Maybe three or four, the vast bulk from the Big Ten and Big Ten Network. My email is Thunderbird, which has a preview pane, so I at least briefly see the content before any deletions, but I know I’m deleting about 90% of them because they’re about other Big Ten schools. There are plenty more “here’s a link” or “please exchange links with me, Person I love blog of you forever hoorah.” Relevant seeming links get clicked; obviously automated link exchange requests get trashed.

Jason @ The Big Lead: Anywhere between 10-20, and that number goes up around the time of major events (Super Bowl, NFL Draft, NBA Draft, etc). I probably delete 75% of them unless a) It’s from someone I have a working relationship with, b) the subject line is really, really catchy/enticing.

Greg @ Puck Daddy: If you combine the daily pitches from bloggers and PR people, I’d say it ranges from 50-75 a day. If you take out the bloggers, I think the number of PR pitches is about 30-50.

I open everything that’s specific to my subject matter. If I don’t get the vibe in the subject line that the email is about hockey or my areas of coverage, then it’s deleted.

Natalie @ Need4Sheed: Maybe it’s because of the popularity of the site, but I have started to get a ton of other pitches from the media, clothing companies, publishers, sports equipment companies and so on. Most of them are really basketball specific but I get a few here and there from other sports.  I have to say most are right up my alley.

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Jul

11

Sports Blogging 101 Series

Filed Under Blogging, Social Media, Sports PR | 10 Comments

In mid-November, I ran a week-long series on sport and social media here at SPRB. This week, I’ll be talking about sports blogging from a PR perspective. We’ll kick off this series on Sunday by discussing why you should care about sports blogs.

Before I start talking about this topic, I wanted to provide my background on the subject. I have been blogging about Red Wings hockey since 2004 before blogs became the in thing to do. It was a hobby, but I tried to treat it as professionally as I could because I knew blogging was a reflection of me (not everyone can say the same).

My first hockey blog, Behind the Jersey, was named one of the top 10 NHL blogs by Sports Business Daily in 2007 and was linked to by USA Today, Detroit Free Press, and Wall Street Journal. I later joined SB Nation where I started Winging It In Motown (also about the Wings). It now gets links from Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports, and even NHL.com. In November 2008, I started blogging for the official Detroit Red Wings blog (Hockeytown Blog) and continue to maintain both that blog and WIM.

As you can see, I have done my fair share of blogging in the sports world. I am also someone who hopes to make a career in sports PR so I understand both sides of the coin, which is why I wanted to do this series on sports blogging from a PR perspective. I think there is plenty of misunderstanding from both sides of the argument and I hope that my series will enlighten the sports PR practitioners and sports bloggers who may read it.

Keep coming back to SPRB this week to read more about the following:

Sunday – Why should you care about sports blogs?

Monday — Interview with Ben Wright, the web site coordinator of the Atlanta Thrashers (and team blogger)

Tuesday — Tips: How to pitch sports bloggers & Sports bloggers talk about PR

Wednesday — Why should you blog (personally or professionally)?

Thursday — Tips: How to monitor sports blogs

Friday — Tips: How to comment on blogs

Next Saturday — 25 sports blogs you should read

Next Sunday — Tips: Developing a blogger policy

And if you have any great reads on PR professionals reaching out to bloggers or blogging themselves, feel free to pass them along to me via e-mail or the comment section.

Jul

10

Job Opening: Edmonton Oilers Communications & Media Relations Coordinator

Filed Under Career, Sports PR | Leave a Comment

For all of you Canadian hockey fans hoping to break into sports PR, this could be your chance. The Edmonton Oilers are looking to hire a communications and media relations coordinator. Think you meet the qualifications below and want to apply? Visit this website.

Reports directly to the Manager, Communications & Media Relations
• The Coordinator, Communication & Media Relations is a full time, benefited position

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Jul

9

What’s on your summer reading list?

Filed Under Sports PR, Tips | Leave a Comment

Ragan Communications e-mails out headlines on a daily basis. On Tuesday, one of the articles was a list of PR-related books that should be on every communicator’s summer reading list. While the author of the article suggested to read these books on vacation, you may want to avoid doing work or anything like it if you’re on vacation. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t put a list together of books that sports PR practitioners should read over the summer (even if it’s not on vacation).

Some of her suggestions:

A few of the books I have on my summer reading list:

Books that I’ve already read, but recommend (click on Suggested Readings for more info):

What book suggestions do you have for sports PR professionals and students? Are there any non-PR books that you plan to read this summer?

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