NHL All Star Fan Vote - Candidate Assignment
Women Join the competition…
In 2018, the NHL debuted new skills competitions featuring members of the U.S. Women’s National team. This event promoted inclusion and diversity in hockey, and it also provided a glimpse of the social media impact potential for campaigns that include women players in fun and competitive NHL events. For example, the clip of Brian Boyle being outperformed by Hilary Knight went viral and garnered exceptionally diverse media coverage and social media impact. This is remarkable potential that can be capitalized upon by an appropriate social media campaign.
In this assignment I was asked to reimagine the All-Star Fan Vote in a way that will drive casual fans to engage like never before. The NHL has a significant opportunity—particularly in light of the current social climate—to engage new fan populations by including the best North American female hockey players in the voting process. What better way to interest and excite casual fans than by giving them the opportunity to vote and bestow an honor on such great women players: Conference Captain of the NHL All-Star Weekend.
Content
This campaign will be sold on social media. Using content specifically designed for Facebook and Instagram, we make users aware of the league vote and increase traffic to the online poll by highlighting the choice of Honorary Captains.
The graphic style is designed to fit the NHL All Star style. It’s bright and vivid and captures users’ attention, but it also delivers a clear and organized message that avoids bogging users down in the details.
The campaign is compatible with social functionality like Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Story and Snapchat. Infographics detailing Olympic accomplishments, personal facts and general background are an easy sell to these platforms and can be accompanied by polls, location tags or live streaming services.
Video Content:
A campaign centered around the idea of “Captain Material” lends itself to showing the connection between members of the hockey community. For example, picture Amanda Kessel going over strategy with her brother Phil at the breakfast table. Gigi Marvin skating the rivers of Warroad, MN with TJ Oshie may be too ambitious, but the hometown tie in is an easy piece of content.
One example, Instagram story, is a great way to capture young audiences. By swiping up with their thumbs, users will be able to seamlessly visit the voting page.
Publishing
Facebook and Instagram ad platforms are the most comprehensive marketing suites in social media. Delivering proven popular content for social media on Facebook allows for the capture of user data beyond what is manually input by the voter. Under the simple question of “Who is captain material?”, the user is empowered to support their favorite women players.
This ad platform has the best functionality to push a brand message and voice through the copy in a post, but it also direct users to a landing page featuring our headline captain’s ballot with the full All-Star Game ballot below.
Teams are more likely to participate if we make it easy for them to do so. A comprehensive brand package including graphics of dimensions fitting all social platforms will be provided and since video is so vital for social media performance, animated graphics focusing on the back story of each woman skater is a great form of engaging content for new fans. This campaign is easy for teams to share because of its neutrality across NHL markets.
#NHLAllStar Fan Vote
The NHL already has a strong foundation for this campaign from past seasons. Encourage all teams when promoting this content on their own channels to use the hashtag as well as follow the All Star brand guidelines.
Distribution
With an aggressive posting schedule of at least twice per week from December 1 through January 1, it’s important that we mix the form of content to avoid stale repetition. By featuring four different captain candidates, this campaign would allow for varied content that would feature individual candidates, in addition to main ballot features featuring all four candidates. Along with internal efforts, reposting or sharing by teams will help saturate our demographic and drive consumers through a natural marketing funnel.
For this campaign, the best strategy is to target women, 18-35 years of age, who like sports and are active in social movements for equality, political reform and who are active in on social media.
Paid Social Promotion
This campaign will drive new users to interact with our contest and submit their data to our site, but the campaign could also be employed to capture a different kind of data.
Data Capture and Retargeting Flow:
Facebook user age 18-35 sees post and Likes, shares, comments or clicks link.
In Facebook Ads manager, create a Lookalike audience that auto populates with users who have similar tendencies, characteristics as the user who interacted with the All Star Fan Vote post.
Use A/B Testing to develop creative and a call to action for campaign most likely to speak to the interests of the audience.
This is where engagement with the Facebook or Instagram post becomes nearly as valuable as an email address submission. Using Custom and Lookalike audiences, we can retarget or re-message new fans based on the information they submit to Facebook.. We can create campaigns that target them and users similar to them because they decided to comment on or Like our Facebook post.
