• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CASE STUDY Milwaukee Brewers COMPANY Sports & Social Listening: From Brand Noise to Strategic A baseball club based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Since 1998 they have played Insights with the Milwaukee Brewers in the Central Division of the National League. Founded in 1876, it is the oldest continuously operating professional sports league in the world. The Milwaukee Brewers are a baseball club playing in MLB’s National League. In 2018 they won the Central Division after a one game playoff to break a season-ending tie. Since the opening of their new park in 2001,the Brewers have averaged over 30,000 LOCATION fans in attendance per game, despite operating in the smallest US city to host a major United States league ballclub. In the 2018 season they drew 55% more fans than Milwaukee has residents. INDUSTRY Talkwalker has helped the Milwaukee Brewers protect their brand, detecting fraud Sports Entertainment and monitoring their reputation across social media and the web. The Brewers use Talkwalker to automate the measurement of their social media initiatives and better promote the club to their fans. ”Talkwalker became the go-to-tool of our marketing and communications teams. We were able to show our partners what a digital and social web-gem looks like. We moved from navel-gazing, just looking at ourselves, to delighting our partner sponsors by giving them another level of service and measurement of their investment with us.” -- Marla Grossberg, Consumer Insights and Strategy Director for the Milwaukee Brewers Photo credit to © Kirstin Schmidt 2 3 One half of a dialogue Managing the day-to-day marketing of a sports team is no small feat. On top of dealing with sponsors and managing promotions to get fans’ attention, the Brewers’ owned social media reporting was done manually. The marketing team would spend more than a week manually collecting, inputting, formatting and analyzing data across a variety of social media platforms. Today their reporting is automatic, and the analysis and write-up take just a day or two. Marla Grossberg, Consumer Insights and Strategy Director for the Brewers described it as “an incomplete yet time-consuming process. There was no way to gain a sense of the sentiment on social media around the team. We were completely unaware of what our community and our peers were saying about us, let alone having a way to measure it, if they didn’t tag us in the post, or we didn’t start the conversation.” The Brewers’ marketing team needed more data on themselves and their competitors. They needed a tool that could save time for the team by collecting all of their conversations in a single place. They also wanted new social media metrics to measure, things like who’s talking about them, at what times and on which platforms. Game-day sponsors share of voice on social media Lastly, they wanted to validate what they already knew to be their best practices, and inspire new initiatives. The Brewers no longer manually collect their social data. All of their reporting is fully automated across online and social sources. They have scheduled automatic game- day reporting that arrives without having to lift a finger. Ahead in the count As they familiarized themselves with the tool, the team realized the platform could Using Talkwalker the Brewers were able to monitor all of their provide them with much more than just their own measurements. social channels, and those of their competitors in order to better understand which content resonated with fans on which platforms. Photo credit to © Kirstin Schmidt They wanted to know what their aggregate engagement looked like, what the sentiment was surrounding the team, and what the themes were within those comments. The Brewers also wanted to listen to conversations about baseball in general, their players, and other teams on social media and beyond. “Just as email has transformed the way people communicate without written letters, social listening has helped us transform the way we measure and track our social performance.” -- Marla Grossberg Consumer Insights and Strategy Director, Milwaukee Brewers 4 5 Around the bases with the Brewers and Talkwalker As sports consumption amongst younger fans moves to streaming Single - protect team reputation clips, the value of in-park For the Milwaukee Brewers, brand identity is everything. They are representatives sponsorships can no longer be of their region on a national stage and endearing themselves to the local fanbase measured by gate attendance or correlates with a direct impact on ticket sales. This is one of the reasons why they TV viewership alone. Talkwalker’s monitor mentions of themselves, even if they are not tagged in the post. AI-powered video analytics tool helps the Brewers prove this to The marketing team was doing their daily dashboard review and decided to drill down their partners, pulling in logos from further into the post with the most engagement for the evening. They determined that clips shared across the web and this particular source of mentions was offering unofficial tickets, for the fifth time, social media. without a formal partnership with the organization. The Brewers were able to shut down this unsanctioned activity and protect fans from questionable ticketing practices A 2019 Mike Moustakas’ dinger before the first pitch. hit a sponsor’s truck and went viral. It’s already been viewed over Double - measuring sponsorship mentions with video analytics 45,000 times. Video recognition captures sponsor mentions on big plays like this home run. “We have dozens of logos scattered around the ballpark, Photo credit to © Kirstin Schmidt and sometimes, if there’s an extra special play in the field, the sponsors get extra exposure. But how do we measure that?” Marla Grossberg Consumer Insights and Strategy Director, Milwaukee Brewers 6 7 Triple - promoting the Brewers With a full social data set to draw on, they are able to promote and invest in their Using Talkwalker to measure their results on social media, the Brewers have optimized content with confidence. They know what their content strategy to promote content that engages with fans, giving them the types will resonate with fans, and where fans of behind-the-scenes looks at the ballclub they crave. want that content delivered. The Brewers have been around for over 50 years, so when it comes to promotions to drive attendance, they have done it all. They looked at what ideas fans suggested on “Using social listening social media, and what other teams around the league were doing. and analytics, we’re able to fine-tune our messaging and deliver impactful content.” Marla Grossberg Consumer Insights and Strategy Director, Milwaukee Brewers Through social listening the Brewers noticed a fun twist on a classic fan giveaway: The Arizona Diamondbacks were giving away a snow globe filled with sand instead of snow. Appropriate for the desert, but Milwaukee receives plenty of snow. The D-backs’ giveaway was a tremendous success on social media, from when it was first announced in February and got more than 2,000 engagements, through the promotional period, where fans curiosity was piqued, up to promo day in August when fans lined up in droves because they felt it was a unique reflection of their hometown team. The Brewers now have a template for an appealing gift for next season. What a come from behind victory looks like on social media Talkwalker reports give credibility and validation to social media initiatives and out- of-home partnerships, simplifying the marketing team’s work and allowing them to demonstrate value to senior executives. Proving ROI is a crucial part of any marketer’s job, whether you’re a sports team or not. Yet one of the Brewers’ priorities when it comes to social strategy is also to give fans what they want. 8 9 Home run - give fans what they want Bottom of the ninth The Brewers use Talkwalker to leverage some of the goodwill that occurs naturally in As ambassadors for the region, and with a responsibility to grow the game in their the park. backyard, the Brewers ask themselves every day how they can stand out. They save time and resources through effective social listening, using that knowledge to please During the 2018 season a fan wore a In November she made the donation, their fans and protect their brand, and prove ROI to their in-park sponsor partners custom shirt to the game, hoping to find which was covered by over 230 news by painting a fuller picture of that brand’s impressions in social clips and videos a kidney donor. The photo of him was outlets, and the following April one of the throughout the game. shared over 17,000 times. The Brewers in-park sponsors, and facilitator of the helped by amplifying the message, where arrangements, Aurora Healthcare, brought it came to the attention of Emily who everyone involved back together to throw was willing and able to “share her spare”. out the first pitch. The Talkwalker platform enables the Brewers to: Find new Spend Identify Track and Identify and sources of man-hours on industry best show direct respond to inspiration. analysis, not practices on value to their issues that report social media. in-park arise on generation. sponsors. game-day at the park and beyond. The result was a feel-good story that brought extra awareness to the organ matching and donation processes and some of the life-saving procedures offered by Aurora Healthcare in their community. ae wi as like ever ere 10 11 Impact starts here. EMEA Deutschland - Frankfurt APAC +352 20 33 35 343 +49 69 254 745-500 +65 3 165 0692 US - New York US - San Francisco +1 646 712 9441 +1 415 805 7240 [email protected] @talkwalker talkwalker.com.

Load more

  7

Copy Link