Comet Branding - Branding | PR | Social Media

The Golden State Warriors Get Social With Their Logo Unveiling

Social media has changed the way fans and professional sports teams interact.

The Golden State Warriors, Oakland, California’s professional basketball team, have taken that interaction to the next level. I came across a very interesting article on ESPN about how the Golden State Warriors are using the power of social media to engage a wider fan base.

The Warriors are about to unveil a new logo for the upcoming season. Their problem was how to keep their fans from leaking it out. Their solution was to take a positive approach and get involved with their fan in the unveiling process.

Using multiple social network platforms, the Warriors leveraged their fan’s excitement by turning the logo unveiling into a scavenger hunt type of game.

Thus the “Warriors Draft Challenge” was born. Fans can sign-up on the Warriors website and each weekday from May 20-31, there will be a challenge question tied to each of the Warriors major social media accounts. If you get the answer right, then a small section of the logo will be revealed. If you get all the questions correct, on the last day you will see the whole logo.

This tactic is great because it gives the Warriors an opportunity to continually post new content during the off-season and give their fans a reason to seek it out.

They have leveraged current players like top rookie Stephen Curry to give fans clues, and subsequent clues will be revealed only when you tweet a specific message from the Warriors. Through every clue revealed, fans have an opportunity to share their experience via Facebook and Twitter.

The Warriors are giving more to their fans than just a unique interaction. Fans who sign up will be automatically registered to attend the team’s draft party at the end of June. In addition, there are also daily prizes available including a chance to be entered to win season tickets.

The Warriors also took a non-traditional approach to their public relations efforts, using Pitch Engine to post the official release.

Within the first 24 hours, the release generated over 4,000 views. A typical release gets sent out to about 400 people. The Warriors are one of the first professional teams to utilize the Pitch Engine service.

Their overall strategy is solid and speaks to their fan-base. They have come up with a unique engagement for their fans and have given them a reason to come back for more.

I also applaud their willingness to embrace new tools and strategies, where it could have been very easy to go the traditional route and “do things how they’ve always been done.”

Other sports teams should take a page out of the Warriors’ book.

What do you think of the overall campaign? What teams do you think are doing a good job leveraging social media?

Tags: Blogging, branding, draft, espn, golden state warriors, logos, Mike Wisniewski, Milwaukee, nba, Pitch Engine, PR 2.0, Public Relations, social media in pr, Social Media strategy, Twitter