It’s always great to be learning, and this weekend we got a little peak into seeing how the effective social media sausage gets made yet again.
Picture if you will next week at the NFL Draft and Trevor Lawrence goes with the top pick. He gets his hat, does his socially distanced interview and instead of checking right into media for questions he goes to Clubhouse and immediately, as soon as he is off the stage, starts interacting with hundreds or thousands of fans who are there to ask him their questions (which media can also be watching). Or how about Naomi Osaka doing the same thing on another platform as soon as she wins the US Open and is off the court. Disrespectful to media waiting? A distraction? Not enough control? And not an hour later after the moment…almost immediately.
All those things can be worked out, but that’s what Jake Paul did Saturday night following his win over Ben Askren at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to cap off Triller Fight Club. I was there as some may know helping Triller on the media side, but what I didn’t really think about before was that I would have a chance to get a better understanding by witnessing in real time the power of the engagement and the quality of content that someone like Jake Paul has built with his community. After riffing with the broadcast talent in the ring, he literally sprinted to the locker room, calmed down for a few minutes took a family call and then his young and socially savvy fans set a time, got him into the app on a phone and off he went, before doing his traditional media. It was maybe ten minutes, but the engagement was authentic and powerful and literally spoke to a very loyal audience.
Now there are many who will knock the influencer model and those who are famous just for being famous, but seeing how someone who understands the audience and the medium surrounded by a handful of people who put him in a position to engage and get stuff done was a lesson learned. Was it traditional? No. Disruptive? Well not really as he was speaking to his audience directly. Did it change the process of how things usually get done in order? Yes, but it was explained before and the time lag was not that bad, because the communication was in place. Did everything get done? Yes.
So think about live streaming platforms, or teams or leagues or even athlete specific sites to do such a thing? Well you need great connectivity in the right spot and you need a platform that could handle capacity, which was set up in advance (I do not know, forgot to ask, why they used Clubhouse). It has to be done in a space here you can be heard and seen, not just a chaotic hallway with too much noise (the locker room was expansive and was the right location this time). It was also very authentic, and pretty powerful to watch it unfold.
Hey look, maybe its simplifying what content capture in the moment can be. Maybe it worked because you are talking abut a media savvy and social savvy individual on the best stage he has had as a fighter so far. Maybe there are restrictions that prevent this from happening with traditional rights holders right now. Maybe. Maybe. But maybe, just maybe, this is another revenue stream and rights deal to be carved out…the “Official victory moment room,” that just becomes part of the deal, the new deal, in engagement and content capture. Would it have worked if he lost? I didn’t ask, but it certainly would not have been as impactful. But the point is his team was ready to act when the moment came, in an environment and a platform the moment maker enjoyed and was comfortable with.
We live for being part of the moment, and here it was, a nice glimpse and an aha moment into the future for those willing to think and act beyond the traditional.
Lesson learned.
