Ever since I was a kid I loved basketball. I used to listen to Jazz games on the radio with my brothers while we shot hoops into a laundry basket. The NBA has evolved since I was a kid. It has become more of a business with brands linking themselves to players, coaches, teams and the league itself.
With all of that white noise and competition for marketers to link themselves to a sports team, it helps to have any edge possible. My latest analysis for Adobe Digital Index (@adobeindex) using Adobe Social to monitor NBA buzz shows that using social to monitor activity within a sport can lead to a real time win.
On January 23rd Klay Thompson made history with 37 points in one quarter. How did fans react to that? Klay had 41x the mentions he does on an average day. A big performance from Kyrie Irving in January led him to a 22x increase in buzz.
These moments show a calculated opportunity for a brand to ink these players to a short term social media contract. The next day why doesn’t Sprite contact Klay’s agent and pay a small fee for a quick endorsement of its product? It shouldn’t be a drawn out process with a commercial or premium video content. Maybe its a highlight of Klays performance put out on YouTube and other social outreach.
With news that spreads as quick as a wild fire, marketing also needs to be quick and nimble. That news shows that brands should link up with the Warriors and Klay Thompson or Steph Curry now before their star fades.
