Xenophon Strategies

Warriors Challenge Their Fans Socially

Blake Rhodes

When the NBA’s Golden State Warriors unveiled their new logo this month, they didn’t just send out a press release and parade players around in new uniforms.  If they had done that, would they have been able to secure contact information for 5,000 potential customers?  No way!

The team used its different social media channels to drive the Warriors Draft Challenge.  The challenge, which incorporated the Warriors' official Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr accounts, launched a few hours before the NBA Draft Lottery on May 18 and lasted until June 16, the day before the team‘s official unveiling of their new logo.  

I decided to check out how the Warriors were running this campaign, so I signed up and yes, the Warriors have contacted me about season tickets. 

Quickly, when you combine a trivia contest with a nine-part treasure hunt, you’ve got the Warriors Draft Challenge. However, this was a social media treasure hunt.  The Warriors enlisted some of their players to share clues using the teams’ social media channels.  As you solved each of the nine clues, 1/9 of the Warriors’ new logo was unveiled until it was fully revealed when all nine questions were answered correctly.  Not only did you get to see the logo, which you could share with your friends virally, but you were entered to win season tickets.

You may be saying, “that’s a nice campaign to create some noise, but what did they accomplish?”  Well, the Warriors set out with these goals:

• Drive traffic to their site during a time when they generally don’t see much traffic.
• Build-up anticipation for the unveiling of the new logo.
• Register people for and promote their Draft Party on June 24.
• Build a database of names for future marketing communications.

I checked with my former colleague and current Warriors public relations director Dan Martinez, and he shared some statistics that showed that they’re on their way to meeting these goals.

• The Warriors.com website saw its traffic grow significantly over previous seasons, drawing over 380,000 page views over the first two weeks of the Challenge as opposed to 181,740 views during the same time period in 2009.
• They built huge anticipation for the launch of the logo and received 250,000 page views on June 17-18, which was their highest two-day total in eight months. 
• The registration portions for both the contest and the draft party have provided the Warriors sales team over 5,000 new leads.  These leads are all being tracked in their CRM system to monitor the final return on investment.

I applaud the Warriors for developing this campaign that effectively employs social media to brand and market their image at the same time.  I’ll check back when the season starts to see how many of those leads turned into ticket buyers.  I might just go to some Warriors games this year.

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