No, You Can’t Just Stick Content Anywhere in the Org

By Jessica Smith On June 2, 2023 In Lessons Learned

The other day I stumbled upon a job description at an NBA team that intrigued me. It was for a “Director of Basketball Content,” which was intriguing because why would you need to label it “basketball content” when working for an NBA team? It led me to so many questions about what the role does and where it sits within the org. 

After digging into the job more, I came to the conclusion that the job sits within the basketball operations side versus the business operations side of the organization. At first glance, this could sound like the perfect setup for anyone who works in social media. Why? Because the assumption is if you sit within basketball operations, you’ll have more access because that’s part of the organization that controls that. 

This isn’t the first role that has ever put a social and content person under team operations vs. business operations. College athletics, particularly in football, have started hiring content personnel for individual teams and putting them under the head coach/operations vs. marketing. Recruiting has primarily been the driving force of this in college athletics. 

Forget the fact that you shouldn’t have to work under the competition side of the business to get access β€” there are a lot of issues siloing creatives from the rest of business operations. Let’s break them down:


It can lead to burnout. 

Having content or social people report into team operations can lead to a fast track to burnout. Why? Because their managers have no idea what it takes to get to point A to point B in their roles. And when you report to people who have zero idea what it takes to do the work, it’s hard to manage the expectations.

You mean, you can’t just make that video happen? πŸ™„

I cannot imagine putting a creative, especially a young creative, in a position where they have to respond to the head coach or someone high up in basketball/hockey/football operations. You are putting them in a situation where it feels nearly impossible to say no β€” creatives need a buffer who can protect them and advocate for them. 

Setups like this can lead to dysfunction.

Having one part of content under team operations and another part under business operations could lead to dysfunction and hostility within working groups. I’ve been at this for nearly 14 years, been a part of a lot of different team setups and led teams β€” the reality is that people are human and if you create literal divides within the content and marketing group, you will feel it.  

Additionally, the NBA job I came across read like there were two sets of social teams β€” one under basketball operations and one under business operations. You’re telling me you will have one group that gets all the access to players? That will not go well.

Leaders should strive to create an environment where collaboration is natural, roles are defined, and everyone is rowing in the same direction. Organizational structural plays a big role in this and matters a lot.

It puts people in a box. 

One of the perks of being part of a larger marketing organization is that you are exposed to projects beyond social and content. When you are part of a broader marketing org, you are going to be part of conversations and assignments that allow you to flex and stretch your muscles. You will have a boss and peers who have been in marketing in some capacity and can help guide, coach, and offer growth. 

If you put social and content people under team operations, they will not get the same exposure to the larger marketing function. And in the long run, that puts people in a box and could stunt their long-term growth. 

It doesn’t maximize resources.

If you have your social and content team spread out within the organization and reporting to different people, there’s no way you will have a process in place to maximize resources. It could lead to redundancy, confusion and inefficiencies. You also won’t be able to let people flex on different projects either. Organizations that want to maximize their content resources will take a holistic view of input and output and have a fluid team, flexing into team operation content one day and brand the next. 

If I’m being honest, I think content becomes a power play within a lot of organizations, but it’s not productive. It should not require content to sit under team operations to get access β€” or team operations to get serviced what they need. The leaders in team and business operations need to come together and create a process that works for all β€” as adults should do β€” but don’t create dysfunction within your organization and for your people because you are grasping at control.

But for all these reasons and more, there’s no excuse to keep separating brand, digital, social, and creative and content teams into siloed and completely different functions that don’t ladder up to a cohesive marketing org β€” in any situation. Organizations need to hire a CMO with brand, marketing, digital, content, creative and comms all under one umbrella because everyone should have the same goals.

Let’s stop the experiment of shuffling social and content teams from one department to another once and for all.

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Why All Teams Should Strive for Inspired Design

By Jessica Smith On October 3, 2022 In Uncategorized

Social media is often the place where your brand shows up most consistently and frequently to consumers. Take that and the fact that the channels have become increasingly visual, and there’s never been a more critical time to obsess over your brand or team’s graphics package. 

Let’s face it. Visual identity in sports is a crowded space with lots of tired trends. If teams aren’t careful, they can easily blend into the sea of sameness. A team’s graphics package should reflect the brand through and through because of that. The goal should not simply be to create a graphics package that looks cool; the goal should be to create something unique and ownable for the brand. 

But how can a team create a graphics package that feels like something they can own? Logo aside, the key is to find graphic details you can pull in that feel brand-inspired. Elements that give subtle nods to the team, city, DNA, etc. in a way they can only own. 

Okay, but what the heck does brand-inspired design mean? I know it sounds like some marketing gibberish, so let’s start with a few real-life examples and explanations to help bring it to life.Β 

Yankees (Circa 2018)

When you think of the Yankees, what comes to mind? Iconic, timeless, and prestigious might be just a few. The Yankees are one of those brands that need no introduction and don’t have to chase the tired trends.

In 2018 at the Yankees (I was working there at the time), I felt like we nailed the perfect brand-inspired design for NYY. We owned the pinstripes, iconic for the team, and we brought in nods of gold to play into the premium and championship nature. The visual identity relied on strong compositions to be bold, intriguing, and not overdone. There was a stated yet strong elegance to the simplicity β€” and it was unlike anything else in the space.

Even with the minimal nature, you could remove all logos and identify NYY, and it felt like the Yankees, and that’s why it worked.Β 

Chargers

The Chargers have built a fun, irreverent, edgy and showy brand and have done an excellent job creating a visual identity that helps them own that. First, they use large, bold text that’s a bit in your face (in a good way); the boldness matches their voice and tone perfectly. Secondly, they lean heavily into a lightning bolt pattern which is an inspired detail that’s ownable for them as a team.Β 

Again, like the Yankees, if you remove the logo and the players, you could still identify the Chargers through the lightning bolt details and big, bold text. 


The Suns

Over the last few years, the Suns have focused on owning the Valley with a laser-sharp focus. And when you think of the Valley, what do you think about? The heat, desert hues, etc. The Suns have created a visual identity that definitely has Valley vibes playing with sun shapes, lightning flares, desert textures & heat mirage-inspired details.Β 


The Yankees (2019), Chargers, and Suns are just a few examples of teams with a visual identity that lean into brand-inspired elements and details β€” but every team should focus on this. With sports teams publishing so many creative assets through social media, nailing a look that is ownable for the brand is critical to marketing. But how do you get there?

First, brainstorm your visual cues. 

The biggest key is to brainstorm all the visual cues that your team can own. These visual cues can be pulled from a lot of different places. A few examples include:

Team Name – For example, Jaguars playing into the Jungle or large cat scratch patterns. The Calgary Flames playing into (yes, you guessed it) flame shapes and textures. Or the Houston Rockets using the rocket and flame shapes from their logo as textures and cues.

Locality – This is about taking cues from the city, state or region your team calls home. There are a lot of different elements teams can think of pulling in from their city or region β€” skyline textures, maps, famous signs (like the NYC Subway numbers), landscape textures, etc. 

Brand History + Elements – This is about digging into your brand and history to pull out visual cues beyond the logo. What are other elements fans might somehow relate to your brand, whether obvious or more aspirational to where you want to take your brand? The Yankees using pinstripes is a good example of this. The pinstripes aren’t tied to their logo, but they are certainly an iconic component of their visual DNA. The Dallas Cowboys At Stewart-Haas Racing, smoke textures and details is a brand element for us as a nod to our owner Tony Stewart’s nickname. 


Second, build out and test.Β 

Once you have a list of visual cues to play into, it’s important to let the creative and design team do their thing. Briefs are essential to create a season look (even if it’s just an evolution); make a brief that guides on the brand elements you want to explore so those essential ownable elements show up. I think the best briefs give enough guardrails to guide, but don’t put designers in a box they can’t push. 

I also believe in this exercise, it’s important to have a few options to react to, so have as many creative helping to solve this challenge as possible. Push the team to bring forth various looks & feels and elements β€” some literal, some over-the-top and some abstract β€” then select and scale down to create your final look.


Pressure test the look.

Once you believe your visual identity is in a good spot, ask critical and hard questions to ensure the look is ownable for your team. A few of the questions I like to ask:

When people see our collective assets, will they immediately think [insert team/brand]?

  • If we removed our logo and our players, would people be able to identify our brand?
  • Are there other teams in the space who have a similar look?
  • Does the look feel modern and fresh without being tired?

A visual identity is integral in bringing your brand to life, and it goes well beyond a logo. As our worlds become increasingly more visual, it’s becoming more and more important for brands and teams to get their look right. Every brand has something unique it can own, whether it’s locality cues or something inspired from its history, so take that inspiration to create a brand-inspired design that stands out from the rest of the crowd. 

Here’s to more ownable visual identies across the sports space. 

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It’s Time To Redefine What Quality Content Means

By Jessica Smith On September 4, 2022 In Best Practices, Creative

In this era of TikTok, memes and lofi content, we face a unique challenge for creatives and digital teams. The challenge? To redefine what we view as quality content.

For so long, “quality” content has referred to the level of production value – how polished, how pretty and how much work was put into it. Creators and marketers have historically defined the standard for quality content and advertising by what they deem aesthetically and creatively appealing. And, we have been looking at it all wrong.

Digital, with instant feedback from consumers and a generation that’s creating straight from their phones, is forcing us to rethink how we approach and think about all aspects of marketing β€” and the definition of quality content should be one of them. For so long quality content has been based on a marketer’s definition and has completely ignored the audience.

Are you ready for the truth about content?

Our audiences don’t care how much time was spent creating something. They don’t care if a piece is polished or it isn’t. They don’t debate 4K video vs. iPhone video or care if Photoshop or Canva were used to make a graphic. And, they especially don’t care if something went through a 100-person approval process.

Our audiences care if the content is interesting to them, period.

Because of this, it’s time to flip the definition of “quality” content on its head. Quality content should not only be defined by production value. Quality content should be determined by how much it resonates with the audience.

This is not to downplay high-production value. I believe production value and creative integrity matter, but there’s a time and a place. For far too long creative has been upheld as a very precious thing that has to be perfect. And in our audience’s eyes, that’s not the case.

It’s actually empowering and freeing for all creatives out there when you realize the standard of creative you’ve set for yourself is higher than the audience you’re catering to. All the rules we’ve been taught or enforced on ourselves are out the window. We have permission to experiment; not everything has to be perfect.

If quality content can take many shapes and forms, then we don’t need to get bogged down in the details that simply don’t matter. We can test and try and let some less-so-polished things fly.

If we can remember that consumers scroll, tap and move on quickly and that the shelf life of content is short and fleeting, then we can permit ourselves not to have to make everything perfect.

If we can understand that quality content is less about the time spent on something and more about how much it resonates with people, we’ll spend more time on how to evoke emotion in people and less time worrying about how to simply make it pretty.

Quality content is about making people feel, not making something pretty. It’s always a win when you can make people feel something with pretty content, but it doesn’t always have to be high production and artistically perfect to resonate.

Creatives and marketers have to get comfortable with what makes us uncomfortable. We should always want to put our best foot forward, but that doesn’t mean we have to be so precious that we don’t recognize that lofi and less polished content has its place β€” and that it actually reosnates.

So here’s to lots of quality content ahead, whether it’s a lofi Tiktok created straight from your phone or a long-form video that tells an emotional human interest story. As a consumer, I hope my feeds are filled with both.

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Why Over-Communicating Matters For Social Teams

By Jessica Smith On July 23, 2022 In Digital, Lessons Learned

As a social media manager, it can be nerve-wracking to let people in too much. If we share our calendar, copy, process, etc., will everyone and their mom give their thoughts? In an industry where people personally have access to the tools and feel entitled to provide input, sharing can feel like an invitation to give unwarranted feedback on things. 

I get it. 

There was a time in my career when I probably held things too close to my chest. I had experienced the micromanaging of social media just for the sake of micromanaging (i.e., little trust in those who lived and breathed it), and when people micromanage for the sake of it, it can build distrust within social media teams. You start to think that anytime you share something, it will spark a wave of changes and possible fire drills. 

Here’s the thing, though. Not sharing and not communicating your plans will only cause broader issues internally. You might be able to dodge it for a while, but eventually, it will hurt you and the team.

Social media managers, here’s why you need to over-communicate.

1 – Social media isn’t about you.
Social media represents the entire organization and brand, so while people need to trust that social media managers are executing to maximize the platforms, it doesn’t mean that others inside the organization don’t need visibility. Social media managers need to be open to feedback when something isn’t right for the brand, and people outside the social team need to learn the art of giving feedback that it’s critical vs. subjective.

2 – Decision-makers need visibility.
Social media has become one of the hot items for many organizations internally, which often creates a sense of urgency and laser focus. There are most likely meetings where social media is brought up, and there isn’t someone in the meeting who lives the day-to-day to speak to the work. Because of that, leaders within the org need to be armed with the right information to answer questions, evangelize, celebrate the work and advocate for resources. If key decision makers don’t have the visibility on what’s going on, it will cause fire drills and frustration when they cannot appropriately speak to or advocate on behalf of the team.

I do understand that in an ideal world, someone on the social team is the one speaking for the social team, but the reality is that’s not always going to be the case. Arm the people within the org who can be advocates with the information they need. 

3 – It builds credibility.
Everyone who works in social media understands that social media does not “just happen.” If you have not been in a role where you are executing, it’s hard to understand what it takes to get from point A to point B. Over-communicating and oversharing is an excellent opportunity to educate on what it takes to make the magic happen and flex your knowledge.Β 

Instead of thinking about oversharing and over-communicating plans as a chore or something that could open up problems, reframe it as an opportunity to position yourself as a thought leader within the organization. When done the right way, evangelizing the work should build credibility with you and the team throughout the org. 

4- It allows you to shape the why.Β 
Social media work is public, which means everyone will see it at some point. Suppose you share the work upfront before anything comes to fruition. This allows you to give people the “why” behind the work β€” why the focus on this platform and not that one, why this creative direction, why this distribution strategy, why this initiative.Β 

When you can shape the “why” behind the work, it allows you to drive the insight and narrative around the work vs. someone seeing it in the wild for the first time and coming to their own conclusions. And when people have to make their conclusions on their own, it often causes more questions, more fire drills, and more work. Save yourself the headache. Shape the why upfront.Β 

On the flip side, decision-makers within organizations need to protect social teams that over-communicate. 

If your social team does a good job sharing plans and communicating, do not beat them down with arbitrary feedback, a million decision makers for “approval,” and process for the sake of process. You hire good people for a reason, so let them do their job. Protect your social team and their energy and ensure that you build an environment where feedback is given constructively and when necessary, not just because it’s someone’s subjective, objective opinion.Β 

At the end of the day, when social teams don’t share plans and strategies, it can distract from good work. Sharing is an opportunity to drive the narrative around the work, so evangelize and champion it and find those people in the organization who will help advocate for the vision. Sharing is caring and will help you and the team in the long run, even if there are some growing pains in the process. 

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Brand Matters In Sports & It Takes Work To Get There

By Jessica Smith On May 30, 2022 In Best Practices with 1 Comment

One of the things I’ve believed for a long time is the need for sports team to build up their brands well beyond the scores. In an unpredictable industry with so many variables you cannot control, a team’s “brand” should be the one constant.

If you spend all your energy focusing on the team performance, then you put all your bets on building a brand based on winning. After all, if you’re only focused on team performance, then the only way you’re going to connect with fans is if you perform at a high level and win consistently. 

This video below from Steve Jobs on their Think Different campaign captures the essence of what brand marketing is about. As Steve says, it’s about values. It’s about being clear what your brand stands for and what you want fans to take away from it. 


More than that though, Steve nails it when he says β€œeven a great brand needs investments and caring if it’s going to retain its relevance and vitality”.  It’s this idea that really hits home with sports. If you want to remain relevant during the highs and lows of team performance, then you need to give fans a reason to care and feel invested beyond wins.

But what does it take to build a brand for a sports team? I’ve been spending a lot of time working through brand work and how we define it, execute it, and bring it all to life. I’ve come to this place where three core components are required: your brand identity, your brand strategy, and your brand plan. And while I think many people lump these all together, I believe they are all three distinct building blocks that must work together.

Brand Identity 

The first building block of your brand is your brand identity. I realize this might be counterintuitive to all the “strategy first” that’s been ingrained in our heads, but hear me out.

So often, when a brand identity is talked about, the only focus is on the logo and look and feel. Your brand identity is not just a logo; a brand identity is about your DNA and the things that make you unique. Visuals are a huge component of any brand, but to believe it’s the only thing that defines your brand identity feels fundamentally flawed and ultimately waters down the work it requires to build one. 

Before marketers build out any plans, they must understand why a brand exists, and your brand identity helps you get there. Building your brand identity should be strategic in nature, but it’s not your strategy. Think about your brand identity as the team’s compass for how to bring the brand to life.Β 

I don’t believe there are hard fast rules for building out your identity, but a few things to consider including in the identity work that will help you understand what you stand for:

Your Origin StoryΒ – How was your team or company founded? Are there any interesting facts, moments or themes from the beginning that helped to build your foundation today?Β 

Your Why – This is where you include things like your brand ambition, purpose, vision, and values. 

Your Personality – If your brand was a person, how would it talk, write, and interact with others? This is where you outline your muse, your voice & tone and your writing style. 

Your Look & Feel – This is exactly what it sounds like. Your logo, visual identity and style guide. 

Your Brand Platform – A brand platform is what you want to communicate and your public-facing messaging points and tagline. 

The result is a brand book to guide internal and external partners when you put this all together. For the most part, this won’t change and any additions or changes should be subtle. 

Brand Strategy  

On the other hand, your brand strategy is about the visionary roadmap to bring your brand identity to life. 

Your strategy should first start with your goals, but these goals must cascade down from “your why” that you outlined in your brand identity. 

Once you understand your goals, it’s important to take a look at your competitor landscape, the opportunities and the challenges. By doing this work, you’ll start to see the white space opportunities that could help you reach your goals, stand out from your competitors and ultimately build a strong brand identity. 

The final part of your strategy is to outline the methods – those key big focuses – that you’ll take to reach your goals and vision. 

Your strategy should be more long-range, forecasting ahead and giving you a roadmap of the big vision for an extended period of time (often spanning two to five years) β€” but it will need to be revisited and re-built, unlike the brand identity. 

Brand Plan 

Your brand plan is about the actionable actions you will take to implement your strategies, and these are the tactics that the team executes on a day-to-day basis. 

Your brand plan changes more frequently. Even if your strategy is a three to five-year roadmap, you’ll look at your brand plan yearly, quarterly and even in opportunistic moments. 


All of these components come together for a robust plan that will make sure your team is standing out, well beyond the scores. This is important for everyone within the organization to know β€” and is most likely relevant for external partners as well. Building a strong brand requires buy-in from everyone within an organization, and it’s not just the job of the marketing team to contribute.

Once you have your work on paper, I also recommend distilling it into a simple framework that people can easily digest. Like the work above, there are a lot of ways to do this, but here’s a sample of what a brand architecture can look like.

Take this work and evanalegize it.

Does this sound like a lot of work? That’s because it is. But if you only focus on short-term tactics, you’ll only get short-term gains. Teams and leagues must play the long game.  

If you build your brand right, you’ll build fan affinity that

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