The Patriots understood what many other companies today are only starting to grasp: that they needed to find where their fans were naturally scializing online and engage with them there by providing compelling content.
Essentially, the Patriots were looking for a new, unique way to connect with fans on sites where they naturally congregate with friends and other Patriots fans. The franchise wanted to break through the clutter of online messages and to enrich fans’ conversations by providing new, interesting, multimedia team content.
A critical challenge was to leverage viral distribution while still maintaining brand control. The Patriots needed to track all embed sites and be able to block any undesirable sites.
“We chose OView because it is the only application syndication service that balances our desire to engage fans across the web with the need to protect our brand,” said Fred Kirsch, director of interactive media at Patriots.com. “As a professional sports organization, we always have to balance being a fun, entertaining sports team with running a smart, profitable business. We feel that the OView syndicated application gives us the perfect balance of entertaining and engaging fans on the front end, while gathering real data and engagement metrics for our advertisers and executives on the back end.”
Using OView, the application syndication service, and the Event Viewer and Media Player modules, Optaros created the Patriots Calendar App, a sharable application available at the Patriots website and Facebook.
The Patriots Calendar App gives fans complete access to all kinds of multimedia content on Patriots news and information, including draft announcements, game schedules and scores, videos of press conferences, radio interviews with team members, details about upcoming Patriots events, great moments in Patriots history and more. Fans can grab the app and embed it into any website (including blogs and social profiles) or synchronize it with Microsoft Outlook and other calendars.
Using OView, the Patriots are able to manage all content, aggregate numerous inbound RSS feeds, make global updates, insert ads, block undesirable sites, and access user engagement through a sophisticated analytics system — helping the Patriots determine fans’ interaction levels and specific areas of interest.
In short, OView allows the Patriots to update and share content, and track user engagement as if each individual instance of the Patriots Calendar App were hosted on the team’s own website.
Revenue is generated through new online advertising slots within the Patriots Calendar App, as well as traffic driven to various online and offline Patriot’s properties.
The Patriots’ return on investment will continue to be closely monitored, particularly as the 2009-2010 NFL Season gets underway and more fans are expected to access, embed and share the Patriots Calendar App. As user engagement and the Patriots’ unique level of camaraderie with fans increase, and the application view is embedded into more websites and social profiles, brand visibility will increase exponentially. In turn, the Patriots anticipate a dramatic increase in advertising interest, as impressions will continually grow through the OView-driven Patriots Calendar App.
"OView syndicated application gives us the perfect balance of entertaining and engaging fans on the front end, while gathering real data and engagement metrics for our advertisers and executives on the back end."
Fred Kirsch, Director of Interactive Media, Patriots.com
The Patriots Calendar App launched in late December 2008, and has since been embedded into more than 140 websites, synched with more than 1,600 Outlook calendars and has 3,340 users on Facebook. Collectively these satellite locations are driving more than 50 percent of the traffic to the Patriots Calendar App.
The integration with Facebook, recommended by Optaros, accounts for approximately 20 percent of this additional traffic, providing significant opportunities for the Patriots to extend their brand communication beyond current site operations and into the fan sites where the team’s most loyal supporters are promoting their message.
“We’ve certainly achieved our goal of finding and connecting with fans on sites where they are most comfortable and already interacting with friends,” said Kirsch. “In professional sports, one of the key factors in creating a successful franchise lies in keeping the fans engaged with the team. By having our fans receive and interact with team content on their own turf, the Patriots Calendar App encourages ongoing engagement like nothing else we’ve done to date.”
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