Overview:
The @Cafe—the official Social Media Headquarters for the World Champion San Francisco Giants—represents the first in-park destination solely dedicated to the presentation of cross-platform, social media conversation generated from the team, fans, players, and baseball insiders. It also includes a behind-the-scenes look at how the team initiates conversation across social media channels, manages content through social listening and analytics platforms, and distributes select posts for display in the cafe. According to the Giants, nothing on this scale has been implemented by a professional sports franchise inside of a ballpark.
Objectives:
The World Champion San Francisco Giants wanted to create a social destination for fans. Placed inside its renowned AT&T Park, this physical space had to incite social interaction, participation and conversation amongst local, national, and global fans of the franchise. It had to be innately captivating and useful to active social users while intriguing to those unfamiliar with social platforms. And while positioning the Giants’ organization and ballpark as innovative, it had to be indicative of a World Champion.
Product Description & Timeframe:
The destination is anchored by a 12‘x4’ video wall featuring custom social media visualizations that were conceived, architected, designed and developed by Array Interactive. Features include: - Real-time posts from social platforms display global conversations - Digital counters provide ever-growing number of followers per specific social channels - Question of the Day poses questions to fans and creates higher conversation volume by inciting responses through social platforms - Official Twitter feeds of the Giants, players, and press deliver unique insider content - A customizable Hashtag of the Day promotes topical conversation around players, team and ballpark - MLBAM player statistics and highlights deliver relevant performance data - Fan tweets are linked to specific ball players to display fan-to-player affinity and following - Social All Star feature highlights best tweets as voted by administrators - Photo of the Day presents top Instagram photos submitted by fans - Exclusive content and sponsorship areas provide new revenue streams - Custom moderation engine empowers Giants staff to review social posts prior to their distribution in the cafe
Results:
The experience was well received by the Giants organization, fans, and the digital signage industry. SportTechie.com recently named it the #1 social media campaign of the 2013 MLB regular season saying “The @Café is number one on the list because it’s a seamless integration of social media and baseball. It’s a place where all fans – not just a select few – can meet, mingle, and enjoy baseball in a new way. It appeals to fans who may not normally come to the stadium, while also introducing those who already attend to the social media community. The Giants and their @Café have the potential to become true trendsetters in MLB.” -Larry Baer, President and CEO of the Giants stated, “I think it’s fantastic. With friends at Array Interactive...a lot of great minds went into this.” -Digital Signage Connection recently noted “Not since the launch of (the) “BuzzWall” at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium...have we seen such an innovative approach to enhancing the fan experience.”
