DIGITAL MEDIA INTERN
SACRAMENTO KINGS
WORLD EMOJI DAY
In a content meeting, I pitched the idea to create this type of video for World Emoji Day. The digital team approved and asked, " what day is it on this year?" Turned out that it was that very same day. I found the highlight from various angles, put together the whole video sequence, filmed myself doing the Animojis, then put it all together in a total of 6 hours. I'm very proud of this project because it was completely self-initiated and I completed the project on my own and it became the King's most successful piece of content to this date.
87,655 likes
#1 Most Liked IG Video
1,063,743 views
#1 Most Viewed IG Video
ENGAGEMENT POSTS
During the summer, it was especially important to come up with unique ways to engage with fans. I was tasked to create some of these executions across all of their accounts.
These two were my favorite examples of making something fun and interesting for fans to interact with!
TIK TOK
STARTING THE ACCOUNT
When I started working at the Kings, I knew I wanted to make an impact wherever possible, however I wasn't expecting it to be within Tik Tok.
VP of Digital Content, Andrew Nicholson, looked to me to lead the efforts in starting and creating content for our Tik Tok.
RESEARCH & STRATEGY
At the time, only half of the NBA teams had accounts and the majority of them had zero posts and were unsure how to utilize the account.
Prior to creating anything, I spent a couple days researching what brands and everyday people did on the app.
While teams posted highlights, we saw value in creating content with a personal touch - similar to how everyday people created content for the platform.
Another theme that stood out to me was that all the most popular content revolved around daily themes. While originality had value, it was significantly easier and safer to start by following trends and doing iterations and our own take offs of what was currently popular.
We would have loved to get the players involved, but since it was the summer, we had no access to player personnel as they were training all across the world. With that limitation, we decided to put Kings front office employees in front of the camera and roll along with trends.
Every day, I would spend about two hours of research in order to get an idea of what was happening. I'd create lists of ideas and then execute from there. I found that trends became stale roughly after 5-7 days.
CREATING CONTENT
Creating videos was stressful, but quite fun. On average, I'd create between 3-5 Tik Toks per week. Examples of some of my best performing Tik Toks are shown on the right.
In a month, we grew from 500 to 18,000 followers. To over-perform and get this level of engagement after just starting out was a huge win for us!
The majority of our posts were thought of, filmed, edited, and posted by me. Andrew initially challenged me to create two Tik Toks per week, and I was able to exceed those expectations with three per week. Eventually, our goal expanded to creating five per week.
TAKEAWAYS & LESSONS
There are a lot of trends on Tik Tok that family-brands can't lean into. Whether it's due to the vulgar popular song being used or the inappropriate dance routine. The more I researched and experimented with posts, the more we were able to learn about what we did and didn't want to do.
With the Kings being a very inclusive and well-represented front office, it was important to ensure that our Tik Tok accurately reflected the diversity in gender and ethnicities within our organization. One challenge was convincing my colleagues to participate, but they were good sports. I also needed to ensure we had a diverse cast.
Finally, after discussions with leadership, I became increasingly aware of the little nuances and details that could potentially be misunderstood by people. I never intentionally tried to create offensive content, but depending on someone's perspective, it could be perceived that way. I really liked how we implemented a diverse group to review our posts prior to posting in order to make sure all perspectives were accounted for and considered.
WEEKLY NBA HASHTAG CONTENT
During the summer when the content can be light for teams, the NBA created weekly hashtags for teams to post plays and highlights. While most teams simply posted normal highlights, the Kings trusted me to produce a variety of creative treatments each week. Each piece is unique, but features similar editing techniques and effects.
PEJA PIN BALL PASS
With historic Sacramento Kings events, our thought was to bring back the same highlight, but with a new creative treatment. After watching the clip, I felt like I could try out some VFX and make the basketball bounce around. This addition of creativity added a new look to an iconic play.
2019 NBA FREE AGENCY
For free agency, we wanted to move in a different direction than what most teams do and stay away from jersey swaps. Instead, we wanted to showcase the fashion styles of each of the players we signed. I initially mocked up a look and another designer helped solidify it into the Kings' branding and passed it back to me to animate each post.
MEMES
The Sacramento Kings don't take themselves too seriously on their social media accounts and therefore are prepared to poke fun at themselves and most certainly opponents. Starting in 2017, they found tremendous engagement with reacting to each game with a unique meme. Therefore, I helped brainstorm and create meme executions for our preseason games. Each execution was prepared with two alternatives, depending on who won the game. All three of these memes were very successful. Particularly, the Toy Story 4 meme - at the time was their 2nd most liked video on IG and 5th most viewed video ever.
TOY STORY 4 "IM TRASH"
YOU GOTTA BE FAST
ROCKET KID
CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS
Here is a collection of motion graphics that I've produced for the @sacramentokings & @goldenonecenter.
2019 NBA DRAFT RECAP
I got the opportunity to sit-in on our 2019 NBA Draft war room and observe how our social team reacted throughout the draft. Being that we had 3 second-round picks, I wanted to create a summary piece that could recap the experience of what is was like inside the Barclays Center on June 21st.
4TH OF JULY FIREWORKS
For Golden One Center, we wanted to recreate the Kings logo using fireworks. After watching tutorials I was able to put this together. If I don't know how to make something, I'll try to figure it out!
ARIANA GRANDE BIRTHDAY
Occasionally, I would support our arena by creating content for the Golden One Center account. In order to maintain positive relationships with artists, it was important to re-engage with them. I took photos from the last time she performed and animated it to give fans a representation of their experience and reinforce that Sacramento attracts the biggest artists in the world.
HARRY GILES WORKOUT EDIT
Stepping outside my comfort zone, this was the first workout edit that I have made. Using Jake Soriano's & Devon Davis' footage, I tried to incorporate some cool transitions and sequences.