The Legend of Lester Hudson Lives On
April 9, 2012Scouts Inc: Browns Need Pretty Much Everything
April 9, 2012
I was driving by the butcher’s market the other day, and on the sign on front was a new message- like us on Facebook. For many companies, that is the extent of their social media campaign. The Indians however, have been innovators in an industry that has been traditionally slow to adapt to the changing times.
It was three seasons (2010) ago that the Indians began the social media experiment in earnest with the league’s first social media only spot in the ballpark. It was a corner of the outfield bleachers that the Indians built a temporary deck around and called the Tribe Social Deck. The deck was replaced last season by the Indians Social Suite, and with opening day, the Suite started it’s second year of use.
The suite isn’t the only way the Indians are reaching out in social media however. New this year are Pinterest, Google Plus and Tumblr accounts. To the Indians’ credit, they aren’t just posting the same photos or ads on these accounts either. Each gets it’s own identity.
The Suite remains the best opportunity for the Indians to best connect with fans on a personal level.
On opening day, those in attendance were treated (like other suite-holders I believe) to visits from Mark Shapiro and Carlos Baerga. Carlos signed autographs and posed for pictures. This is the kind of experience that even a 16-inning loss didn’t dull.
For the Indians, doing the best they can to make customers happy will keep putting some fans in the seats during marginal years, but the best way to draw will always be the product on the field. Unlike the Browns, the Tribe knows they can’t continue to lose games and keep filling the house.
Perhaps some day the Browns will stop taking customers for granted. Then again, as long as fans continue to flock to the ‘Factory of Sadness’ without a winning product, what reason do they have to change?
9 Comments
I applaud the Indians’ social media initiative. The Club’s interest in involving fans through social media can only mean great things for the Tribe, even in the worst of times. I was thrilled when they opened a Pinterest account. Acknowledging the large female fan base through Pinterest is so smart. I wrote a blog post about it, that’s how excited I was: http://mcdougalltc.com/blog/cleveland-indians-pinterest/. Being a fan far away (Buffalo), void of the freedom to attend as many home games as I want, SM platforms allow me to say in tune with the Indians.
Agree with you on the Browns comment, I’d have to assume it won’t stay like that much longer, with the Browns fielding consistently bad teams for a generation…
Eh. Between this and the wind turbine on the roof of Progressive Field and Snow Days and college hockey…does Mark Shapiro and the rest of the Polo Shirt Mafia realize they are in charge of a baseball team? It’s great to be “forward looking” on “new initiatives” but after a decade of bad drafts, disappointing free agency decisions, and 8 out of 10 losing seasons, the Tribe front office needs to get back to basics. Give me baseball guys like John Hart and Charlie Manuel any day. They can hire PR flaks to do this kind of stuff in their spare time and not make it the focus of the organization.
Without social media (blogs included) you can bet that more than half of fan’s complaints went unheard. Whether they’re listening or not is debateable, but at least they care enough to pretend. Maybe soon they’ll care enough to put a better product on the field.
Of course, the scouts are the ones putting up sledding hills and twittering with you. The Indians can do both. A major criticism of the Indians has been that they don’t connect well with the fans. Obviously this has been proven wrong. The Indians connect with the fans as well as any organization in any sport. It’s just that fans want to complain.
Decade of bad drafts? LOL. May I introduce you to Brad Grant?
I think it is great that the Indians are using social media to reach their fans. it is certainly the way that many people are communicating these days. My company is also starting in social media and we just hired a social media agency to help us out as we are too busy to do it. I will keep you updated on how it all works out.
I meant the decade between ’98 (Sabathia in the 1st round) and ’08 when Grant took over for Mirabelli, who was PROMOTED despite his horrible track record of drafting busts and 4-A p-layers like Crowe, Sowers, etc. Grant seems to have done a better job, as Kipnis, White, Pomeranz, Chisenhall, Phelps and others have excelled in the minors and tasted the big leagues relatively quickly. Hopefully they stick (and I think most of them will) or even become All-Stars (also possible).
Everyone gets up in arms about the promotions the team has made within the front office, as if they are simply rewarding the few guys who got promotions. The Indians promoted Shapiro and Mirabelli, but they basically got reassigned to less hands-on roles, to promote guys who many other clubs were hot on. Antonetti and Grant were very popular around the league. The former two were promoted to ensure the team kept the latter two.