Mediaboss Marketing

Learfield VP/Social Media Jack Patterson (@JackCPatterson) has only been with the company since April after leavingsocial marketing firm Spredfast, where he was Regional Sales Dir for more than two years. He was also the Redskins' Strategic Marketing Dir for two years. Patterson is the first person at Learfield with his title, but he said it is part of a shift in the industry. He said, "A lot of different roles and resources are being placed in social and digital. College athletics is no different." Patterson is noticing that schools, of which more than 120 are Learfield properties, are starting to make investments in social and digital. He said, "What makes college great is there are so many young talented people out there that want to work in graphics and creative and content and doing all the things people do on a day-to-day basis. The potential is there. Its really a matter of schools continuing to put the investment around it." Working with properties on implementing digital and social strategy: The industry has changed a lot. There was a time when people were just filling radio. Then we started getting into signage. Now we are in the phase where packages are including digital and social all the time. Advertisers, brands and agencies are looking for digital and social assets in a place where they can find their targeted audiences and engaged audiences. For us, its how can we leverage our official website, how can we leverage our social channels and give the best opportunities for our clients that we can. Digital and social, increasingly in the more sophisticated market, has been coming up for years and is now trickling down to markets of all sizes.

Advising/consulting: Im not hitting send on any post, and Id like for it to stay that way. Even when I worked in the software industry and would talk to brands, we would try to understand from them who is running social. Often times there is someone who is running social and someone who is hitting send. We are working with our properties to educate and try to come up with new pieces of inventory they can monetize and put in front of their sponsors.

Shaping Learfields social and digital philosophy: Were going to build on the things that have already been done before, but in some ways will be more targeted toward specific needs. Were going to try to create the most scaleable pieces of inventory for all of our schools. We work with a wide variety of schools in size. We need to be able to create things we can do over and over again regardless of the size of your school, the success of your football or basketball program. The beauty for us is its 365-days a year. Often times in sponsorships, you are limited to when your season is running. Social and digital assets are things that can live all year.

Influence on schools social and digital activity: They are going to run their own social-media practice, and were going to respect the things that they are doing. We feel like we have some expertise in this industry as well. That said, the universities are the ones who are doing it on a day-to-day basis and know whats happening with the coaches, the teams, the program itself and we want to respect that. At the same time, we want to partner with them and work with them in a wide variety of ways. Its creating great content together; in some places it might be finding sponsors that align with different platforms and different campaigns that were running.

Social media success in moving tickets: If you think about it, its a natural touchpoint with your fans. Multiple times throughout the day you are reaching them. We know this from the metrics that are out there. Thats what social media is doing as much as getting you behind the scenes and access. It impacts not just ticket sales, but probably impacts merchandise and so many things throughout the whole digital footprint.

Lessons learned from team side, applied to collegiate side: The business continues to change and its changing very fast. The emphasis on graphics and video has just really changed everything through the cost of the year. Some of the larger teams that are truly building up big graphics teams and have almost production studio quality graphics that are coming out. That is really a huge shift. When I was with the Redskins, it was often about sending out info and driving people back to your website. While thats still going on, there are these great stories out there, there are great content series being built.

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Social Studies: Learfield VP Jack Patterson On Implementing Change, Lessons Learned - SportsBusiness Daily (subscription)