Marshall’s chapter of the American Marketing Association hosted a virtual Sports Marketing Week November 30 through December 4. They were able to have speakers from different positions in marketing departments for sports teams across the country. They had one male speaker and four female speakers.
“We wanted to showcase and emphasize women in careers with sports. We are beyond excited to be able to listen to these speakers and ask them questions,” said Lexi Moore, who is a part of AMA and runs their social media. She hosted these virtual events with the help of Taylor Huddleston and Hannah Pratt.
Thursday, their guest speaker was Jamie Louden, the Manager of Digital Marketing for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Louden talked about her own career and how she got into the position as well as gave advice to the virtual event’s attendees. She talked about the difficulty and importance of engagement and how they executed it virtually.
“We were sent home, and from there, we were kind of tasked with the question how do we engage the fans when we can’t have them in the arena,” said Louden.
She talked about running the Penguin’s app and utilizing their digital channels. It was important to media engagement and keeping their season ticket holders as well. Communication was a key component as they transitioned to a more online approach. Their marketing team was separated into “bubbles,” and it was important that all information from events was communicated and put together.
“We had one PR guy and one content guy collecting all of our stuff from the bubble. We made sure to utilize social channels, the app, and we did watch-and-wins, so it would keep people watching the game,” said Louden, “I can’t lie its pretty difficult when your job is to get people in the arena and then all of the sudden it’s not.”
Louden emphasized the importance in reaching out and collaborating with digital marketing teams from other sports teams in hockey, as well as completely different kinds of sports.
She also spoke about the importance of people skills and making connections and networking along with more common digital design and marketing skills when trying to get internships and applying for jobs.
“Being able to reach out and talk to someone is really helpful. I think more of a concrete skill would be knowing how to work Adobe Photoshop and learning that. It’s rudimentary in everything we do, even as simple as resizing a photo,” said Louden.
She discussed her approach to digital marketing across platforms and how they reach their target audience and fans. They do not post the same exact post across multiple platforms since each platform holds different audience types and niches.
“We even had a Tik Tok team that has a meeting each week to discuss trends and what is happening on the app that we can use,” said Louden.
Targeting these demographics is important to the success of reaching their audience. Each day in Louden’s job is different, from game days to “off-days.” On her off-days, Louden is in meetings working to figure out how to sell more tickets, creating new content ideas, and whatever else is needed of her that day.
The virtual event ended with a few more questions about internships and resume building. AMA’s other speakers for the week included two members of the Warrior’s social media team, the Washington Football’s Digital Marketing Manager and Partnership Marketing Manager, and the Kansas City Royals’ Senior Director of Event Presentation and Production.
Moore hopes that these speakers helped AMA members as well as students that attended that were not a part of the organization.