OTT and the NFL - Pariscope

“Twitter is where live events unfold and is the right partner for the NFL as we take the latest step in serving fans around the world live NFL football”, words from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (NFL Media, 2016). In 2016 Twitter means Periscope and OTT means mobile technology, not figuratively. The NFL is using this mobile technology to not only broadcast full games for free but to broadcast ongoing analysis and this has already started with the Fantasy Football break downs on the NFL Network. This is something that will put the NFL ahead of the pack or at least neck and neck with the NBA and ESPN who are going to be doing something similar in the 2017 NBA season. This is groundbreaking in the way that sports companies will move forward in their broadcasting capabilities. This also has huge implications to how future TV and broadcasting partnerships work out. This has already been seen with the NFL. The NFL plans to broadcast their Thursday night football games through Periscope. This is a loop hole because the games are available nationally on networks such as NBC and CBS but the NFL still owns the rights to the broadcast so they have the right to broadcast it through their own Twitter channel.

This is the type of engagement that is evolving because of technology and industries are almost being forced to adopt or be left behind. I don't think that sports organizations are looking at this technology in a negative light but rather the latter. This is giving them another platform to provide their fans with their product. The NFL is already capitalizing on this and the NBA technically capitalized first but have yet to put it to use. My theory is that eventually TV will be app based and this would play into that theory but overall mobile broadcasting is an opportunity in which sports orgs are starting to take advantage of.

References:

NFL Media (2016) National Football League and Twitter Announce Streaming Partnershio for Thursday Night Football
Retrieved from https://nflcommunications.com/Pages/National-Football-League-and-Twitter-Announce-Streaming-Partnership-for-Thursday-Night-Football.aspx

Mobile Technology and it's Impact

When it comes to todays technology there seems to be a endless tunnel of capabilities. I believe there are multiple ways to break this down wether you say wearable technology as the new comer vs. a cell phone which anyone that isn't a millennial would agree is something kids are better without. You could go higher level and just flat out say the internet since this is truly where all mobility comes from but in the end the Smart Phone is the most impactful resource out to date.

What came first technology or the ideology around entertainment? Was a computer invented to log data or to create a way to entertain people? We all know that TV's were created first and that was purely a entertainment based product. The evolution led to smart phones. How do we get a TV to roam the streets with you or better yet how do we have your TV and computer roam the streets with you. Enter the smartphone! Everything that the Smartphone is comes from the idea of entertainment and the technology before it, the ancestors if you will. Wether it be games, shows, a compass, calculator or written messages. This has all been rolled up into one systematic invention which is the smart phone.

I believe the smart phone took over because other technology started to become a every day "house hold item" in which people would miss when they were out and about. If I check my computer for emails how do I do this on the road? If I miss my favorite show how do I know what happened? This was all driven from technology and its capabilities. Eventually the smart phone was born and it took over as everyone knew it would. Unfortunately kids want to play games, we all know this. But adults fall for it as well. The access to everything anywhere is how this technology took over and it is exactly why it will only evolve and never die.

Interview with Juan Parra from Accelo

Richard: Hi Juan how are you today

Juan: Im good how are you

Richard: doing good doing good. I guess I'd like to know a little more about your role and where you work. Give an introduction to yourself as a PR professional your current position and so on.

Juan: Uh my name is Juan Parra, I am the head of marketing at Accelo uh basically my role consists of managing one, everything that has to do with communications and distribution channels towards all of our gamma of clients. Work very closely with sales so our communications are always coordinated in terms of the events that we are putting out there the marketing pushes that we are putting out there and kinds of work and uh last but not least is working with the success team to ensure that the content that we are putting out there is not just good for the new and upcoming clients but also for the existing clients that are looking to get more out of our platform.

Richard: ok and do you mind just kind of explaining a little bit of what Accelo is and what it does?

Juan: yes Accelo is a professional services automation platform and what that means is that we integrate the core modules that companies, small business to big enterprise companies use to run their businesses and that includes CRM, project management, customer services, retainers or contract management and we do this because we found that there is a gap in-between the tools that our users use on a every day basis we found that users in the professional services sector use between 5-7 tools to run their businesses and by minimizing the amount of tools having all of those teams working within one same platform and leveraging the data that is created in each one of these tools their team can run more seamless you can emphasis in optimizing business practices and ultimately make more profit.

Richard: Great ok so as a marketing director over at Accelo what are your responsibilities and how do they integrate with just marketing and your overall business objectives

Juan: so my main responsibility is hit our main goal which is keep  the pipeline healthy and by pipeline I mean not just traffic that comes into a platform but traffic of users that  ultimately convert into our sign up process and then ultimately convert into paying clients and thats a very broad and general answer but on a day to day basis I make sure that all of our marketing mix is working on point and that we are hitting our targets that we set for ourselves daily weekly and monthly and at the same time make sure that the sales team has all of the collateral to ultimately sell and ultimately close those sales and I have mentioned before I also work with success to make sure people aren't just happy coming into the platform but that they stay happy throughout and we do that by leveraging case studies by enhancing our community that we build of our VIP users who are like our top guys that are always there to give us referrals to talk to new clients who have questions or who don't necessarily know how to customize the platform its not just a factor of us teaching the new users but its also a community of other users where that can be enhanced

Richard: Ok and what kind of methods of communications do you use through your organization. What channels and what do you find most effective?

Juan: Thats a very interesting question and it's a very interesting question for us because we are a start up and as a startup we live and die by every dollar that we put into marketing and communications public relations and so on and so fourth and when we started or at least when I started with the company a year and a half ago we basically did not have any marketing. So it was our task to figure out what was going to be the best marketing mix for the company and we started going through a very traditional route where we would do digital marketing through Google ad words and other channels and then we did public relations by doing it some work in house and then some work with a pr agency that we hired and what we saw was that the pr agency was really good at publishing a lot of our content but in terms of bringing in traffic that convert for us it was not happening and it wasn't because there was it was any pr bad pr it was because the users that we have that we bring into our platform they are usually they talk to each other within this niche culture we are a professional services automation platform so that means we work with lawyers and we work with same time accountants and at the same time digital agencies and digital marketers and they do not live in the same places so we had to shoot very broad to gather couple here a couple there and so what we did was we decided to stop going the pr agency route and bring the pr in house and we did that by leveraging our users we actually before Nov of 2015 the company was known as AffinityLive  and its what was the name of the company for over three years and at that point we had decided that the platform had evolved enough that it deserved a new brand and a new identity and as a core value of the company the company stopped being a company about its product and started to become a company about its users therefore it wasn't about marketing our features it was about marketing the user experience and how users are actually going and taking advantage of the platform and ultimately growing themselves. So we setup ourselves a project where we basically leveraged all of our users and asked them hey it would be great if you could talk to us about your experience with Accelo and not just using the platform but overall experience in the culture within your company and how Accelo has actually helped your company grow. As a result of that campaign that we pushed out we had about over thirty people writing about us and that ultimately converted into an up in traffic because of word of mouth and extended distribution of communications of we grew our traffic buy 150% in the last 6 months and we have grown our pipeline by 202% since we started doing that and that is our current push that we are doing really hard is leveraging our current users to get more.

Richard: Ah thats great! I guess how have your public relations practices effected the reputation of your organization? Do you think that that gets across to your clients the way that you're doing it and if so how do you measure the success?

Juan: Yes so I just spoke a little bit about the rebrand and the rebrand was very key for how our consumers perceived our company. Before the name with AffinityLive the name itself was not an appealing name the reason that it wasn't appealing was because when we decided to take not hat name, that was about four years ago, we were making a play for the cloud and back three years ago there was no such thing as the cloud. There was this thing that some people didn't know what to call some people were calling  it the cloud Microsoft was doing a push for live and so on and so fourth and we took a gamble and said lets add live to our name so that translates to people but as we know today the cloud is known as the cloud and not as live or as anything else so the name itself became obsolete and so it was not a name that was good for us. So as it was very interesting because even though we had a great platform and all the new features that anybody could ask we were still perceived `as an outdated company in some ways therefore we decided to go with a rebrand. The rebrand itself was a very big it was mostly a pr move that we did. We had decided to go with a shorter name that was a lot more appealing and that was put together with just a good name like Accelo but attached to it a nice logo that had new colors and that looked very attractive and that was flat so it was going on modern trends and what we did for our rebrand was we did a press release we like I said we leveraged our clients and so at that point when we did the rebrand and what we saw was nothing but good opinions and good blog posts about the brand. Now people perceive us as one a more approachable company two a company that is on par with our competitors out there and third a company that people can relate to and I think that was the biggest key for us was before people saw AffinityLive as a tool now people see Accelo as part of their core business and they are taking it like it is Accelo is starting to become a verb instead of just a noun right and thats what all companies strive for at least at the start up level. I guess to summarize all of that is that Accelo with its new name and with its new brand and with good PR behind it has become a company that right now we are seeing our competitors have taken notice of us and they know that we are a big player within the realm of PSA and we are seeing that on our growth numbers, we are seeing that in the amount of interaction that we see on social media with people talking back to us saying we love Accelo, Accelo is great this is what I have been waiting for all our lives and ultimately it has been a success.

Richard: Great thats great to hear. Thank you for all your insights. I have one more question after all of my serious questions. Whats your favorite color.

Juan: My favorite color is blue and funny thing about blue is that blue was our main color in the company before and our colors were black and blue so when we decided to do the rebrand, when we sat down with the designers they came up with a new gamma of colors a new color scheme and within that color scheme there absolutely no blue and to make matters worse I had just painted a wall in the office that was blue. So I was like no no no no we have to do something about this, we have to put blue in there and after a lot of back and fourth I was able to put a little line of blue within that Accelo logo and that made me very happy.

Richard: there we go so the blue in the logo we can chalk down to Juan 

Juan: Yes (laughter)

Richard: Alright Juan well thank you for your time. Thank you very much and uh you have a great day!

Juan:  Sounds good, thank you man!

(School Assignment) Press Release - New NBA Playoff Format

By Richard Hatfield on May 15, 2016 

NEW YORK – The NBA Board of Governors would like to announce a reformatting of divisions, schedule and overall playoff seeding within the NBA. The Board has been discussing conference imbalance for a couple of seasons now and we have finally come to an agreement on how to move forward with a solution. Last season we decided to seed playoff teams in each conference by record compared to divisions. The idea of doing away with the current division format leads us to a region format. The NBA has known that the biggest roadblock is how to evenly schedule an 82 game season between 30 teams across the United States. By moving teams into a travel friendly region we can cut back on travel time and move towards our ultimate goal of have the top 16 teams in the NBA compete in the playoffs for the championship.

            The new format will break our teams up into the following regions

Ziller, Tom (Nov 26, 2014) This proposal will fix conference imbalance and the NBA schedule.

Image retrieved from http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/11/26/7280545/nba-schedule-reform-regions-map-playoffs

By re arranging our 30 teams in regions we will break up the schedule to a more travel friendly listing. At the beginning of each season we will do a lottery of which teams will play each other within a specific formula. Each team will, at random, play two teams in a region 5 times in a season and then the other 3 teams twice. The remaining 18 games will be at random. This allows for less back to back games and will employ lighter travel loads on our athletes.

            With the new schedule format we will be changing into a brand new playoff format as well. The top 16 teams in the league will be going toe to toe in the playoffs. Imagine seeing Anthony Davis and his New Orleans Pelicans playing the Cleveland Cavaliers and Lebron James in the first round.

Simmons, Bill (April 4, 2014) Fixing the NBA Playoffs

Image retrieved from http://grantland.com/features/fixing-the-nba-playoffs/

It is thoughts like this that makes us excited for this announcement. For too long has their been a indifference between the Eastern and Western conferences and rarely do we see both conferences equal in competition. In the 1980’s the Eastern Conference ruled the world of Basketball and now in the 2000’s the Western Conference has hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy 11 times while the eastern conference has only hoisted it 5. This new format will help even the playing field as well as bolster the NBA draft for teams that require high lottery picks. The playoff format will move back to a 2-3-2 format to help travel plans. The overall goal is to even the playing field across the board to increase the competitive nature of the NBA as well as adhere to our athletes health needs with travel instances, to give you the fan a better entertainment experience all the way into June.

Halftime Words Bracket Round 1

Just like Michigan State there were some great posts going out in the first round. Here are the results

Bracket slot 1

Warriors, Spurs and the 95-96 Bulls 4 (44.4%)

Was Conor McGregor out of his mind or just Conor McGregor? 5 (55.6%)

Bracket Slot 2

If it looks like a catch, sounds like a catch, and there was a football move made like a catch, it’s a catch! 6 (66.7%)

Lets Talk Defense! 3 (33.3%)

Bracket Slot 3

The Natty! 3 (33.3%)

To vote or not to vote! 6 (66.7%)

Favorite post of all

Warriors, Spurs and the 95-96 Bulls 1 (11.1%)

Was Conor McGregor out of his mind or just Conor McGregor?

1 (11.1%)

If it looks like a catch, sounds like a catch, and there was a football move made like a catch, it’s a catch! 3 (30%)

Lets Talk Defense! 2 (20%)

The Natty! 2 (20%)

To vote or not to vote! 1 (11.1%)

The round two bracket is below

http://goo.gl/forms/LYlpoQ0RFx

HalftimeWords Bracket Madness!

In light of the NCAA Tournament and everyones brackets being busted within the first day I decided to make a bracket of my own. Now I know some of you chose Michigan State as your Champions and well you blew it by not picking Oregon! It seems as if every year there is always a top dog going down to a unheard of school form a barely noticed division and somehow the only people that ever get it right are the people that don't watch nor care. So for the few of you out there that have brackets, like making brackets but absolutely have no investment towards the outcome I invite you to come help me make a bracket of my own.

I have made a form on Google (link below) that has my Blog posts from this past year pitted against each other. Please take the time to read my posts and help me decide what I did well and what I pulled a Michigan State on!

Cheers,

http://goo.gl/forms/LYlpoQ0RFx

Warriors, Spurs and the 95-96 Bulls

If you are an NBA fan and you miss the 90's then this season so far has been some sort of special. Not only are some of the Bull's records from their historic season in trouble of being broken but some of their records have been broken and by more than one team! Not only have the Warriors beaten the Bulls record for most consecutive wins at home but the Spurs are on the verge of breaking this record as well. Let alone the Warriors and Spurs are both on the brink of the elusive undefeated at home season, counting opening day to the playoffs. The Warriors managed to break the record when you take into account last season. The Spurs are nipping at their heels though and have been all season in all aspects. Lets break down the amazing that the 2016 season has shown thus far!

First the Warriors going 24-0 to start the season. Not only did they break the previous record of 15-0, set by the 1948-49 Washington Capitols and matched by the 1993-94 Houston Rockets but they damn near almost doubled it. If it wasn't for playing a 2OT game against the Boston Celtics on the first night of a back to back they most likely would have beaten Milwaukee, the team that broke this streak. Funnily enough the Bucks have broken a couple of the best winning streaks in history including snapping the 71-72 Los Angeles Lakers' 33 game winning streak. This is just one record the Warriors have broken this season, no real need to mention Steph Curry breaking his own 3 pointers made in a season record, or that they also broke the 95-96 Bulls most consecutive home wins.

Now the Spurs! The media has been all about the Warriors since they started off 24-0 but quietly and I mean dead quiet, the Spurs are only 3 games behind the Warriors, 3 games! The Spurs are also on the brink of breaking the Chicago Bulls' most consecutive home wins and are nipping at the heels of the Warriors as they have been all season. The Warriors lost a close one in San Antonio just the other night. Let alone they also play each other two more times this season. One more in Oakland and one more in San Antonio. That means that these records could very well be broken or made by the very team they are each challenging.

Now the elusive 72-10 record. Now it is very unlikely but the Spurs still aren't out of this race. They would need to go undefeated the rest of the way which is unlikely since they have to go to Oakland and play the Warriors in two weeks time. With that said they are still right there, not only is a team capable of breaking this ridiculous record but there are two and even if the Spurs don't make it they are almost guaranteed to be a game or two away. The Warriors on the other hand are poised to make it. 12 games left and 8 of them are at home. Lets say they win all of their home games that means they only have to win one on the road to match the record and with their remaining road schedule only having 2 of 4 teams above .500 I would put money in the bak on the fact that they at least match the record.

Either way this season has showed us that the magic of the 90's is not gone in fact the game has sped up and there is as much talent in the league as their ever has been. Wether it be players or coaches everything  has been interesting and I can't wait to see it play out.