Case StudyMultiply: Engaging College Hockey Fans for National Championship

NCAA Frozen Four2012

College hockey fans are some of the most passionate fans in sports.

Nowhere is that more visible than at the Frozen Four, the NCAA’s Division One College Hockey Championship.

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the objective

The 2012 Frozen Four was hosted in Tampa, Florida by the Tampa Bay Sports Commission, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay & Company. These three partners set out with a few clear objectives for their digital strategy for the Frozen Four:

1. Generate unprecedented buzz about the Frozen Four on social media, in a way that was fully measurable at the aggregate and individual fan level

2. Reward the most passionate and engaged fans for the actions they took to spread buzz about the Frozen Four online

The Multiply team was tasked with developing a game that would harness the fans’ passion and incentivize them to share their experience at the 2012 Frozen Four on social media.

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the solution

In order to meet these objectives, the partners on this project knew they needed a truly innovative tool to incentivize fans to buzz about the Frozen Four online and measure that buzz in a powerful database where they could quickly and easily view data to reward the most passionate and engaged fans. The solution was CollegeHockeyRewards.com, powered by Multiply—the first comprehensive social media rewards program designed specifically for a single major national sporting event.

College Hockey Rewards rewarded college hockey fans for all of the actions they took to spread buzz about the Frozen Four online. Members earned points, virtual badges and real-world rewards for taking actions such as checking-in to the Frozen Four on foursquare, tweeting with #FrozenFour and posting a photo with the National Championship trophy, just to name a few.

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CollegeHockeyRewards.com launched a few days prior to ESPN’s selection show for the Frozen Four tournament. In the days leading up to the selection show, fans were encouraged to sign-up at CollegeHockeyRewards.com to unlock the Selection Show badge for telling their friends that they would be watching the Frozen Four selection show.

Leading up to the Frozen Four, fans were incentivized to predict the winner of the Frozen Four, invite their friends to become members of CollegeHockeyRewards.com and share buzz about the Frozen Four on social media. Once the Frozen Four teams earned their spot in the tournament, we moved quickly to coordinate the efforts of College Hockey Rewards with the digital teams at Boston College, the University of Minnesota, Ferris State and Union College. New badges were created for fans of each team, who could unlock their team’s badge by sharing with their friends that they were supporting their respective team on CollegeHockeyRewards.com.

Once fans hit the ground in Tampa and checked in on foursquare, they were greeted with a video of Tampa Bay Lightning Alternate Captain and Frozen Four alum Marty St. Louis personally welcoming them to Tampa Bay and the Frozen Four.

On the ground, fans earned points for checking-in to their team’s headquarters near the spot of

the Frozen Four, taking photos with the Hobey Baker and National Championship trophies and of course tweeting about their experience with #FrozenFour.

Click the image to watch the video on Youtube.

4

the results

College Hockey Rewards was an enormous success in meeting the objectives set forth by the Tampa Bay Sports Commission, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay & Company.

A total of 4,492 #FrozenFour tweets and retweets of @NCAAIceHockey were posted by members of College Hockey Rewards. These tweets led the way to more than 31,000 #FrozenFour tweets during the tournament. College Hockey Rewards members shared 521 pieces of Frozen Four content on Facebook to 88,261 unique friends, gaining a potential 237,576 impressions.

Perhaps the most compelling metric of engagement was the fact that the 619 members of CollegeHockeyRewards.com took an average of 21 actions on the site! That’s an incredibly deep level of engagement with fans that most organizations only dream to see in such a short period of time.

A total of 2,407 badges were unlocked on CollegeHockeyRewards.com and 150 Frozen Four lapel pins, hockey pucks and t-shirts were distributed to fans who met certain point levels. The two grand prize winners (who took 223 and 161 actions) each received a commemorative Frozen Four 2012 jersey customized with their name and signed by Frozen Four alum Marty St. Louis.

While every metric measured on CollegeHockeyRewards.com points to overwhelming success for the project, it’s the anecdotal evidence of raving fans that provide some of the most satisfaction for a job well done by the partners on this amazing project. Here are some of our favorite posts by fans about College Hockey Rewards!

by the numbers

• 619 CollegeHockeyRewards.com members• 2,407 badges unlocked• 21 - Average number of actions taken per member • 2,314 - Average member score • 456 - Average number of Facebook friends of CollegeHockeyRewards.com

members compared to the average Facebook user who has 245 friends• 521 status updates promoting the Frozen Four posted through

CollegeHockeyRewards.com• 237,576 potential impressions of content posted to Facebook from

CollegeHockeyRewards.com• 88,261 unique Facebook users reached with posts through

CollegeHockeyRewards.com• 4,492 #FrozenFour tweets and retweets of College Hockey Rewards partners from

CollegeHockeyRewards.com members• 31,285 #FrozenFour tweets from College Hockey Rewards members and non-

members• 150 rewards given out to CollegeHockeyRewards.com members• 23% of users followed @NCAAIceHockey, @VisitTampaBay, @TBLightning, and @

RHiggins_TBSC on Twitter• 34% of users liked NCAA Men’s Hockey, Visit Tampa Bay, and the Tampa Bay

Lightning on Facebook

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