Digital marketing lessons for sports from IShowSpeed

Ac­cord­ing to Forbes.com, IShowSpeed, the pro­lif­ic stream­er, is world-fa­mous for his high-en­er­gy gam­ing re­ac­tions, pranks, and trav­el con­tent. Born Dar­ren Ja­son Watkins Jr., Speed got his start with gam­ing con­tent on YouTube in 2016—he now has 40 mil­lion sub­scribers on the plat­form alone. He of­ten ap­pears at Cham­pi­ons League Soc­cer games and WWE match­es—some­times dressed in a cos­tume, hawk­ing Lo­gan Paul’s en­er­gy drink Prime. He signed with Warn­er Mu­sic and re­leased the sin­gle “World Cup”.

IShowSpeed kicked off his Caribbean tour in Trinidad and To­ba­go last Sat­ur­day. Ac­cord­ing to a Trinidad Guardian re­port, the vi­ral con­tent cre­ator start­ed the tour with his sig­na­ture high-en­er­gy livestreams. Ato Boldon con­firmed his vis­it. The well-known lo­cal event man­age­ment team UEL in­volve­ment gave cred­i­bil­i­ty to his vis­it.

There are im­por­tant lessons that can be learned from the I Show Speed rise to promi­nence and in­flu­ence. In par­tic­u­lar as it re­lates to sport mar­ket­ing, con­tent cre­ation and en­gage­ment with the un­der-35 de­mo­graph­ic.

For a num­ber of years the im­por­tance of so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing has been a re­al­i­ty. The TTOC Sport Busi­ness con­fer­ence ac­knowl­edged that re­al­i­ty. In fact, the core of the TTOC mar­ket­ing trans­for­ma­tion and strat­e­gy was built on the un­de­ni­able re­al­i­ty and em­brace of so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. Es­sen­tial el­e­ments of the plan were con­tem­po­rary minds such as Dale Lutch­man, LaShaun Ramd­hin, Na­dine Khan, Dwayne Cam­bridge, Bre­vard Nel­son, Rheeza Grant, Chanelle Young, Melanie Gul­ston, Busi­ness Bridges TT, and Zwede He­witt. That pe­ri­od was ex­cit­ing and cre­ative, with ro­bust con­ver­sa­tions, and no ideas on the ta­ble were lim­it­ed by in­flat­ed egos and pet­ty agen­das.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) trans­formed its mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy by piv­ot­ing from tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es to a dig­i­tal-first, so­cial me­dia-dri­ven mod­el to in­crease fan en­gage­ment, ath­lete mar­ketabil­i­ty, and rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing part­ner­ing with plat­forms like LUHU to en­hance dig­i­tal pres­ence.

I re­call in a Ju­ly 5, 2016 blog en­ti­tled ‘TTOC cut­ting loose from its com­fort zone’ I wrote:

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (TTOC) ef­fort to trans­form how it mar­kets and brands it­self has seen the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee em­brace a dif­fer­ent ap­proach in ar­eas such as the align­ment with Trinidad and To­ba­go mu­sic and cul­ture.

It’s an evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion that re­quired the TTOC to step up its pub­lic and fan en­gage­ment strat­e­gy. Cul­tur­al part­ner­ships with Er­phaan Alves, Sekon Sta and Chucky Gor­don.

The songs Be­lieve, My World and Bleed­ing Red, White and Black all seek to in­te­grate T&T’s mu­sic with the Olympic ef­fort. A fol­low-on of the Lon­don 2012 We are Con­querors by Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller, which was com­mis­sioned by Bptt. For Rio 2016 Press Play Juke Box com­mis­sioned Er­phaan Alves’ Be­lieve to sup­port the Text Do­nate cam­paign.

Then there was the #learn­tolove ini­tia­tive be­tween Sun­ny Bling, Press Play Juke­box and the TTOC.

The TTOC need­ed to di­ver­si­fy its pub­lic and fan en­gage­ment. There was a strat­e­gy that looked at dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics. Enough of the nos­tal­gia. The main point is that IShowSpeed short vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go is a re­minder of why sport mar­ket­ing in the con­tem­po­rary world will con­tin­ue to leave old, con­ser­v­a­tive and tra­di­tion­al-think­ing sport lead­ers be­hind—way be­hind to the detri­ment of their sport.

Those who don’t hear will feel. In 2016 the TTOC mar­ket­ing trans­for­ma­tion was launched. I show speed gam­ing con­tent start­ed in 2016. His tra­jec­to­ry didn’t stag­nate, nor was it stymied.

Progress waits on no one.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.