Los Angeles Clippers Branding Through Social Media

When evaluating the branding and creative media associated with professional sport teams, one team in particular stood out to me. Lately, the Los Angeles Clippers have been the talk of the Los Angeles basketball world due to the lack luster performance of the Lakers. Accordingly, I took a deep dive into their Instagram and Twitter accounts to see what type of creative enterprises they are implementing throughout social media to gather excitement around the team as they continue to make their way into the playoffs. As I evaluated their social media accounts I looked into how consistent, creative, interactive, as well as how they build excitement around their team brand throughout their posts.

While each post is unique, I saw a consistent look, identity and personality throughout their posts. Since Twitter is a news platform and Instagram is an interactive platform, I observed more fan interaction through the Los Angeles Clippers Twitter than I did on their Instagram. However, as you can see in figures 1, 2, and 3, the posts on both platforms have the same style about them. The Los Angeles Clippers did a great job of incorporating similar posts both with black and grey scale pictures. While the pictures are primarily in black and white, the Clippers social media team made sure to highlight team performance each and every game, highlighting the best players performances and posting their stat lines on their social media accounts to build excitement around the performance of their current players.

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Another key takeaway from their social media strategies was their unique creative to support the team brand. As you can see in figures 4 and 5, the Los Angeles Clippers incorporated music within their posts to connect cultural trends and connect to a larger consumer base. For this analysis, I focused on two posts I found very interesting. A big trend on social media came from the highly anticipated new Dreamville label album titled Revenge of the Dreamers 3. During their promotion of the album the Dreamville team sent out personalized invites to other MCs to promote the features on the album. Very similar to this promotional tactic, the Los Angeles Clippers decided to promote their game against the Golden State Warriors on January 18thby creating a creative post that mimicked the Revenge of the Dreamers 3invite, see figure 5. Another interesting creative concept that I found on both Instagram and Twitter was the utilization of famous rapper YG, see figure 4. By creating a creative surrounding the LA native rapper that is a big LA sports fan was an interesting way to connect Rams fans with Clippers fans. YG was a very viral and outgoing supporter of the Rams team. Connecting music to their social media plan is very important and connects cultural trends together to help promote the any brand that is connected to music. The Clippers did a great job by doing this.

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When evalauting how the Clippers interact with their fans and followers, I found it difficult to find explicit examples where the team interacted with their followers. However, I discovered a few examples of how the team utilized their social media platforms to interact with their fans and community. As you can see in figure 6, the Clippers training staff went to Cedars-Sinai, a leading hospital in the Los Angeles area, to show students future performance enhancing training equipment and connect with the community. They also used their social media accounts to humanize their players. As you can see in figure 7, the Clippers told the story of one of their best players Danilo Gallinari, an Italian who came to the states to follow his dreams. This was a great way to let their fans feel more connected with players on a personal level. Lastly, I found that on Instagram the Clippers did a great job continuing their humanization of their players by creating creative content that surrounded their players doing physical activities, like yoga, see figure 8, or answering random questions so their fan base can get a better understanding of what their favorite players like the most. In figure 9, Jerome Robinson answered questions like what his favorite video game is, what his favorite social media platform is, and so on. This is a great way for fans to get to know the organization’s players better, and is creative way to humanize their players. At the end of the day these players are just human, and the Clippers organization wanted their fans to know this.

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In summary I believe that while the Clippers’ Social Media team could do a better job of interacting with their followers, overall they do a great job of building their brand through creative posts that are consistent throughout the two social media platforms I looked into, Twitter and Instagram. Through this unique creative and consistent voice, look, identity and personality across multiple platforms, the Clippers’ effectively were able to create content that connects to their fans and gives them a special voice across different teams in the league. Through unique creative the team is also able to build excitement around their team. They also did a great job of creating an emotional attachment by interacting with their Los Angeles community in new and exciting ways.

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