Case Study: How Twitter Turned a Campaign into a Community for the NHL

When was the last time you cancelled your Super Bowl party because your favorite team wasn’t playing in the game? That was the question posed by Michael DiLorenzo, the National Hockey League’s social media and digital communications manager, at the Business Development Institute‘s Social Integration breakfast Wednesday.

DiLorenzo explained that one the challenges faced by the NHL is convincing fans to “activate nationally” during the Stanley Cup playoffs — that is, getting people to care and watch playoff games even if their local or favorite team isn’t playing. So when a couple innovative fans came up with the idea to have a “Tweet Up” for the 2009 playoffs, the NHL ran with the idea. Since then, #NHLtweetup has become a great example of how marketers can use Twitter not only as an engagement tool, but as a loyalty and community building tool as well.

Meghan Keane of eConsultancy has the goods:

DiLorenzo was charged with making the [2009 NHL Playoff] push “larger than life,” so he went to Twitter, where he thought the voices of 200 active fans might sound like 2,000 or more, and from a fan suggestion the NHL Tweetup was born.

The first Tweetup was sponsored by the NHL in New York, where the NHL hosted a hockey watching party replete with hockey giveaways, beer sponsorships and lunch shuttled over from a nearby McDonald’s. But as New York fans started tweeting about the event, other cities wanted in too. Soon there were over 2,000 people organizing Tweetups and looking for NHL sponsorships. And it was exactly that cross over — from what DiLorenzo calls the “virtual world” of Twitter to the real world — that the NHL had been looking for.

The hockey league is the latest in a growing number of brands who use Twitter not simply to broadcast messages, but to stimulate engagement through a mix of promotional contests, giveaways and customer service listening. Dell recently attributed more than $6.5 million in sales to its Twitter efforts, thanks to daily discounts posted on Twitter which directed users to an online store. Still, the remarkable thing about #NHLtweetup is not only its ability to convert an online interaction into a real-world action through Twitter — it’s the fact that the NHL enabled a self-sustaining community of online fans to convince each other to act offline.

Since the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs, hockey fans have taken #NHLtweetups far beyond its humble origins, organizing regular season viewing parties in dozens of cities across the country, most of which DiLorenzo says he is happy to provide official merchandise and memorabilia to help participants feel “emotionally connected” to NHL community.

According to DiLorenzo, the NHL audience on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms has grown 88% since the beginning of the season. Meanwhile, #NHLtweetups have also helped grow media attention for the sport. This year’s #NHLWinterClassic drove 134% more print coverage and 73% more broadcast coverage than in 2009, DiLorenzo says.

Have other examples of brands who have created self-sustaining communities of customers on Twitter or Facebook? Send them to Blog@eMarketer.com.