Tuesday, May 1, 2012

NBA Launches Tumblr/Pinterest Pages for Playoffs


Pinterest. Tumblr. NBA Playoffs? One of these things is not like the others… but in order to extend their social media presence in time for the 2012 Playoffs, the NBA now has pages on both Pinterest and Tumblr. These campaigns will support existing Twitter and Facebook campaigns.

The main purpose of these extensions is to increase attention to the playoffs through photo sharing. The league sees this as a worthwhile endeavor to use their “rich library of content to drive further engagement.”

Color me skeptical; I’m all about extending social media engagement wherever possible, but when I think of the NBA, Pinterest and Tumblr is largely incongruent. The main demographics for these two social media sites are hipsters and women. Unless I’ve missed something, I don’t think these are the most active supporters of the NBA. Expanding the league’s social media footprint to as many people as possible is a great idea, but this might be too large a jump. (Facts to back my assertions up courtesy of MarketingPilgrim.com: 68% of Pinterest users are female, compared to 38% of NBA fans) Noble idea, unlikely reward.

This being said, the NBA also plans on trying to push a great deal of e-commerce through both platforms—this is about the only way Pinterest makes sense to me, although they’re going to get to offer a bit more than another outlet to buy league apparel to get (let alone keep) the attention of users. Whether that’s possible has yet to be seen.

What do you think? Is this a brilliant business move on the NBA’s part, or a flop-campaign in the making?

1 comment:

  1. I agree obviously with the fact that those two sites do not seem to hit the demo of the NBA. I also think that if there was one major sport league to make those two part of part of a successful social media arsenal it would be the NBA. I'm not on either site but I must say I am sort of intrigued to jump on my girlfriend's Tumblr and Pinterest just to check out the content.

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