Harrison McIntire

The Story Behind PLinUSA’s Man City Influencer Celebration

May 15, 2018
by Harrison McIntire

Your 2017/18 Premier League Champion is Manchester City. Pep Guardiola masterminded a title-lifting season that shattered nearly every record in the book, including most Premier League points, wins, goals, and longest win streak. On their way to their 3rd Premier League trophy, the club tied their archrival Manchester United for clinching the league with the most games remaining – five.

The club’s dominance over the course of the campaign put Premier League USA in a unique position to be ready, with minimized risk, when they inevitably lifted the trophy. The official US-specific social media accounts for the Premier League were able to coordinate an influencer video that could be pushed out immediately once the title was clinched.

The video, which featured the most famous American ‘Cityzens’ from Carli Lloyd to DeMarcus Beasley to Cesaro and more, was pushed out minutes after City sealed it on both Twitter and Instagram. As the accounts are focused on being a community (they do hundreds of replies each week) supporters were included as “influencers” as well.

Dillon Payne, who spearheaded the initiative for Premier League USA said, “Once someone proposed the idea we knew we were onto something. It not only allowed us to provide a unique piece of content in such an important arc in our narrative but it also directly supported the positioning of the accounts.”

Knowing how pivotal the moment was, Dillon didn’t want to cut any corners either. He realized that Instagram’s max video length would prove to be an issue but didn’t want to lose out on the impact of a longer video.

Instead of cutting down the video, “We split it into parts. We realized that if we broke it into multiple videos we could place it into an Instagram carousel to fully leverage the brand of each influencer.”

Their followers liked the approach too. The video ended up capturing 251,000 views, 615 RTs, & 2,810 likes on Twitter and 379,904 views and 79,246 engagements on Instagram.

Graphics will always work great, but everyone will have one in some form at peak moments. Being ready with a differentiated, unique piece of content will always lead the way. Never forget that content (and timing) is king.

Full disclosure: We, Gilt Edge Soccer Marketing, run the Premier League’s US-specific social media handles.

Categories: Influencer, Premier League, Social Media