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David Brickley is something of a social marketing pioneer. In 2011, he founded STN Digital, a leading social-first digital marketing company in sports and entertainment. STN now has more than 50 employees and creates hundreds of pieces of content daily for partners like ESPN, Warner Bros., NBC Sports, Under Armour, the Philadelphia Phillies, and NBA star Jayson Tatum, among dozens of others. The company helped Elton John launch his TikTok. In 2023, digital sports viewership surpassed traditional television viewers for the first time. Forty-three percent of young adult sports fans follow their favorite league on social media, 54% follow their favorite athlete, and 32% of all sports fans use social media while watching games. Brickley and STN have been at the forefront of this social-first revolution. Brickley never wanted to start a social marketing agency. But when Kobe Bryant opens a dooreven by accidentyou walk through. Building a business A lifelong Lakers fan who grew up east of Los Angeles, Brickley took a job in 2011 as a producer at Fox Sports Radio with the dream of hosting his own sports talk radio show. I thought I should have my own afternoon show, he said. My program director thought differently. Shut down by the higher-ups, Brickey became an entrepreneur by necessity. He used Fox Sports AV equipment and studio space after hours to launch his own YouTube channel. At the time, original sports content on the platform was scarce. His content regularly made it on YouTubes front page, which grew his profile enough for him to start working directly with professional athletes, eventually landing Bryant as a client in 2013. In an exclusive interview, Brickley spoke with Fast Company about his evolution into a digital maven, sharing his insights on how social audience habits have changed, how he sees them evolving in the future, and how any company can build a social content strategy that works. The interview has been edited and condensed. How did you land Kobe Bryant as a client when you were just getting started as a small shop? It started with good karma. I did a ton of favors for the publicist of Matt Barnes, who was a Lakers player at the time, and as a favor, I interviewed his twins after they got on the honor roll at their elementary school. In exchange, I got a 10-minute one-on-one with Matt. Then one day I was at a boxing class and I ran into his publicist. She mentioned she was working with Kobe, so I asked if I could send over some ideas. Because of all those favors I’d done, she let me pitch Kobe the concept of the “Kobe Minute”a 60-second weekly video about his on-court and off-court successes. They loved it because we could highlight his charitable work without it feeling self-promotional. How did creating content for Kobe and his team open your eyes to the idea of creating a social marketing agency? The Kobe opportunity was the epiphany moment. I had just reached out to my childhood hero about working together, and he said yes. So I realized if I could land Kobe, I could reach other athletes and teams too. We built an Excel sheet with all 32 NFL teams, found every email, and reached out. Seven hopped on calls, three wanted proposals, and the Minnesota Vikings were willing to try us out as a partner. It was pure bootstrapped cold outreach. Being able to create your own destiny without relying on someone else for opportunity was intoxicating. You started STN Digital basically from scratch. What struggles were your clients having when creating original contentspecifically for socialand how did you position yourself as the solution? Back in 2013, every sports entity had social channelsthe Facebooks and Twitters. But they weren’t posting original content. They had these audiences but didn’t know how to engage them. Social was just a PR dump of press releases and super boring, non-fan-centric content. So my message was, “We understand fans, we understand what the sports fan wants, and we can curate content specifically on social that speaks to them.” You gotta understand that at that time, a fan-first approach of speaking authentically about topics fans cared about didnt exist. Now, as we transition to 2025, every CEO, president, CMO in the world is starting to think about a social-first approach, which is awesome to see. How does the agency work? In what ways do partners deploy your services and expertise on a given social marketing campaign or initiative? Our clients use us in one of two ways. Usually, they’ll either hire us as a world-class social media department and we run everything A to Zcopywriting, content, analytics, everythingor they’ll bolt us on as a world-class content house. In that case, they have an incredible team already, but they add us on top because their team doesnt have three and a half hours to dream up a bunch of dope ideas in a whiteboard session or simply need more engaging content for all their initiatives. ESPN has a 75-person social team with incredible engines internally, but we’re able to be that supercharger to take them from 99% potential to hopefully 125% potential. What’s an example of a creative campaign you’ve executed that you’re really proud of? Our work with the Indiana Fever during the Caitlin Clark draft just won a Webby. My team spent 70 to 80 hours creating this video of a Toy Story-esque action figure of Caitlin Clark dribbling around her bedroom, shooting hoops. It got around 10 million views on TikTok alone and 500,000 engagements. What’s interesting is we’re seeing lo-fi content outperform hi-fi content by 40% more views and 30% more engagements on average. But this high-production piece was thumb-stopping creative that nobody else was postingsomething that made people think, I gotta watch the rest of this. Its something the Fever and we are super proud to have collaborated on. What are some of the biggest misconceptions you see about social marketing content, and what strategies that may seem counterintuitive actually work? I look at social media as upper-funnel fan engagementbuilding community, credibility, and trust. But a lot of the time, brands see it as a lower-funnel platform where they’re trying to talk about brand, logo, messaging, and calls to action. You have to be social on social. You have to provide valuewhether it’s education, laughter, or elicit some type of emotion. People arent required to follow you, so why do they? You have to build that relationship. Brands that do social wrong are mostly just, “Look at me, look at me!” and constantly making calls to action. That’s not how you build true community, no different than a friendship or relationship. For every eight things you give your community, you have then earned the right to ask for two things in return. And the value you give in that 80% needs to be memorable. What are some of the other lessons you’ve learned about social engagement or audience behavior over the years? The power of real-time social, especially in sports, continues to b undervalued. During the Olympics with NBC Sports, we worked back-to-back 12-hour shifts daily and helped them get 6.5 billion impressions in 17 days. Those impressions would cost $50 million if you bought them on the open market. The key is being ready for every moment. If Simone Biles won bronze, silver, or gold, we had content ready for all scenarios with different angles and storylines. Same with Caitlin Clark’s draft. We spent 30 days planning content for before, during, and after she was picked to capitalize on arguably the biggest moment in the Fevers franchise history. How do you approach data and measurement when creating content strategies and campaigns? We follow the data of what works, but we also pay attention to how different platforms’ algorithms behave. Instagram will serve you something in your feed that happened five days ago, so there are considerations about what goes on Stories versus in-feed. We’re constantly obsessed with datanot just what’s working or not working, but what different post types perform best, whether it’s a reel, carousel, or single post. We’re analyzing timing, post type, static versus video versus carousel, and noticing how algorithms are being optimized differently across Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. We use platforms like Sprout Social and Rival IQ to get super deep with third-party and first-party data. We analyze our top 10 and bottom 10 posts constantlyweekly or monthlyto understand why certain posts underperformed. We look at who was featured, what time it was posted, whether it was a carousel versus a reel. We might notice reels are taking a dive and wonder if the algorithm has changed. Not all engagement metrics are equal, either. Watching something for 3 seconds and scrolling past is much different than watching it for the full 60 seconds. And I believe that one of the most undervalued engagement metrics is shares. If you take time to DM content to a friend saying, “This is so us,” that’s 10 times more important engagement than just a like because you’re actually taking time to send it to someone you love. We look seriously at shareability and ask, Is this something you want to DM your family or best friend? What about platforms? Which are the most important, and where do you see the most success and engagement? We still see Instagram and TikTok at the top in terms of engagement and virality. From a sports perspective, Twitter is still that real-time water coolernobody else holds a candle to it. There have been attempts with platforms like Bluesky, but we saw with the Luka Dončić trade how NBA Twitter just exploded in ways other platforms can’t replicate. Social behavior continues to swing back and forth. Once something becomes too saturated, there’s an opportunity for new platforms or content types to emerge as fresh ways to connect with audiences. The key is being adaptable and understanding where your specific audience lives and engages most authentically. Marketing efforts can often become fragmented across different departments. How should companies think about aligning their social strategy with broader marketing goals? Social and sales teamseven CMOs and marketing teamsoften operate separately from social, which is a problem. CMOs should always oversee the social department because it has to ladder up to a greater vision of value prop and audience understanding. Social and community building and fan engagement at the top of the funnel is all to eventually work people down the funnel to become customers and drive revenue generation. If I were a prospective client who came to you and said, “My social strategy sucks. What can I do?” what’s the first piece of advice you would give me? Where would you start? I would ask, What audience specifically are you trying to grow? Then we can reverse-engineer a strategy based on what that audience finds valuable, entertaining, and engaging. Are you trying to grow mass audience because you’re a large brand, or are you saturated in one demo but want to diversify? Then, once we identify the target avatar, we can develop a strategy based on what we know works with other brands talking to that same audience. Without figuring out who your customer is at the very top of the conversation, you’re just posting content and hoping it works with no real endgame. So lets figure out who youre talking to, what they want most, and how we can meet them where they are and deliver it to them.
Category:
E-Commerce
Memorial Day Weekend is upon us, marking the unofficial start of the summer vacation season in America. Yet, a recent Bankrate survey from late April found that only 46% of Americans plan to travel domestically or internationally this summer, with costs cited as the primary concern. Dwindling U.S. consumer confidence may lead some individuals to reconsider spending their precious discretionary dollars on travel. Still, you may have more travel options within your budget than you thought. For those determined to get away, theres an excellent Google Flights hack that reveals options within a certain budget. Some Google Flights aficionados know this as the anywhere hack. Heres how to use it. The Google Flights anywhere hack Google Flights is one of the best aggregators out there for finding airline tickets between any two cities on Earth. It works very simply: visit www.google.com/travel/flights, enter your departure and destination cities along with your desired departure and return dates, and click the search button. Google Flights will then reveal the best options for your selected destination across numerous airlines. However, if youre trying to stay within a certain budget, this traditional method of using Google Flights can be exhausting, because you have to check individual cities manually. For example, if your airline ticket budget is $1200, it can be tedious to enter cities one by one on Google Flights (So Paulo, then Paris, then Osaka) only to find that tickets dont fit within your budget anyway. Sticking to this method may also mean you completely overlook interesting destinations youd never considered before. Thats where the excellent Google Flights anywhere hack comes in. Its perfect for people who are more flexible in terms of their destination and put a greater priority on staying within a certain budget. Heres how it works: Go to Google Flights as normal and enter your departure city in the Where from? field. Fill out your departure and return dates, as well, in the respective fields. But then, instead of entering a specific destination in the Where to? field, type in anywhere and click the search button. Now, on the results screen, you will see a global map displaying all the options available to you from your departure city to destinations around the world for the selected dates. By default, these options will cover all price ranges. However, you can narrow the results to show only tickets that fit within your budget by clicking the price filter dropdown menu and dragging the slider to your maximum preferred price. The results will then show you where in the world you can fly while staying within your budget. And keep in mind that the Google Flights results map is as interactive as regular Google Mapsso be sure to zoom in and pan around on the map, and youll see additional flight options appear. Click on any one of them to get more details about the selected itinerary. Find even more options with the flexible date hack The anywhere Google Flights hack can help you quickly discover destinations you can travel to within your budget. But another simple hack may reveal even more destinations you can afford. Thats because you may actually be able to discover more locations within your budget if your dates are flexible, too. Route prices arent set in stone, and they vary wildly depending on the date you want to fly. To reveal these potential new options, click on the date field from the search results screen. In the drop-down menu that appears, click on the Flexible Dates tab, select any one or all of the next six months, and indicate how long you want your trip to be: for the weekend, or for one or two weeks. Google Flights will then scour the internet to find you the destinations you can go to within your budget and across the periods you selected. This flexible date hack frequently yields even more results than the anywhere hack alone because there are often significant savings to be had on routes flown during periods of lower travel demand. Just one final thing to keep in mind: While you may be able to find new destinations you can afford to explore using these Google Flights hacks, remember that once you arrive, Google Maps may not actually be the best way to navigateso be sure to pack your phone with the apps that are.
Category:
E-Commerce
The concept of advancement is baked into the way we think about workalmost like it’s a video game. Just like you dont want to stay at a particular level of that game for too long, it sometimes doesnt feel like youre succeeding at work if your title doesnt change, and you dont get a significant raise. Getting a promotion isnt just a matter of wanting it or playing the game long enough. There are several factors at playonly some of which are under your control. First, the organization needs to have a position for you to move into. If there is no role for you to play, then there isnt much you can do to get promoted this year. Second, you have to decide whether the job you would be promoted into is one you really want. Third, you have to be ready for that new set of responsibilities. So, if you want to get promoted this year, you need to get information related to all three of those issues. Is there room for me? Before you get your hopes up for a promotion, you need to know whether there is a role for you. Early on in your career, the answer to that question is probably yes. Often, the first few promotions reflect your ability to do your role with less oversight and to take on additional responsibility in your initial role. Before long, though, promotions start to involve either oversight of an entire project or supervision of people. At that point, there are fewer potential roles available than when the promotion involves more technical expertise. Once youre on that people management track, the number of potential positions above the one you have go down. You may eventually reach a point when you may be completely qualified for a future role, but there may not be a position available. What does the next role really entail? As attractive as a promotion may sound in theory, you also have to ask yourself whether you would enjoy the job in practice. This question is particularly relevant when considering the people management track. Being a supervisor of other people is a very different role than the individual contributor roles that usually precede it. Just because you enjoy the work of your organization does not mean that you will enjoy having to manage others. As you rise in the organization, the work you do goes from being focused on the tactics for achieving particular goals to formulating the strategy that will guide the path of the organization. This strategic oversight comes with additional responsibility for the success and health of the organization. The job can be exciting, but also stressful. Talking with supervisors to find out the true responsibilities you will be taking on is important. Work and life need to be integrated. If your new role requires different hours or more engagement on nights and weekends, you should think through whether your lifestyle and responsibilities will support those changes. Be sure to talk with people in your life, such as a significant other. Their life might be affected by a change in your work requirements, so you’ll need their support. What do I need to learn? When you are approaching a promotion, youll never be completely ready. There is always a lot to learn on the job. That said, there is often work you can do to prepare. Your organization may offer technical or leadership classes that you can take to begin to develop the next set of skills. Talk with your supervisor, the HR team, and any learning and development professionals in your organization to find out what options there are for you to get a jump on the next round of skills. Look at job ads that your company or others put out for similar roles and get a sense of whether your current qualifications fit. If companies prefer advanced degrees for applicants to a position, it might be time to think about going back to school. Being proactive wont guarantee you the promotion you want, but it can help speed you on your way. And if a promotion in your current organization isnt in the cards, it will also get you ready to move on when the time is right. Finally, be aware that promotions dont always happen on your timeline. It can be frustrating to feel like you have languished in a role longer than you should. But, use the time to learn, to develop your social network, and to be ready to hit the ground running when a new opportunity does open up.
Category:
E-Commerce
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