RUNNING HEAD: CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 1

Cleveland Browns Social Media Campaign Analysis

Edward Marotta

14 November 2018

John Carroll University

 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 2

Data Analysis

Throughout the course of the 2018 NFL season, the constructed week provided

information on the Cleveland Browns Twitter (@Browns) to analyze in an attempt to better tailor

messages to a specific target audience. From the text provided through the course, secondary

research, and the Browns messages themselves, there were ample social media strategies and

execution plans to dissect and provide suggestions so that the Browns may better convey

information when communicating with their audience.

Since the wave of social media hit mainstream audiences in the early 2000s, and adopted

by professional sports in the early 2010s, teams have competed in this online atmosphere, which

allows them easier, immediate access to fans and individuals interested in their team or sport. As

a result of the popularity amongst all age generations in this online atmosphere, it became a

challenge for teams to represent their messages in a fashion that would convey the appropriate

information to the targeted audience, with the expressed intent of fan engagement and further

action from that audience in support of the team. The importance of messages conveyed in a

social media setting are noted by many, including Lowes and Robillard, who conclude, “As a

mediated experience, sport news works to build an intimate connection between fans, athletes

and teams, and their live competitions. The spectator experience takes place either at an event

itself, where a select few have the privilege of watching it live, or through a mediated discourse.

The importance of mediated sporting discourse cannot be overestimated in our emerging digital

culture.” (pg. 308)

Text research in class provided an outline that teams may utilize when determining how

to reach audiences experiencing events and fanship through the mediated sporting discourse.
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 3

Bruning and Ledingham’s concept of the Organization-Public Relationship determined that a

two-way relationship between the organization and its audience was essential for growth within

the mediated space, and the Alabama OPR study applied this to sports, breaking information

provided in earlier text down into categories that fit the identity of an organization’s messages to

their audience. Professionally based tweets, or tweets that shared information about the team or

promoted an event, were most utilized in the Alabama OPR study, amassing a total of 71.4% of

all tweets observed in a constructed week.

When applying the concept of professional tweets to the Browns, much of the same was

viewed. Of the roughly 200 tweets analyzed from the Browns twitter through a constructed

week, nearly 70% were informationally or promotionally-based. Non-game days were especially

heavy in professional tweets; the Browns likely used this strategy in an attempt to keep fans

engaged with “insider information” throughout the week, when no action was taking place.

Examples of these professionally based tweets largely included articles posted daily to the

Browns website and hyperlinked through Twitter with a picture of the athlete/subject to increase

engagement, such as the October 1 tweet pertaining to Baker Mayfield.​1​ This article, clearly

defined as informational-based through the content provided, outlined an effective use of

multimedia content to drive engagement with a simple post. Pictures, emojis, and a clear subject

line all increase how an article will be engaged with, and this tweet included all of those

categories while maintaining the simple and clean look that the Browns brand is built on. While

professional tweets are useful, their repetitive nature leaves more to be desired when used in

bulk. Because of this, other types of tweets need to be utilized; the Browns included other tweets

that may pertain to OPR categories in these messages.

 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 4

Personal tweets included interactivity with influencers who support the team (such as

athletes or celebrities) and engagement with fans themselves over social media. The Browns

increased their use of these types of tweets on game days, particularly during warm-ups, where

they often posted and tagged their players in pictures and videos on the field or in the tunnel

when they arrived. On the October 14 game day against the Los Angeles Chargers, a simple

interactivity tweet was conveyed with Baker Mayfield tagged.​2​ Without regular text, and just the

use of a tag, emoji, picture, and game-related hashtag, this tweet increased fan engagement by 90

percent, when compared to the above informational tweet. With nearly 3,500 likes and 450

retweets, this tweet, and others like it, performed particularly well when compared to

professional tweets. Using influencers like Baker Mayfield to drive engagement was a useful

tactic for the Browns, and these types of tweets prove it.

Community-based tweets are also examined by the OPR model, and are essential in

developing a personality with the target audience. The personality an organization develops is

viewed as one of the most essential components of brand management, as stated by Shannon

Gross, the Director of Content Strategy for the Dallas Cowboys: “We came to realize that the

things that appeal to an audience on social media were different than those on traditional-website

media. We started creating our own content and incorporating personalities into our content,”

(Abeza 2018, pg. 297). Through this Gross showed that social media could not be treated like

any other run-of-the-mill website content. Because of the high levels of engagement and

perceived intimacy with the audience, a personality for a brand, especially in the realm of sports,

was essential to distinguish that organization from others, and secure an online fan base.
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 5

Community tweets engaged fans with entertainment, activities, and fanship with their audience,

who develop a relationship with this personality in social media channels. In the small-to-mid

sized market the Cleveland Browns play in, this connection to their community was essential to

increase the Browns’ engagement with fans on social media. While activity and fanship-based

tweets were harder to produce in a regular fashion, the Browns included these type of messages

in only 18% of collected data through the constructed week. These messages were very effective

with their audience, such as an October 18 tweet regarding Jarvis Landry 3​​ , but the Browns may

have been able to use these tweets with more regularity to increase engagement. With over 3,000

retweets and nearly 8,000 likes, NFL Films capitalized on the Browns brand within the

community with high levels of engagement that top the majority of the Browns direct messages.

NFL Films did have a more national platform, but the Browns could have used this event to

further connect with fans in a much more personal way than they did (with a retweet). Producing

more community-based content of their own would greatly benefit the Browns when attempting

to create and manage long-term relationships with fans localized in the Greater Cleveland area.

Strategic Campaign

Formative Research

In order to develop an effective strategic campaign design for the Cleveland Browns

moving forward, it is essential to gain an understanding of what type of audience they are

catering their messages to. To find this specific target audience, fans within the social media

atmosphere must be evaluated, but moving back further to sports media audiences helps provide

a basis for many fans who created long-term relationships with the team prior to their

engagement with the organization on social media.

 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 6

This concept of sports media playing a major factor in the involvement with teams was

explored through Dauncey and Hare (2014), who explain, “While the media are far from being

the sole purveyor of cultural representations of sport, their increasingly symbiotic relationship

has in recent decades given the media and professional sport a power that social and cultural

critics have challenged and an inexhaustible supply of objects of study for cultural historians.”

Although media is not the only way to show fanship, the ease of access media gives fans of

sports and sports franchises helps facilitate a more intimate relationship with that specific team,

something that helps both the fan and the team, who is looking for long-term fanship as sources

of revenue through ticket and merchandise purchasing.

Intimate relationships with fans are taken further with social media’s around-the-clock

access for users to gain insider information on teams they follow, which is why team’s largely

used professionally-based information in starting their social media campaigns. Just as Abeza

(2018) noted in their interview with Gross, these relationships needed to be developed, and social

media provided an outlet for teams to do that. Noellke (2014) viewed this relationship in a

similar light: “ Social media facilitate discussions among sports fans and extend the opportunities

to nd like-minded people. They constitute new forums for sport fans, and they facilitate the

communication between fans and athletes. Sports crucially create passion between athletes/teams

and their followers; fans tend to build strong attachments to their favorite players and clubs. This

need for proximity can be fullled through social media; in other words, ‘The world of sports

fosters social connections, a feature that is ideally suited for social media.’”

Noellke (2014) referred to sports clubs’ needs to develop a brand personality to better

connect the organization and its influencers with fans through a two-way relationship. This type
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 7

of relationship has been modeled as the most necessary component a team can have with it’s

social media strategy through course text, and Devlin (2017) provides a method to use it to an

organization’s advantage: The benefit of sport consumption is primarily rooted in social

connections; thus, a personality trait tied with socializing should be no surprise... Sport

marketing companies should continue to facilitate engagement with their team’s fans, and offer

opportunities for their fans to socialize to further appeal to their personality types,” (387).

The concept of brand personality created a strong basis for how the Browns social media

messages should be tailored to better engage with their target audience through professional,

personal, and community-based posts. With that notion in mind, the next step became obvious:

identify who the target audience is that the Browns convey their messages to.

Although the Browns have a presence on many different social media platforms,

including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and even LinkedIn, the crux of course

research focused primarily on the Browns presence on Twitter. After being given analytics on

this platform to base research of other organizations off of, Twitter user data may be directly

applicable to narrowing down who the Browns will likely be relaying their tweets to. The

Browns currently have 1.1 million followers on Twitter, and analytics show that Twitter users

are largely: 18-29-year-olds (who combine to make up more than half of all users), skew slightly

female, and have college degrees (45% of all users have a college degree, while 32% in the U.S.

make more than $75,000 annually,) (Sehl 2018).

Narrowing the Browns target audience down further, the size of their market as a

franchise heavily factors in to who is actively engaging with their posts. As a mid-market team

who competes with many other professional football teams in their geographical location (the
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 8

Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Detroit Lions are all located near their market), as

well as large-market college football teams (Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines),

and even other sports in their city (Cleveland Cavaliers/ Indians), the Browns audience is largely

centralized to competing for individuals localized in the Northeast Ohio area. With the majority

of U.S. Twitter users located in urban and suburban areas, this is representative of the market the

Browns are trying to attract, so the above demographics may be applicable to those audiences.

With users skewing younger (under 30 years old) and slightly female (but most likely an even

split based on the number of male football fans totalling 55% of the NFL audience), it can be

assumed on a base level that these are the individuals the Browns need to create messages for.

After successfully identifying these demographic categories for the audience, the Browns brand

personality may be successfully developed to deliver effective content to their target audience.

SWOT Analysis

When attempting to attract and maintain long-term relationships with fans, the Browns

are faced with multiple strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to their growth.

The Browns strengths in attracting their target audience include: a fan base that has been

committed to their hometown team for years (even through losing) with loyalty, new players that

are major influencers on social media, a rising level of success on the field due to new

management and talent, and an underdog persona. Fans in Cleveland have been connected to the

Browns largely for their entire lifetimes; Cleveland’s market makes them a place where people

are raised and stay into their adulthood, unlike places like Los Angeles and New York, where

people widely move to later in life for work and non-sports related or connected activities, so the

Browns fans likely have more of an emotional, long-term investment into their team. Influencers
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 9

like Baker Mayfield and Jarvis Landry help facilitate winning on the field, which attracts fans in

the area who want to see turnover in the league and different teams winning, which may increase

their fanbase as well. On top of their on-field performance, these specific athletes generate

headlines off-the-field with their social media presence and large individual fan bases, which

attracts fans who follow these athletes as personalities.

The Browns face setbacks in attracting fans in their target audience due to: lack of recent

success on the field, competing sports franchises in their area, a smaller market, and lack of

stability within organizational structure. With the Browns being located in Cleveland, they won’t

receive as much national attention as other successful franchises located in the larger markets of

New York or Los Angeles without winning, which has also been hard to achieve for the Browns

in recent years, most likely due to the lack of stability they’ve had from the General Manager

position down to their Head Coach and Quarterback. Having stability in these roles puts faces to

the franchise’s brand, and until the arrival of Baker Mayfield, that was largely an unknown for

the team itself. Due to this, even fans in the Greater Cleveland area may flock to other, more

successful programs, such as the Ohio State Buckeyes or Pittsburgh Steelers, who are located

near the Browns target market.

Opportunities for the Browns on social media include: the high likelihood of turnover for

teams in their division who have been successful, activities in their community that pertain to

their target market, retaining players that actively show an interest in community-based events,

and the NFL putting more of a spotlight on the team through programs such as HBO’s “Hard

Knocks.” Although the Browns cannot control what other teams in their division do, the high

likelihood of coaches getting fired (Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh) gives them an
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 10

opportunity to take advantage of winning divisional games that fans are emotionally invested in

while other franchises are in down years. Winning puts more of a spotlight on the team and

attracts fans they may have lost previously in the area, and is facilitated through NFL programs

such as Hard Knocks, which creates an emotional investment in the team and it’s players. Along

with those players comes finding the right people (not necessarily the best players) to aid in

Cleveland-sentric activities that citizens of the area care about, and retaining those players after

they build an emotional attachment from fans. Capitalizing on these location-based activities

(such as the Lake Erie Plunge) is essential in creating a long-term, two-way relationship with

fans, and is an opportunity for only the team in that specified market.

Threats that the Browns face when attracting fans are: The success of other teams in their

market, their lack of primetime television games, sports media programming’s lack of coverage

of the team, and former players’ success in other markets. With the Browns constantly

competing with the Indians, Buckeyes, and Steelers for fans and media attention, it hurts their

coverage when they are losing and these other teams are winning. Ratings go down when users

can change their programming to a more competitive game, but the league and sports media do

not do anything to help the Browns in retaining or attracting fans. Their lack of primetime games

means that they are only regionally broadcast, during a time where fans have the ease of access

to multiple games being played simultaneously, and when covering the Browns, ESPN, NFL

Network and others largely run shorter segments than they would even for the Steelers. Their

lack of coverage on national broadcasts regionally and nationally hurts their chances of building

meaningful fan engagement. Additionally, it is not a good look for the team on that national
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 11

programming scale when their former players, such as Josh Gordon of the New England Patriots,

leave the team and have more success, along with more national coverage elsewhere.

Overall, the Browns have had a lot to overcome in recent years to build their narrative

online to what it is even now, but are trending upwards with the arrival of Baker Mayfield, Jarvis

Landry, and stability in the front office. These factors increase play on the field, but also provide

opportunities for the Browns to capitalize on personal brands and change the narrative of their

team around the Greater Cleveland area, where they are largely trying to attract fans from.

Strategic Plan and Design

The Browns Twitter campaign is designed with the explicit goal of increasing the

connection between the team and it’s players to the Cleveland community, where the largest

portion of their fans reside. The mission of the Cleveland Browns Twitter is to facilitate a

relationship with the Browns, their affiliates (players and influencers), and the Greater Cleveland

area community through intimate personal connections, accurate and concise informational

content, and community-based activities. These areas all form a structure, which the Browns will

use as the foundation of a strong two-way street of communication in the online atmosphere.

SMART objectives that will help the Browns develop a well-managed Twitter feed that

executes their vision statement to the target audience on their December 9 home game against

the Carolina Panthers are:

1. Post a total of three community-based tweets to generate a total of 7,500 likes and

retweets online, increasing engagement numbers by over 40% due to these tweets

that day.
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 12

2. Post five personal tweets to gain a total of 5,000 likes and retweets, while

expanding the Browns’ connection with these players by 25% (due to the increase

in amount of tweets/interaction with these tweets, in comparison to an average

game day.)

3. Post four total promotional tweets pre and post-game, earning a total of 2,500

likes and retweets and increasing engagement by 20% on these types of tweets.

(Content calendar located in appendix.)

Evaluation

Success in the Twitter campaign can be easily measured by comparing actual results to

the desired results of the campaign, as communicated through the campaign’s SMART

objectives. The overall goal of the campaign was to meet or exceed expectation guidelines

presented through SMART objectives, while effectively communicating with the audience

through the scope of the organization’s vision statement and campaign goal. Specific and

measurable goals are key indicators of a successful campaign, and can measure (not count) levels

of engagement that the audience has with the team, as well as provide feedback to modify the

campaign approach moving forward to better suit the audience’s desires.

When reporting back to the client with these results, a layout of the content calendar,

along with SMART objectives that detail desired outcomes, will help communicate a successful

campaign back to that individual/ group. Using these pieces of information, along with collecting

analytic data provided by Twitter to account holders, will help the client see how effective the

social media campaign was in communicating the campaign goals with the organization’s vision
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 13

statement at the forefront of their campaign through SMART objective-based social media

messages.

In the case of the Browns’ Twitter campaign, each tweet was sent out during the

December 9 game day with a specific purpose. Whether it was engaging with players through

multimedia content, showing fanship to people attending the game, highlighting the arrival of a

Browns legend, or simply promoting that specific game, each tweet creatively, yet directly,

communicated a campaign SMART objective to the audience. Further, each tweet sent out, from

promotions early in the day to community-based content, kept the local Cleveland community

engaged with content by directly addressing them, such as using the words “hometown,” “you,”

or simply “Cleveland.” This wordage was tactically placed in the content of posts to ensure that

fans based in-or-near the Greater Cleveland area (the target audience) felt directly engaged with,

as well as following the community-heavy vision statement of the Twitter campaign. Because of

these tactics, the Browns Twitter page received higher engagement among fans in the local

Cleveland area than any other game day of the season, and promoting the next match-up in a

similar light argues that this game will likely yield similar results.

Overall, the local fan base of Cleveland is what largely drives engagement and interaction

numbers for the Browns up, so tapping into this specific audience is smart for the Browns to

utilize. Influencers who take stakes in community activities provide an extra layer of fanship for

this audience, and must be heavily included in the promotion of the team on game days.
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 14

Works Cited

Abeza, G. (2018). The Past, Present, and Future of Social Media in Professional Sports:

Interview With Shannon Gross, Director of Content Strategy, Dallas Cowboys.

International Journal of Sport Communication,​ ​11(​ 3), 295–300. Retrieved from

http://jcu.ohionet.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s

3h&AN=132020466&site=eds-live

Dauncey, H., & Hare, G. (2014). Sport and media: representing and conceptualising identity and

community. / Sports et médias : représentation et conceptualisation, identité et

commu-nauté. ​Movement & Sport Sciences / Science & Motricité​, (86), 5–14. Retrieved

from

http://jcu.ohionet.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s

3h&AN=98642151&site=eds-live

Devlin, M. B., & Brown-Devlin, N. (2017). Using Personality and Team Identity to Predict

Sports Media Consumption. ​International Journal of Sport Communication,​ ​10(​ 3),

371–392. Retrieved from

http://jcu.ohionet.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s

3h&AN=124843348&site=eds-live

​ ew York. Routledge, 2016. Print.

Kim, Carolyn Mae. ​Social Media Campaigns. N

Lowes, M., & Robillard, C. (2018). Social Media and Digital Breakage on the Sports Beat.

International Journal of Sport Communication,​ ​11(​ 3), 308–318. Retrieved from

http://jcu.ohionet.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s

3h&AN=132020464&site=eds-live
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 15

Nolleke, D., Grimmer, C. G., & Horky, T. (2017). NEWS SOURCES AND FOLLOW-UP

COMMUNICATION Facets of complementarity between sports journalism and social

media. ​JOURNALISM PRACTICE,​ ​11(​ 4), 509–526.

https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2015.1125761

Sehl, K. ​100+ Social Media Demographics that Matter to Marketers.​ Hootsuite. 2018. Print.
 CLEVELAND BROWNS SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ANALYSIS 16

Appendix

1. “Baker Mayfield owns turnovers in otherwise impressive debut as starter (newspaper

emoji) >> brow.nz/qesqrN (picture of Baker Mayfield).”

2. “(soon emoji) #LACvsCLE @bakermayfield (picture of Baker Mayfield).”

3. “RT @NFL Films: @God_Son80 kept his promise to his high school sweetheart by

using his platform to help put an end to CF. He hopes to continue looking for a cure in his

new city with the @Browns #NFLFilmsPresents: Keeping a Promise (video),”