Embracing the Social in Social Media

Abstract

This article addresses the rise of social media in professional sport and the varying ways in which sport organizations have interacted with consumers in the social media environment. We examine one particularly interesting case: The innovative social media marketing practices of the Los Angeles Kings hockey organization, most especially through its twitter account @LAKings. Through the use of digital ethnography, we analyze and interpret official statements produced within the context of the Kings marketing and consumer strategies. We argue that the Los Angeles Kings’ social media strategy illustrates the potential collaborative efforts of an organization and its consumers in a social media space. This “coexistence” between brand and consumer provides the organization an opportunity to encourage relationship development and brand community.

Keywords

social media strategic marketing consumer behavior relationship marketing Twitter

To everyone in Canada outside of BC, you’re welcome. (@LAKings, 2012)

On April 12, 2012, at 1:26 a.m. this statement made via the social networking site Twitter was cast forth onto and unexpectedly received by the followers of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Los Angeles Kings. The “Vancouver tweet”—delivered by the Kings’ official Twitter account, @LAKings—was certainly not the only tweet sent in these mid-April late-night hours. However, the sentiment conveyed by @LAKings on this evening was exemplary of a different perspective on the implementation of social media strategy among businesses and sport organizations. Rather than maintaining measured distance from the social media masses (i.e., fans, media, and other organizations), the Kings inserted themselves directly into their virtual community. Through what was certainly a precarious maneuver, the months that followed would suggest that social media need not serve as solely a communicative or promotional mechanism but as a space for a brand or organization to be real, just as its consumers or fans are. Such a strategy, we surmise, can foster and encourage interaction between multiple entities—particularly, between consumers or fans and the brand or organization—strengthening the (brand) community in the process.

As such, taking an in-depth look at @LAKings, and the responses that the account has garnered, provides an opportunity to develop a better understanding of a particular series of interactions that we view as innovative and groundbreaking within the realm of professional sport marketing. More specifically, through the use of case study analysis, we investigate how @LAKings has been able to foster brand community through its use of earnest, inventive, and, at times, comical and controversial,¹ online interactions.

The article begins with a review of relevant literature, including discussions of convergence, passive and active consumers, brand community, and a brief review of Twitter and how it has impacted the world of professional sport. Following the review of literature, the Los Angeles Kings and their innovative social media strategies are introduced. By using digital ethnographic techniques through case study analysis, we provide distinct examples and draw conclusions that serve to attempt to explain the influential nature of LA Kings social media strategies.

Convergence and Sport

The exponential growth of new media in the past decade has contributed to an increasingly complex media landscape, which Jenkins (2006) referred to in Convergence Culture, as media convergence.² Convergence is a coexistence of multiple media platforms; rather than new forms of media replacing old or one type of media becoming preferred over another, media platforms are viewed as cooperative, with each maintaining a place in the spectrum of media platforms. Convergence, Jenkins argued, is not limited to an array of technologies, nor is it constrained by traditional producers of media content; in theory, convergence considers the media consumer as well. For the consumer, this involves the use of multiple (traditional and/or new) media platforms, fostering a more engaged and interactive community of consumers. As Jenkins (2006) stated:

If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable and stayed where you told them to stay, then new consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old consumers were isolated individuals, the new consumers are more socially connected. If the work of media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and public. (pp. 18–19)

Although Jenkins’ suggestion that relative to those of yesterday, consumers of today are more active, migratory, and socially connected is valid, it is Jenkins’ last point—that new consumers of today are noisy and public—that has encouraged an environment for the active, migratory, and socially connected consumer. New media consumers are perceived as active because they have the mechanisms to be so in the public sphere; they are viewed as more migratory because new media has exposed them to alternatives; and they are seen to be more socially connected because technologies and social networking communities have brought them together.³

The convergence of media technologies has allowed for—though not guaranteed—a more efficient participatory culture, whereby individual media consumers share (if not co-opt) power with producers of media. Such a dynamic allows consumers take an active role in the way they consume media and, in some instances, become producers of media themselves (Hutchins & Rowe, 2013; Jenkins, 2006; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009). When consumers actively participate in the production of information, they are serving to spread messages. The spreadability of messages is the central thesis of Jenkins, Ford, and Green (2013) that builds on the ideas of convergence. Extending beyond the theory of convergence, “Spreadability refers to the potential—both technical and cultural—for audiences to share content for their own purposes, sometimes with the permission of rights holders, sometimes against their wishes” (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013. p. 3). The agency that consumers have garnered in the production and circulation of content has served to alter the creation and circulation of media.

A Shifting Media Landscape

Passive and active consumers

Historically dominant media platforms such as television, radio, and newspaper have ensured a divisive boundary between the media producer and consumer, allowing for the hegemony of corporations, with consumers merely acting as passive consumers (Jenkins, 2006; Marwick & Boyd, 2010). Simply put, traditional media platforms provide nearly all authority to media producers, with the consumers’ sole responsibility to consume produced material.

Contrasted with the passive media consumer, new media has allowed for the emergence of the active media consumer. While active consumers exist in the traditional media space (e.g., an individual can call a broadcasting company to voice his or her opinion or write a letter to the editor of a newspaper), new media platforms such as Twitter have allowed the voice of the active consumer to be amplified as a result of its public nature. On this same note, it should not be misunderstood that all users of new media are assumed to be active consumers (e.g., it has been estimated that less than one third of Twitter users are active users; Lunden, 2012); a sizeable population of passive users are, at most, merely observing the actions of other Twitter users (e.g., using Twitter as a news reader or following their friends).

While traditional media allows for vertical flow of content from powerful conglomerates to isolated consumers, new media has allowed for information to flow horizontally between consumers (Rosen, 2006). This sideways flow of information allows consumers to share information and, through social networks, allows them to pool knowledge in what Pierre Lévy (1997) referred to as collective intelligence. Within these communities, consumers can share their expertise with other members of the community, contributing to a collective intelligence generated by consumers rather than traditional media sources. The emergence of new media has allowed for the cultivation of virtual communities, comprising consumers tied together by a shared interest.

Although media convergence can be observed in a variety of content areas, perhaps one of the most illustrative areas is mediated sport. Today, media producers can broadcast a sporting event on television, radio, and/or the Internet, while also disseminating information through social media networks before, during, and after the event. As a result of these options, the sport media consumer has the ability to choose how he or she consumes a given sporting event (and, as well, to actively create new content, as is the case with produsage). For example, a consumer can watch a sporting event on television, stream live highlights on the Internet, and interact with fellow sport fans and/or teams on Twitter or Facebook simultaneously. Additionally, due to the vast availability of mediated content, individuals may choose to go to official entities (i.e., official team websites) or they may choose to garner information from tertiary entities (i.e., team-related blogs). Thus, the consumer’s ability to decide how he or she consumes the event can challenge the power of the media producer.

Brand community

Extending the notion of consumer choice in media consumption and “sideways” exchange of information, the idea of brand community—defined by Muñiz and O’Guinn (2001) as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand” (p. 412)—suggests that rather than a traditional dyadic relationship between a brand or organization and its consumers, the relationship is more triadic (wherein the organization communicates with consumers, but recognizing consumers also communicate with each other) or even customer centric (this model suggests the consumer is the center of the relationship between consumer and brand, with the brand, its products or services, organization, and employees branching from this center point; see McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002). Thus, considering the consumer-centric view of community allows for the acknowledgement of the complex, interrelated relationships that exist not only between a consumer and a brand but also between a consumer and the organization, its product and service offerings, and the individuals who market them. Considering the latter, as McAlexander, Schouten, and Koenig (2002) explained in their ethnographic research on brand communities, “marketers also contribute to the process of community building by creating the context in which owner interaction occurs” (p. 42).

Treating social media sites as spaces for virtual community creation and existence allows marketing professionals to strategically organize and encourage community as a way to enhance the consumer experience. Further, by participating in community conversations themselves, marketing professionals can encourage dialogue between the organization and the consumer, which “conveys confidence, accessibility, respect and authenticity to people both inside and outside of the brand community” (Hanlon & Hawkins, 2008, p. 15). Although adopting social media as a strategic marketing tool (in addition to its basic promotional usefulness for organizations) has had mixed appeal among professionals, some organizations (e.g., Amazon, Brooks Running, Chobani, Starbucks, and Taco Bell) have embraced their ability to be a member of their own brand communities. For example, Chobani’s digital communications and social media team is encouraged to be “warm and quirky, engaging and inviting” (Greengard, 2012, ¶3) in an effort to forge relationships with its current (and potential) consumers.

Twitter

Collective intelligence and brand community are particularly evident on Twitter.⁴ Each Twitter user’s profile page is considered a microblog in that it consists of short, 140-character max messages (rather than a traditional “web” log, or blog, which consists of longer messages). As Murthy (2011) wrote, microblogs “can facilitate virtual communities because users feel a continuous partial presence of other users” (p. 782). In addition to the users a Twitter user follows, users can connect with one another by using a “hashtag” (i.e., a word or phrase preceded by a # sign).⁵ Hashtags allow Twitter users to connect with others outside of his or her social network; thus, whether intentional or not, a Twitter hashtag can amass a group of users, allowing for the cultivation of a social networking community that may never have existed in the absence of the hashtag.

Twitter and sports

Because social media websites such as Twitter allow users to communicate constantly—in real time—consumers have subsequently grown to expect information to be available to them instantly, regardless of a topic’s significance (Redhead, 2007). Considering sport, the conversations among sports fans that once took place at the stadium, pub, or around the television are now oftentimes manifesting themselves in digital form (i.e., in tweets, likes, blog posts, or comment sections). In particular, Twitter gives the user instant access to thousands of other users interested in the same game or entity, broadening the ever-changing participatory role of fandom.

The popularity of Twitter has extended into the sports industry, drastically changing the way sport is consumed. A majority of professional athletes and sports teams possess Twitter accounts (Wertheim, 2011), and sport fans have followed suit, becoming just as involved (if not more) as the teams and athletes they support. For example, more than 150 million Olympic Games–related tweets were sent during the 2 weeks of the London 2012 games (Clarke, 2012), with fans using the social networking websites to complement the traditional broadcast of the event. With athletes and sport teams encouraging the use of social media websites like Twitter, sport fans are being conditioned to participate in Twitter “conversations,” as they consume the sport event via traditional methods (e.g., television or live attendance). In this sense, Twitter has become a valuable medium for sport fans and properties to communicate with each other as a sporting event takes place (Boyle & Whannel, 2010; Hutchins, 2011).

It should be noted, however, that this real-time communication between fans (and athletes or teams) is never intended (or desired) to replace traditional sport consumption (i.e., television viewing or live attendance). Rather, as Boyle and Whannel (2010) have argued, social media can be thought of as an extension or broadening of the media landscape. As an additive complement to traditional media, social media has contributed to an increasingly dynamic and complex media landscape and consequently has impacted sport culture and media. Technology has given way to a grassroots convergence in which consumers—not just media conglomerates—can choose the way in which they consume media by bundling various media platforms to best meet their desires (Jenkins, 2006). Similarly, new media has given media conglomerates and organizations the opportunity to communicate with consumers off the air, enabling them—if they so choose—to capitalize on a space (i.e., social media) for relationship development and branding.

The influence of social networking sites such as Twitter on sport consumption and/or fandom has been examined in a variety of areas, including uses and gratifications among followers (see Clavio & Kian, 2010); live tweeting during an event (see Highfield, Harrington, & Bruns, 2013); telepresence (see Hutchins, 2011); and sport journalism (see Sanderson & Hambrick, 2012; Sheffer & Schultz, 2010). The most successful organizations in the social media space appear to focus less on their promotional bottom line and more on being active, relatable, and truthful—all in an effort to facilitate a community-like environment where organizations and consumers seamlessly exist.

Such an approach to social media has been undertaken by the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings. Under their Twitter alias, @LAKings, the professional hockey organization has capitalized on the community-like atmosphere of social media to position itself as a brand (or, team) consumers can trust. Thus, in the next section, we turn our attention to the actions of the Los Angeles Kings on Twitter (and, in a related fashion, to its various connective armatures in the Los Angeles Kings brand community). In so doing, we emphasize how @LAKings has enabled the organization to interact with fans, and nonfans alike, in a unique and, we believe, game-changing fashion.

Case Study and Digital Ethnography

To investigate the social media strategies of the Los Angeles Kings, we employed case study analysis. As Flyvberg (2011) noted, “Case studies comprise more detail, richness, completeness, and variance—that is, depth—for the unit of study” (p. 301). Due to the unpredictable nature of social media and the response that interactions on social media can garner, we determined case study analysis would be advantageous to obtain a deep understanding of particular social media strategies.

Following the methodological footsteps of Norman (2012), we conducted digital ethnography (Murthy, 2011), focusing on the online interactions produced by @LAKings and the subsequent online media produced by a wide variety of news agencies, sports-focused websites, and bloggers. Ethnography allows the researcher to explore an idea or question rather than set out to test a structured set of research hypotheses (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1998). The insight obtained through ethnographic research is unique relative to other qualitative research methods, as it allows the researcher to observe or experience the naturalness of a scene.

Considering digital ethnography as a method of inquiry, researchers are afforded the opportunity to unobtrusively observe the interactions of individuals in a virtual space (Kozinets, 2002; Murthy, 2011). Thus, conducting digital ethnography enabled us to gather and interpret information and interactions produced in cyberspace.⁶ Following Ruhleder (2000),

Sustained longitudinal involvement will enable observers to watch and participate in the unfolding of norms, patterns, rhythms, relationships and folktales. The involvement will help develop an understanding of how virtual communities absorb and respond to new members, and how they maintain their viability in periods of change and turmoil. (p. 5)

By following @LAKings since early 2011, and reviewing all of the tweets that the account has produced (roughly 32,000 tweets), we were able to develop a deep understanding of the focus and characteristics that has come to typify the account. Additionally, we reviewed the content produced by two prominent Los Angeles Kings blogs, The Royal Half and Mayor’s Manor.⁷ Although many Kings blogs exist, these two, in particular, garnered our interest due to the direct interactions the two digital spaces have had with the Kings (i.e., being linked to on the official Kings website, kings.nhl.com; contributing original content to that official website; being re-tweeted and/or tweeting at each other on Twitter; and so forth). We also surveyed content on the faux news blog, LAKingsInsider.com, which is run as a team-owned blog that provides interviews, game recaps, and so forth. Finally, we reviewed content produced by sport-related media outlets such as Deadspin.com, Yahoo Sports Puck Daddy blog, ESPN.com and non-Kings specific hockey blogs. By extending our investigation beyond entities with direct ties to the Kings, we aimed to provide a more holistic view of the phenomena.

Social Media and the Los Angeles Kings

Within this section, we discuss how the LA Kings have used social media—specifically beginning during the 2012 Stanley Cup Play-Offs—to upset the social media practices of the NHL, which, to that point, had proven to be very predictable and banal (announcing game scores, player appearances, team news, etc.). We begin with a discussion of the NHL and its relationship to social media before turning our attention to an analysis of the Kings social media practices. Through our analysis, we found that the Kings achieved new media success by injecting their social media efforts with personality, earnestness, and brand animation. As a result of these facets, the Kings have been able to foster an effective brand community.

Since the lockout of the 2005 NHL season, hockey has found itself in tumultuous times (at least, in terms of the U.S. television market). Once a prominent player on Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) and its affiliates, hockey has been relegated to outsider status within the sporting mainstream, prominently visible only in the historically hockey-fond regions that are lightly spotted throughout the American landscape (namely, the Northeast in New York, Boston, and Pennsylvania and parts of the Midwest in Chicago and Detroit). Excluding the 2010 U.S. Olympic hockey team, there has been little collective appreciation for hockey—within the United States—since the 2005 NHL lockout.⁸

In the time following the lockout of 2005, social media was beginning its rise to prominence. During this time, Twitter was being put into motion (c. 2006) and the NHL and its teams were looking to rebrand themselves in order to reinsert themselves into the American sporting consciousness. Following Hutchins (2011), Twitter provided the opportunity to “produce stories about sports, intensifying and proliferating media sports content and information available in the public sphere, and forcing new ways of thinking about the interaction between sport and digital media by sports organizations, athletes, journalists, publicists and fans” (p. 239). Through Twitter, a new opportunity for brand, and thus league, development became viable.

In what had been the case since the advent of sport-related social media communication, sports organizations continued the trend of communicating, through Twitter, in a less than exciting fashion, not wanting to be controversial, unique, or bulletin board worthy, while also maintaining a high degree of control over team-related information.⁹ However, as the popularity of the microblogging site increased, and its use became more widespread, interesting transformations were occurring. One team in particular chose to embrace social media in a way not previously seen: The Los Angeles Kings.

Introducing the @LAKings

To understand that impact of @LAKings, it is vital to know the characters behind the handle. In 2010, Dewayne Hankins was employed by the Kings to manage @LAKings, the social media (i.e., Twitter) presence of the Los Angeles Kings¹⁰ (Wyshynski, 2012). Hankins viewed the Kings as a prime career development opportunity due to the willingness of the Kings to provide the funds that Hankins had deemed necessary for success. It was also vital to Hankins that he be allowed to develop a unique voice for the Kings through his social media practices, stating in an interview:

Part of the deal for me coming in was that if we're going to do this, we're going to go all-in. Be different. Be unique. In L.A., you can do that. We’re the little brother of the other four or five teams here, so we gotta do something to be entertaining. If you’re a different team, you can't do this. The Lakers can’t. Not to the extent that we can. (Wyshynski, 2012, ¶17)

Hankins was provided the opportunity to navigate his own ship by the Kings and in September 2011, the partnership behind @LAKings was formed through the hiring of the then-Kings intern, Pat Donahue. Hankins had a few recommendations for Donahue in saying, “We’re going to give you the keys to this, but we want to make sure that it’s funny, that it remains snarky” (Wyshynki, 2012, ¶18). Through the guidance of Hankins, and the inventiveness of Donahue, a powerful partnership had been formed; one that only months later would challenge the norms and boundaries of sport-related social media.

The Vancouver tweet

Although the momentum of @LAKings had begun with the union of Hankins and Donahue, the real visibility of the pair’s Twitter experiment would not be fully realized until the 2012 NHL play-offs.¹¹ Prior to Game 1 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals, oddsmakers and fans alike had forecast a quick, rather painless series for the Canucks who had won the NHL’s President’s Trophy, which is handed out to the team that has the most points during the regular season. But in Game 1, the Kings came out flying and in a hard fought battle notched a 4-2 win. A surprising result considering the preseries prediction, what was perhaps even more surprising was the way in which @LAKings commented on the win, through the dissemination of the now infamous “To everyone in Canada outside of BC, you’re welcome” tweet.¹² The response was swift and varied from outrage to praise. Many considered @LAKings to be out of line (including the Kings own head coach, Darryl Sutter); however, the men behind the handle argued that they were using Twitter to its optimal function.

The tweet served the purpose that Hankins and Donahue had planned for: it elicited a response. Due to the varied nature of the responses to the tweet, many—specifically, those associated with the Vancouver Canucks—believed that the Kings organization needed to apologize. How Hankins and Donahue handled the Vancouver tweet fall out would become as influential as the tweet itself.

During the same day that the controversial tweet was sent, an apology was made by the Los Angeles Kings’ Vice President of Communications and Broadcasting, Michael Altieri, who stated, “We encourage our digital team to be creative, interactive and to apply a sense of humor whenever possible. To anyone who found it offensive we sincerely apologize” (Shoalts, 2012, ¶2). Though an apology had been offered, it was clear that the Kings viewed the role of a team’s official Twitter page to be far different than any other official capacity Twitter entity had been previously. In speaking with the author of Monarchy Hockey, a hockey blog authored by Adam Williams, Hankins offered his opinion on the role that a team’s official Twitter page should have:

I’d have to say I am still surprised by how much publicity our Twitter feed gets. At the end of the day, we aren’t saying anything groundbreaking—we’re just saying things you wouldn’t normally hear from an ‘official’ team account. And that’s really the difference; we’re using Twitter exactly as it was intended—to interact with our fanbase. Social media is a two-way conversation and Twitter, specifically, is designed for great one-liners that can be shared and re-tweeted. All we’re doing is injecting a little personality into @LAKings. There are accounts far more interesting, funny or racier than ours—it only gets the attention because we’re not ‘supposed’ to act that way. (Monarchy Hockey, 2012)

Through Hankins’ statement it becomes clear that he believes that the role of the official Twitter feed of a sports team has the opportunity to be more than simply a place for updates, scores, and directly relevant team information. In his estimation, the official Twitter feed should serve as an extension of the franchise and should have the opportunity to interact within the world of social media as it seems to be fit. Thanks to Hankins and Donahue’s forward thinking, social media within the NHL had been adapted in less than 140 characters.

Through what was being referred to as the “@LAKings Model” (Monarchy Hockey, 2012), a new level of authenticity and interaction was available to those interested in the Los Angeles Kings in specific and hockey in general. Those in other forms of new media were also taking note of the work of @LAKings. Writers of the popular but critical sports blog Deadspin praised to the work of @LAKings stating @LAKings, “is a window into the future of social media in sports” (Dickey, 2012, ¶1). Fans were taking notice of the unique space that @LAKings was occupying as well; as a result of the encouragement and acceptance of social interaction by @LAKings, the popularity of the feed grew by leaps and bounds. Prior to the Vancouver tweet, the feed had approximately 70,000 followers (Monarchy Hockey, 2012). At the time of this writing, @LAKings has amassed roughly 322,400 followers,¹³ and the Vancouver tweet has garnered over 13,000 re-tweets.

With newfound popularity and due to the stance that @LAKings had taken with regard to fan interaction, a new and unique communication market between a team’s official social media producers and fans had been created. Although it has been commonplace for many years for fans to affiliate with their chosen teams through various practices (e.g., wearing team apparel, attending team functions, and communicating on message boards), the availability and encouragement of interaction through the use of Twitter has given fans another—oftentimes more personal—way of developing involvement with the team. This newly formulated interaction has served to blur the lines that exist between fans and the teams they support. In a time in which attending sporting events is financially unrealistic for many, the availability of an interactive source like a team’s official Twitter page can act like a dividend for a fan’s investment.

Changing the Game: The Role of Personality in Social Media

Cha, Haddadi, Benevenuto, and Gummadi (2010) attempted to quantitatively break down how a Twitter user goes about developing an influential platform, explaining that, “influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally, but through concerted effort” (Cha et al., 2010, p. 17). Although the study was published in 2010, 2 years before @LAKings authored their influential tweet, it does serve to cloud these findings. @LAKings had been developing influence since its inception, however through one tweet, @LAKings became one of the most influential members of the sport media realm on Twitter. The tweet not only ushered in a new age of social media practice within professional hockey, but also served to connect teams to their fans in an organic and far less business-like fashion.

What resulted from this tweet was visible personality and flair, which provided consumers enjoyment in a way that a box score never could. It is often stated that professional sport is entertainment, and @LAKings has served to inject a unique type of entertainment into professional sports media. The important occurrence to note is that it has changed professional hockey’s social media practices in an instant. Though this process appears to have been building over time, change did in fact occur instantaneously.

Returning to Jenkins (2006), the following passage offers insight into the success that @LAKings has had:

Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift. Convergence alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences. Convergence alters the logic by which media industries operate and by which media consumers process news and entertainment. (p. 15)

The individuals behind @LAKings realized that a shift was taking place in the landscape of the media consuming and producing public and they chose to embrace and accelerate change rather than resist it like many of their counterparts. What was viewed as a rogue—and within many circles, blatantly offensive—action served to inject a bit of humanistic vigor into a practice that was sorely behind the times. By ruffling a few feathers, @LAKings not only opened the door for the Kings organization to connect with their fan base in a way not previously experienced, but they also paved the way for the other 29 NHL franchises to follow in their footsteps. Speaking of the Kings’ Twitter feed, Deadspin’s Jack Dickey makes the point with poignant accuracy by stating:

There’s personality in the Kings’ stream. The subscriber knows there’s a human sensibility behind the feed and appreciates it. Putting humans behind a feed representing the teams allows us to envision the teams as a sentient entity with its own identity and its own voice. We always search for identities with our teams. We want them to be tough, resilient, whatever. But the Kings’ feed adds a new dimension—what would your team say if it could talk? (Dickey, 2012, ¶7)¹⁴

Through their unique use of Twitter, @LAKings has broken down certain barriers that once alienated the hockey fan from their favorite players and teams. What has resulted is a new culture of fandom that is shifting the fan from a strictly voyeuristic role to that of a participant or coproducer. The door has been opened for the sport-consuming public to participate in sport consumption in a new and unique manner, in a collective community environment that had never before been available to this extent. As Jenkins et al. (2013) stated:

Whatever audiences’ motivations, they may discover new markets, generate new meanings, renew once-faded franchises, support independent producers, locate global content which was never commercially introduced in a local market, or disrupt and reshape the operations of contemporary culture in the process. In some cases, these outcomes are the direct goal of participatory culture; in others, they are a byproduct. Companies that tell audiences to keep their hands off a brand’s intellectual property cut themselves off from these processes, many of which might create and prolong the value of media texts. (p. 35)

How this environment will evolve is anyone’s guess; however, the days of passive fandom are reaching the end of the road.

Earnestness

Carlson and Peifer (2013) discussed how pop culture political satirist/pseudo-journalist Jon Stewart has been able to shift the boundaries of discursive responsibility within the world of political communication. They explained that Stewart—who has long been known for his satire, most recently displayed through his hosting of the politically laden nightly news program, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—has been able to encourage this shift in the landscape of the news reporting media through a unique mix of humor, earnestness, and political positioning.¹⁵

Of the rationales presented by Carlson and Peifer (2013) explaining the ascendency of Stewart, the most pertinent and transposable to the success of @LAKings is the concept of earnestness. Carlson and Peifer (2013) used a working definition of earnestness that defines the concept as, “A perceived trait of authenticity and sincerity, undergirded by strong convictions and serious intention” (p. 337). Although we acknowledge the contentious nature of terms like authenticity and sincerity, by employing them as a collectively bound conglomeration embedded within the concept of earnestness, an appropriate site of comparison is created. Replacing the comparative entities of journalism and Jon Stewart with traditional sporting franchise social media practices and @LAKings, respectively, the similarities of the two separate situations become apparent and comparison suitable.

Essentially, @LAKings, like Stewart, has chosen to exist as a dualistic entity that has the ability to be both satirical and official by undergirding one’s social media practice with earnestness. Though @LAKings may masquerade as a comedic Twitter persona—which can be seen through their interactions with the official twitter feed of the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey club: @BlueJacketsNHL (see Wyshynski, 2013)—at the end of the day, they are the official social media representation of an NHL hockey franchise, and as a result, their ultimate goal is the furtherance of the commercial viability of the Los Angeles Kings brand.

Take, for example, an interaction @LAKings had with @BlueJacketsNHL on April 6, 2013. At this time, the Blue Jackets were fighting for a place in the NHL play-offs and needed the Kings to beat the Edmonton Oilers to aid in the divisional point standings. In response to the requests, @LAKings authored a tweet that carried the following message: “A lot of Blue Jackets fans want us to beat the Oilers to help them out. But what has #Lumbus ever done for us? #TRH” (@LAKings, 2013). Although the text of the tweet seems fairly innocuous, the tweet also contained a picture of Jeff Carter, clad in a Kings sweater, standing in an agricultural field with the Stanley Cup hoisted overhead—Carter had been traded from Columbus to Los Angeles during the 2012 season and was instrumental in the Kings Stanley Cup victory. Commenting on the interactions with @BlueJacketsNHL, Dewayne Hankins stated,

We get along with them because they are trying to do the same thing we are, have fun. I don’t know when it started, but they were responding to what we said and it snowballed. We take jabs at them, they jab right back, it’s all good-natured. No other group has that dynamic, they think we are attacking them when really we’re just trying to get fans talking. This isn’t personal, we aren’t super fans having twitter wars. It’s marketing departments. (Wyshynski, 2013, ¶12, emphasis ours)

Although less evident than the obvious jab regarding Jeff Carter, the tweet mentioned previously contained another interesting portion. The seemingly innocuous hashtag at the end of the tweet, #TRH, signified that author of the tweet was in fact one of the writers from The Royal Half blog/collective (www.theroyalhalf.com). Returning to the discussion of passive and active consumers, the Kings allowing an author of The Royal Half—what is essentially a fan community in its own right, founded by an “ordinary Kings fan since 1988,” that provides comedic hockey commentary and sells its own apparel—to tweet on their behalf illustrates the potential for active consumers to influence the social media activities of a sport organization. By giving active consumers such as the author of The Royal Half Blog, creative authority the Kings are able to bridge the gap between consumers and the sport organization within the LA Kings brand community.

Social Media and Brand Animation

Working with comedic earnestness has enabled @LAKings to operate in a unique manner among team official sport-related social media representations on Twitter. However, this specific social media strategy is not the sole reason explaining the popularity of @LAKings. By deploying their social media strategy in a very specific and thoughtful manner, @LAKings—and the personalities behind the handle—has enabled a brand to come to life. Essentially, the personalities behind the handle have anthropomorphized @LAKings and thus the LA Kings brand (Fournier, 1998). By injecting “life” into the brand, the stage is set for a different type of brand–consumer relationship. As Fournier (1998) noted, “The brand has no objective existence at all: it is simply a collection of perceptions held in the mind of the consumer. The brand cannot act or think or feel—except through the activities of the manager that administers it” (p. 345). The social media practices of @LAKings have served to rearrange the perceptions of the consumer; @LAKings becomes animated and thus relevant through the actions of its two administrative managers and those with whom they allow authorship.

Brand animation via social media provides an organization the opportunity to increase interactivity with social media users (i.e., consumers). @LAKings has become uniquely interactive by encouraging a relationship not only with the fans of the team but also with other team-related media entities including bloggers and team insiders, such as news-oriented blogs like Mayors Manor, founded by John Hoven, an accredited member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association, and sport-entertainment blogs like The Royal Half, discussed previously. In the case of Mayors Manor, which was named “Best Sports Blog in Los Angeles” by LA Weekly, the blog is known for its relationships with current players, and regularly posts news and interviews related to the team that scoops the traditional press in the city, such as the Los Angeles Times. In the case of The Royal Half, its authors were invited to post snarky pregame previews before each game in the 2013–2014 season on the official Kings website, kings.nhl.com, unheard of in professional sports in this day of rigid, guarded communicative actions (rather than, e.g., providing a link to The Royal Half’s website. In this way, one might view such previews as being endorsed by the Kings organization, despite the following disclaimer appearing at the end of beginning of each preview: “The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Los Angeles Kings Hockey Club. All opinions expressed by The Royal Half are solely (and most likely) his own and do not reflect the opinions of the Los Angeles Kings or their Hockey Operations staff, parent company, partners, or sponsors. His current whereabouts are not known to the Kings and he has no access to information beyond the access and privileges that go along with being a half-season ticket holder.” Included in these previews are links to “Best Opposition Blogs,” “Best Opposition to Follow on Twitter,” and “Worst Opposition to Follow on Twitter,” highlights of the previous game’s tweets by those in the brand community. This carries over to the actual game that night, which often sees @LAKings re-tweeting tweets made by The Royal Half, Mayors Manor, and opposition bloggers.

This type of interaction may not be completely unique to the Twitterverse; however, by deploying social media in this fashion, @LAKings becomes a beacon of team-related knowledge that links together multiple media entities through the official social media representation, which results in a robust social media community with the Kings at the center. These actions result in a more complete relationship between fans, official team sources (e.g., management and employees), and secondary team–related sources (e.g., sports writers). This holistic relationship serves to position the social media–consuming fan as a team insider. Indeed, the Kings, in recent months have taken the idea of brand community and social media to a higher level by creating the “LA Kings Social Club.” The social club is an online platform that collects and organizes Kings-related content that has been produced on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, while also providing links to relevant press releases, online articles, fan comments, and polls that quantify the use of specific hashtags to answer questions such as what current Kings player would you most like to have dinner with. By organizing traditional, new, team-produced, and non-team produced media in one online space, the Kings have provided a home for the community associated with their brand.

When a relationship between brand and fan is encouraged in this manner, fandom has the opportunity to evolve from being predicated solely on consumption to that which can include production and synthesis of information as well. Fournier (1998) described this type of dynamic relationship by stating, “Relationships are constituted of a series of repeated exchanges between two parties known to each other; they evolve in response to these interactions and to fluctuations in the contextual environment” (p. 346).

Conclusion

Throughout this article, we have aimed to show how the Los Angeles Kings have inherently acknowledged that social media is not necessarily just a converging element in the spectrum of media platforms (as Jenkins might suggest) but rather a unique opportunity to build relationships with users and foster community. In doing so, the Kings—through their Twitter handle, @LAKings—have leveraged social media to position the organization as “real” to the consumer. That is, they have acted with such a heightened degree of earnestness and truthfulness that has enabled the organization to create an identity for their brand, which has resulted in the cultivation of an online community of consumers.

The prioritization of a relationship with the active audience has enabled the creation of a brand community with the LA Kings at the forefront. By embracing brand community–based objectives, it becomes conceivable to establish meaningful relationships with consumers. Such objectives, however, must be rooted in an organization’s strategic marketing goals rather than limiting the purposes of social media to traditional communications or public relations endeavors. Specifically, for marketing, communications, or public relations professionals closely tied to an organization’s social media efforts, focusing on creating an identity for the brand and/or organization (e.g., through practices of earnestness and authenticity) should be of upmost importance, as such can serve as a gateway in establishing interaction and relationships with consumers. While the utilization of social media outlets for traditional marketing is inevitable, the case of @LAKings illustrates how the willingness of a brand to move beyond these traditional promotional efforts can be beneficial to both organization and consumer in terms of relationship development and maintenance. As Aaron LeValley, the LA Kings Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Analytics argues, the “swagger” shown by the brand’s Twitter presence “creates a value proposition. It makes you want to follow the Kings because you’re going to get something different you can’t get anywhere else.… When [followers] read our posts, it allows us to deliver other messages that may be more revenue-generating. They accept those messages because we have that conversation with them” (quoted in Curtis, 2014, ¶9).

Developing and maintaining a brand is a difficult process that requires immense amounts of time and effort. Relationship marketing offers organizations the opportunity to enhance their brand(s), though it is not a simple tool to put into place; it requires a type of humanistic interaction between the brand and consumer in order to have reciprocation within the relationship. Social networking sites such as Twitter have provided a means for brands to interact with users in a unique manner as they can, in essence, converse directly with consumers. The Kings have embraced and implemented this type of interaction better than any official sport franchise associated with the big four North American sport leagues (Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League, and the NHL)—a fact supported by being the only sport franchise featured on the 2012 edition of the Twitter 100 in Sports Illustrated (“The Twitter 100,” 2012), winning the award for “Best Interactive or Social Media Campaign” at the 2012 PromaxDBA Sports Media Marketing Awards and winning the award for “Most Engaged Fans” at the 2013 Social Media Icon Awards (Twitter category), among other accolades.

What has resulted is critical acclaim and consistent conversation surrounding the @LAKings social media entity and thus the Los Angeles Kings brand. @LAKings has become synonymous with the Los Angeles Kings, bringing the brand to life and building strong relationships with fans and media in the process. By embracing social media and more precisely, the social in social media, the Los Angeles Kings have charted new waters in illustrating how optimizing the interaction potential of a brand with social media users can encourage relationship and community development between an organization and its consumers; waters that have been, and will continue to be, uneasy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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