Produced by 🙋♀️, Motion Design & Edit by Ishaan Mishra
In March of 2024, I was brought in to Enjoy Basketball to help build out one of the biggest creator-led basketball content networks for the Gen-Z and Millenial audiences as Senior Director of Content. Alongside two business heavy-hitters in the industry, Cody and Cole Hock, and the incredibly talented creator himself, Kenny Beecham, we knew we were creating something bigger than just the content at hand - it was a community that was changing the voice of sports media.
📲 DEFINING OUR SOCIAL VOICE ACROSS PLATFORMS 📲
On a content base built around talent voices, what were we doing to stand a part? Why did people want to follow @EnjoyBBall vs. just follow Kenny Beecham himself? How were we activating on sports news via @NOTBPod vs. @EnjoyBBall? What did this look like on X vs. IG vs. TikTok? It was important to create a unique identity that was reflective of the talent’s values, but found a new way to engage our audience. After bringing in our new Social Media Manager, we worked tirelessly to analyze, test and create a voice that made every platform have a distinct purpose and need to follow.
@ENJOYBALL INSTAGRAM: 121% increase in followers
@ENJOYBBALL TIKTOK: 223% increase in followers
@NOTBPOD INSTAGRAM: 52% increase in followers
@NOTBPOD_ TIKTOK: 105% increase in followers
***I give you followers as a metric, but it’s truly all about engagement, engagement, engagement.***
🔁 ESTABLISH PODCAST OPERATIONS ACROSS PARTNERSHIPS 🔁
Omaha Productions and ESPN saw the brilliance in our premier show, Numbers on the Board, and picked it up for a two-season partnership. A big mission of mine was to bridge the two worlds together 1. of their incredibly talented production team and 2. the three of us at Enjoy. In doing so, we were able to set new standards for our YouTube series, how that was shared to ESPN, and how we distributed our show content across socials.
📈 ORIGINAL SHOW DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH 📈
With a smaller foundation set, it was go-time for experimenting with new show properties! I managed branding, creative, staffing, and execution of the following:
ENJOY BASKETBALL YOUTUBE (105k subscribers): We were firm in wanting to create a new avenue for the guys to create outside of a standard podcast show. We knew that NBA Trivia was a hit with our audience and thus the Enjoy Basketball YouTube was born.
THE CHECK UP: While this one didn’t get as far off the ground since our priorities shifted, it was a delight to dip our toes in the docu-style channel world!
T’D UP (20k total listeners): During Summer League of 2024, we hosted a sold out Numbers on the Board live show in Vegas. The biggest note coming out of this? (Outside of seeing the sheer amazingness of our talent succeed on a big platform) Is that Pierre Andresen NEEDED to have a show where interviewing athletes was the priority. And in just a short-period of time, we launched T’d Up with Pierre Andresen.
SMALL BALL (35-40k total listeners): It was very obvious that any show with Kenny Beecham at the helm, was going to crush. After testing some social pieces and different ideas, it become apparent: don’t mess with the formula. Now my next challenge in launching our 2024-25 partnership with Vox Media? Collaborating to ensure each ad read, social cutdown, and more came through feeling authentic to both Kenny and the game. With a brilliant Vox Media team, we were able to do just that!
FANDUEL PARTNERSHIP: During the 2024-25 NBA Season, we had a partnership with FanDuel that included coordinating sponsored content including an in-show segment on Small Ball with Kenny Beecham, sponsored posts on Enjoy Basketball social platforms, and content for Kenny’s personal platforms.
With FanDuel’s creative flexibility, we were able to find ways to again, test and find the best voice and pieces of content to optimize sponsored content across all executions. We always kept in mind: How can we better tell a story using this product and odds? How does this information BEST benefit the audience outside of simply monetary winnings?
🐐 BUILDING A TALENTED ROSTER 🐐
In an effort to grow our content, it was important to bring in talent who could tell stories in a different light. This requires people with an innate ability to not only know what hits on the feeds but understand how to make that vision come to life.
We locked in a producer that showed a refreshing love of the game, which was instrumental in building their chemistry with our already existing talent. From there, it was easy to develop engaging YouTube content for our channels. This helped grow both or long-form content tremendously and encourage new creative avenues in our Chicago Studio.
Our next free agent was a dual-threat social producer and creator who could masterfully piece together viral moments both on and off the camera.
She immediately boosted our TikTok and IG Reels, two huge growth mechanics we didn’t have the bandwidth to lean into before.
This talent opened the door for their own original content series which after one video we learned it needed its own social presence. “WAGTalk”, led by Maddy Sells, became a mammoth of its own content offering. Not only did it present new stories in the NBA but did so in an easily digestible format that gauged an entirely new audience: those that identified as females of all ages.
🛠 NBC AND DRAFTKINGS INTEGRATION 🛠
All of these pieces ultimately led to a game-changing partnership, as one of the major puzzle pieces in NBC’s return to the NBA. We had about three weeks to prepare our fully digital, YouTube-first shows for the NBC’s Peacock that would air five days a week throughout the entire NBA Season. SAY LESS 🫡.
From re-structuring our filming schedule, to building new production and post-production practices, graphics, and more, my team and I were engaged, attentive, and continued to ask ourselves - Despite the changes, how do we continue to deliver a product that our audience would love to this new platform? What growth levers can we continue to pull on top of this content?
We continue to find those creative solutions and build our shows to be top tier for Peacock, top tier for YouTube, and continue to crush it on social.
