Building and scaling the NHL’s player publishing program
I edited this video to share with players and their agents ahead of joining the Player Publishing program.
As Manager, Social Player Development, I was tasked with building the NHL’s Player Publishing program.
We faced an interesting challenge: Players weren’t excited to publish much of anything on social. There were exceptions including the uniquely talented Trevor Zegras, who I’ve got a full case study on because he was SO down to work with us.
But most players were afraid of looking cocky and the resulting locker room “chirps.” After nearly a year of building relationships with agencies, clubs and earning players’ trust, we found success at scale.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are where we took a partnership with Greenfly to the next level.
Key highlights (data from the 2020-21 Stanley Cup Playoffs):
I created 25 custom videos for NHL athletes and published 33 posts overall.
These posts generated 800K+ engagements and 2M+ video views.
Cole Caufield published 3 videos helping him gain 108K followers (+79%).
Philipp Grubauer received coverage from Bleacher Report, Sportsnet and other outlets after sharing a curated photo.
Player posts tallied an average Overperforming Score of 3 (CrowdTangle).
Below is a selection of content I created and distributed to players across the league both during the Stanley Cup Playoffs and in support of tentpole campaigns such as Hockey Fights Cancer.