Cleveland Indians court digerati with Tribe Social Deck

By Kaye Spector

Plain Dealer Reporter

 

In the Cleveland Indians lackluster 2010 season the team can count one success: They drew a record crowd of social media lovers.

 

How? Through the Tribe Social Deck, a cordoned-off area in left field near the bleachers that serves as an invitation-only press box for the wired.

There's Wi-Fi, a flat-screen television with cable and electrical outlets for laptops. There's also visits from the communications staff and media packets with information about the players, statistics and game notes.

Sometime's there's surprises, too, such as upgrades to seats in the visitors dugouts or a suite when the weather's unpleasant.

It's the place where Tweeters, bloggers, Facebookers and others of the Internet ilk can watch the game live and connect with other members of the digital community.

Their comments have ranged from describing game play to shoutouts to friends. Many on Twitter post links to photos taken at the game.

Despite the Tribe's ho-hum action on the field this year, a spot on the Social Deck made a night at the ballpark one of the hottest tickets in town among the digerati.

The Indians' front office did not advertise the Social Deck when it was launched on Opening Day in April. Instead, over several games, the organization invited 18 influential people in the local social-media community, who talked, tweeted and blogged about their experience to their friends.

By May, the Indians had a website (indians.com/connect) where anyone could apply for a spot on the Social Deck by answering, in the Twitter-esque 140 characters (as on Twitter), questions about their interests and why they wanted to go.

At the end of the home season Wednesday, more than 500 people had applied this year to sit on the Social Deck. Five people were invited to each game, and each could bring a guest.

"It's sort of self-selecting, the way we went about the application," said Rob Campbell, executive development fellow-social media for the Indians. "We go to where they play."

The Indians worked with Arizona-based Digital Royalty to come up with the idea of a special section of seats catering to the social-media community. It's believed to be Major League Baseball's first, and the Indians have fielded calls from other teams inquiring about the Social Deck.

Sports marketing analyst Bob Dorfman, of Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco, said the Social Deck is an example of sports franchises trying to reach out to bloggers and Internet types.

"There's been a conflict in the press box over whether they should allow bloggers there," he said. "This is a great way to include those people, make them feel part of the team and get positive information disseminated. Everyone is doing it in some
way." 

While other teams have credentialed Internet-only writers, the Social Deck allows the Indians to include a broader spectrum of social media users, not just bloggers who want to cover the game, Dorfman said. 

Dominic Litten, leader of interactive marketing at Point to Point Inc., an advertising firm in Beachwood and founder of the Cleveland Social Media Club, was among those invited to Opening Day. 
Litten said that before accepting the invitation, he checked with the Indians and received assurances that he had complete freedom to say what he wanted about the game. Other online commenters will occasionally moan over a bad play. But most are polite. 
 Litten said the deck is a smart move for an organization trying to connect with an online audience that can be negative when the home team is losing. 

"Kudos to them for identifying them," Litten said. "It's something that's exclusive. And as soon as you make something exclusive, everybody wants it." 

Cleveland resident Paige Boyer, who went to the deck once as a guest and once as an invitee, said she continues to see the people she met at the ballpark. 

"It's a way to build your professional and social network, said Boyer, a communications and media relations coordinator with Hospice of the Western Reserve. "It takes that social media experience and adds human interaction, which makes social media even better."