FirstEnergy Sees Social Spikes Because of Cleveland Browns Naming Rights Deal

BY ADAM GROSSMAN

How do you know if a naming rights deal for a venue is working? It is a question we are often asked by our clients. Our responses are focused on lift. In particular, the goal of many naming rights deals is to increase awareness, sentiment, and engagement in a specific market more efficiently than a company could achieve on its own.

FirstEnergy’s naming rights deal in Cleveland is a good example of the results a company should be achieving on its own. For this post, we are going to focus on using our Social Sentiment Analysis Platform (SAP) to demonstrate spikes in value that should occur. We focused on the first two weeks of the season when the Browns played a home game at FirstEnergy Stadium on September 10th and away game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on September 17th. We then want to answer the following questions:

  • How many of the most valuable posts for FirstEnergy were related to FirstEnergy Stadium
  • When did FirstEnergy receive its most valuable posts?
  • Did FirstEnergy receive a spike in positive sentiment from posts relating to FirstEnergy Stadium?
  • Did social media influencers or large media organizations post about FirstEnergy Stadium?

Detailed below are the results from our SAP Platform.

FirstEnergy received significant increases in brand awareness and sentiment through its name rights deal with the Cleveland Browns. 

FirstEnergy received significant increases in brand awareness and sentiment through its name rights deal with the Cleveland Browns. 

This graph quantifiably answers our questions and clearly demonstrates the value created for FirstEnergy.

  •  How many of the most valuable posts for FirstEnergy were related to FirstEnergy Stadium?

Of the top ten most valuable posts involving the keywords “FirstEnergy, @firstenergycorp, FirstEnergy Stadium, @FEStadium” all ten posts had to do with FirstEnergy Stadium. The posts are highlighted in the top red box in the image.

  •  When did FirstEnergy receive its most valuable posts?

FirstEnergy’s top posts all occurred on Sunday, September 10th (when the regular season home game occurred) or Monday, September 11th (right after the home game occurred).

  • Did FirstEnergy receive a spike in positive sentiment from posts relating to FirstEnergy Stadium?

While there were some negative posts, FirstEnergy did receive a significant spike in positive sentiment as demonstrated by the trend line highlighted by the second red box at the bottom of the graph. Even on the tail edges of the sentiment graph (i.e. when the Browns were not playing a regular season home game) you can still see sentiment spikes on Sunday when the Browns were playing a regular season or preseason game. During the other parts of the week the sentiment is closer to zero.

  • Did social media influencers or large media organizations post about FirstEnergy stadium?
This post by "The Miz" had higher engagement than many of his other posts to his 2.75 million Twitter followers.

This post by "The Miz" had higher engagement than many of his other posts to his 2.75 million Twitter followers.

Both influencers and large media companies did post about FirstEnergy Stadium. The most valuable post was the one seen above from WWE Superstar Mike “The Miz” Mizanin. This post delivered the most value to FirstEnergy and had higher engagement than many of the other posts on The Miz’s social media account. In addition, The Wall Street Journal, TSN, and Cleveland.com all had posts that featured FirstEnergy for the September 10th game at FirstEnergy Stadium.

For this post, we intentionally limited our analysis to examine one social media channel. A full analysis can and should be done looking at all paid and earned media channels. This includes but is not limited to in-venue activation, television viewable signage, events at the stadium, and the use of a team’s intellectual property. Block Six Analytics’ (B6A) Partnership Scoreboard is specifically designed to complete this type of cross-channel analysis and provide near real-time results to our clients. Our SAP platform provides clear evidence that FirstEnergy is achieving its sponsorship goals through its naming rights deal with the Cleveland Browns during the first two weeks of the 2017-18 NFL season.