In a World of Their Own: Planet Orange

SportSpiel recently met Jeramie McPeek of the Phoenix Suns. He’s the VP of Digital for the team, and has been a member of the organisation for nearly 20 years. He started with the team as an intern in the team shop in 1992, and his role has grown from there. He has a degree in journalism, is the Editor-at-Large for the NBA’s official magazine Hoop and was recently featured on the cover of Chief Marketer magazine. He is in charge of a team of eight, including two digital archivists that create photo galleries for the team’s official website.

He took me under his wing for an afternoon and was able to tell me all about what makes the Phoenix Suns – in my opinion – one of the best in digital media in the NBA, if not all of world sports.

Web History

The Phoenix Suns official website launched in 1995. At the time the site fell under the “Publishing” and was initially used as a tool to complement the popular team magazine, Fastbreak. In 2000, after five years of operation, the team realised the potential that the website could have, and began to shift their resources accordingly. Jeramie used a new camera purchased by the team to take pictures at a training session. He downloaded the photos from a floppy disk onto his laptop and posted them on the website the same day. This was his “ah-ha!” moment – the moment he realised the benefits the medium of the internet could bring.

Inspired by this new technology, the Publishing team had a thought: Why can’t we think outside the box, put our content online and save the costs of running a magazine? Producing the magazine required a long lead time, was costly, and was not efficient. In comparison, the website would reduce lead time, cost less and allow the Suns immediate access to their fans.

After the photos proved to be such a success with website users, the magazine was soon shut down and its budget of roughly $100,000 was shifted to the Suns’ website. This new focus allowed allowed the Suns to grow their target market from Phoenix and Arizona, through to the United States, and the world.

How the website looked in 1998

In 2004 the website team hired new staff, which coincided with the return of former Sun, Steve Nash. Steve was highly sought after in the off-season of 2004, and with Phoenix winning his services, it was important to relay this message to the fans. His arrival press conference was streamed live on the internet, which at the time was very rare. The live press conference received 2,500 views, which in today’s terms is not much, but was quite impressive in 2004.

A light bulb went off inside Jeramie’s head that day. There was some serious potential for growth here.

In 2005, the web team was re-branded as “Interactive Services” and only last year did they finally become the “Digital” team.

To check out all former versions of Suns.com click here

Planetorange.net

In 2007, Jeramie attended a conference where he received an award from NBA Commissioner David Stern for the best team website. The conference brought together the NBA’s brightest and best minds in the digital space. At the conference he had an idea presented to him that became planetorange.net. The theory behind it being, “Why don’t we create our own MySpace or YouTube, but just for our fans?”

The idea seemed odd at first, as the trend at the time was to shift content to these popular sites, not away from them. A huge amount of resources would need to be put into the creation of this new online community, but the Suns had faith in Jeramie and his team to make it succeed.

Planetorange.net is now the Phoenix Suns’ own social networking site; think of it as Facebook combined with Youtube, but only for Phoenix Suns fans. It’s a place where fans can get unique, original content directly from the team. It has streaming video, archived photo galleries, message boards (where Planet Orange ‘citizens‘ are often profiled) and has visitors from around the world on a daily basis.

The online community for Phoenix Suns fans

Going Behind the Scenes

Behind the scenes content or that “fly on the wall” element is something that only only team’s can provide their fans. It should be a priority for any club’s digital team to provide this unique content, as it’s what the fans crave. They come to the team’s website because they want content and access that they can’t get from TV or a newspaper.

In 2005, the Suns had a strong run and made it deep into the playoffs. Jeramie and his web team were lucky enough to be given an all-access pass to the players during the post-season. This included the team locker room, hotel, and even on the plane. They would post videos of players at practice, playing cards in their downtime, or even sleeping! This was content you couldn’t get anywhere else. With the team’s strong play-off run, the demand for content was at an all-time high.  It was the playoffs, every moment counts! From photos and videos to blogs, there was now a daily demand for new content, which lead to some great initiatives from the team in the space.

Twitter Use

The Suns are now known as one of the most active NBA teams on Twitter, but it wasn’t always that way. In late 2008 after Shaq was traded to Phoenix, he heard about Twitter, and quickly embraced it. Jeramie saw the potential here, and got on Twitter himself that same week. Shaq got the ball rolling for the Suns on Twitter, and it quickly spread throughout the organisation. Their head coach Alvin Gentry, eight of the 15-man roster (including Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire) and a staggering 32 members of front office staff are all on Twitter. You can find every one of them here

Fan Engagement

I was lucky enough to be in Phoenix when they were having a Facebook Fan Appreciation Night. The event was open to members of their Facebook Fan Page, and the fans were invited to come along to a special pre-game session. Here they were able to sit in the stands before the game and take in the entire Phoenix Suns experience. After the game, the fans and I headed back to the practice court for their post-match Q&A. The Q&A involved the Suns announcing team Al McCoy and Tim Kempton and the local fans peppered them with questions for about 20 minutes.

March 26: Facebook Fan Night; Commentary team Al McCoy and Tim Kempton

The Suns have also held a “Tweetup” which involves sending a message out to their Twitter fans, and inviting them along to a game. These tweetups have been extremely successful as the team’s  Twitter community is a strong, tight-knit group. They have had fellow Twitter users Amare Stoudamire, forward Jared Dudley and Alvin Gentry all attend to show their support.

The Suns recently held a Star Wars themed fan night. (You can check out the pics here). Jeramie is a Star Wars fan and put a lot of hard work behind the scenes with some big organisations to get the event up and running.

The following video is a preview that MyFoxPhoenix did in the lead-up to the event.

Luck breeds success?

A word that Jeramie kept bringing up was “luck”. He said the team got “lucky” with this, and “lucky” with that, but I think hard work and determination breeds luck, and ultimately success. Getting Shaq on Twitter may have brought attention to the Suns’ efforts in the online space, but they had put in the hard work eight years earlier when the organisation moved away from the magazine, to the website.

It’s not just the Digital team at the Phoenix Suns that does well, it’s the whole organisation. You almost get a warm fuzzy feeling just being there.  The team routinely retains old players as executives or front office employees, even the US Airways Center staff appear to be a close knit team.

I’d like to say thanks to Jeramie and all the Phoenix Suns staff for making me feel more than welcome.

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