The Rams saw a significant spike on social media for the team’s content around this year’s NFL Draft, led by a “Friday” spoof video heading into the event and then posts for Alabama QB Ty Simpson after he was taken in the first round.
A week before the draft, the team dropped an homage to the 1995 film “Friday” as the centerpiece of its NFL Draft campaign, starring the sons of actors Ice Cube and Chris Tucker. The video, dubbed “Thursday,” saw a team record 29.6 million social media impressions during its first six days (Friday through Wednesday before the draft, just on Rams platforms). That doesn’t count millions more on Snoop Dogg’s Instagram account, where he posted the video natively (to over 16 million views at this point).
“We had the idea back after we won the Super Bowl in 2022 -- when we did our ‘On the Clock’ draft film -- it kind of came up and it just wasn’t the right time,” said Marissa Daly, the Rams’ SVP/Studios and Marketing. “So we kind of kept it in our book of like, ‘Hey, when the right time comes, we’re definitely going to do this.’ … We’re lucky enough that O’Shea Jackson is a massive Rams fan and we’ve worked with him in the past. He was the face of our ticketing campaign a couple seasons ago, and then we reached out to Destin [Tucker] and kind of pitched the idea to him. And once we had them locked, the rest of the cast of characters came to be.”
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Coming into the draft, the Rams had only one first-round pick over the last decade, so the social media team was presented a nice gift when the club traded into the first round to select Simpson.
“Any pick from a big school and a big skill position, I’ll take, because it generates buzz and excitement around it,” Daly said. “We will always be ready to react.”
Having that marquee draft pick in attendance in Pittsburgh for the event helped create more content and collab opportunities for the team. The Rams ended up doing social media collabs with not just Bama (they also took a player from the Crimson Tide in the seventh round), but also with Ohio State and Miami around the players they selected from those schools.
“What was exciting this time is we actually went to the draft,” noted Daly. “In all of my seasons, we’ve never sent anyone there, and we sent video and social on the off chance that that person was there and just to get content with fans. And so we now have content with Ty from the time he walked off the stage to the time that he got to L.A., and we did 24 hours with him. We brought him to our draft experience, our block party. So it really came full circle for us being able to bring the first-round pick.”
Posts that performed well included portraits, messages from teammates, letters from home, behind the scenes, red carpet moments and an on-stage moment. The Rams content team also took advantage of the Rams Block Party, which was open to fans. Content from that event included a sizzle reel, photo gallery and Simpson visit when he made it to L.A.
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