002 Post-Tournament
Was that a month, or a minute?
I’m not quite sure if I can say definitively that the dust (confetti?) has settled on the 2016 BNP Paribas Open, but my calendar tells me this year’s tournament is in the past. What a blur!
It’s hard to know how much time has passed since things have been ‘normal’, because we’ve been running at 100 miles per hour for far longer than the two week window of the tournament. Play wrapped up on March 20th, and the day after, I had a quiet moment on the couch when I thought, “I had no idea how exhausted I was until everything stopped.” But you know what? I miss it like crazy.
Then
To give a little context for where I am, let me fill you in on where I was.* Last year, after floating around in the ether that is unemployment and freelance, I got a call from Matt Van Tuinen, who I interned with in Chicago during my senior year of college. Matt, who is the head of the media operations at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, CA, wondered if I could come help his team cover a few miscellaneous tasks that they were shorthanded for. Of course I said yes.
Thanks to the team, nature of work, and setting, it was the best professional experience of my life. That led to making on-site connections and accepting a full-time digital marketing position for the tournament just a month later. So, while I got to just drop in for the show last time, this year I’ve been working towards it for about 50 weeks.
Team
A week before the tournament started on March 7, the team started arriving, and trickled in throughout the early days of the tournament. As a massive extrovert, I can’t tell you how much fun it was to have everyone in one place. Although my desk is in the administration office during the year, I had my computer moved up to the media deck so I could be closer to the team I worked directly with.
The team consists of public relations and social media specialists, website content managers, writers, editors, translators, photographers, photo editors, and videographers, and they’re all as quality people as they are talented. I love that my responsibilities call for me to intertwine with them, and I’m already looking forward to working together again next year!
Day-to-Day
My role throughout the year as the Digital Marketing Coordinator consists of quite a range of things: website content management, email marketing, digital advertising, graphic design, and social media. During the tournament, fortunately for me, many of the team members I’ve just spoken about are on site to help in those areas; teamwork makes the dream work!
With the team churning out content, the bulk of my work early on was quality assurance. As you can imagine, it’s imperative that when we have the spotlight for just two weeks out of the year, everything is tight. I worked with our digital consultant, website team, and app developers to ensure that things like our scoring modules, photo galleries, and news articles were publishing, updating, and appearing correctly.
Another piece to the puzzle for me was ensuring that our digital advertising efforts were running smoothly. We serve web banners on our website for tournament sponsors, and it’s important to ensure that we are serving the pre-determined quantities and in correct locations.
Highlights
Apart from those, some fun graphic design, and a slew of other responsibilities, one of the highlights of the year for me was my involvement with our social media efforts. In addition to our main channels, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, this year we added Snapchat and Periscope. This was a very exploratory year on those platforms, which meant that we had the freedom to try things.
The nature of Snapchat and Periscope as intimate and live glimpses begs that the audience be near the action. Following that model, this means that whoever is producing the content will inevitably be close to said action. See where I’m going here?
Periscope took me front row for Novak Djokovic’s championship mural unveiling, and into the booth as Venus Williams signed autographs. Snapchat brought me around the grounds, courtside, and even on court one special night for a Snapchat takeover.
Following their wins, I pulled Victoria Azarenka and Milos Raonic aside to have a little fun. I asked Azarenka to teach us how to dab (a dance move she does regularly after winning), and I gave Raonic a chance to try his first Snapchat.
Both players were fantastic sports about it, and apart from a muffled mic in one clip (my bad!), the content came out really well! Although the main goal is to pull fans in close to what they care most about, the players, it was easily some of the most fun I’ve ever had at work.
It is still surreal to me that this year’s tournament is in the books, but in the words of one of our team members, Nick McCarvel: “Hey, only 49 more weeks until #BNPPO17, right?”
Until Next Time
Thanks for being interested! If you have any other questions about what I’m up to, or just want to say hey, feel free to reach out! My line is always open.
*Shameless self-promotion: If you’re around Orange City, check out the March issue of The N’West Iowa REVIEW for more of my story!
