ABOUT THIS ENTRY

On January 9, 2022, Klay Thompson returned from injury after 941 days away from the game. With this comeback moment, the NBA social team was challenged with telling the story of his career leading up to this point and covering the special moment of him returning to the game. This submission discusses the strategy behind the coverage of Thompson’s comeback on @NBA social.

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

NBA social serves as a complement to our offerings on NBA League Pass and draws awareness to nationally televised games, making NBA social an integral source to the league’s marketing campaigns and business objectives. The strategy behind the NBA’s content execution for #KlayDay was to engage fans on social and get them excited to watch the game, while driving viewers to the linear broadcast and engaging fans across multiple devices and platforms.

KlayDay’s impact from @NBA social media shows the social and cultural impact of the entity. @NBA is reaching fans globally every second of the day through social media. The followers of each platform continue to grow for @NBA and the team focuses on unique, innovative and high-quality content to promote brand awareness and excitement about the NBA around the globe.

Objective: On January 9, 2022, Klay Thompson returned from injury after 941 days away from the game. Thompson had not played a single NBA game since he tore his ACL in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals. With this major comeback story featuring Thompson’s return to the game, @NBA social’s goal was to bring awareness to Thompson’s redemption story and promote his first game back. The league aimed to engage fans on social to get them excited and tune-in to the broadcast, while also celebrating Thompson’s incredible career.

Strategy & Execution: It was Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals and the last game at Oracle Arena. Thompson was up to 30 points when he tore his ACL. He went into the locker room and then triumphantly walked back onto the court to shoot his final free throws. Thompson left the game on crutches and didn’t return until January 9, 2022. @NBA started the comeback day by sharing this story of his last game. In addition, @NBA shared Thompson’s best plays for fans to relive all the exciting moments from his career. Not only were fans excited about this comeback moment - NBA players were as well - and @NBA shared all the well-wishes from teammates, legends and other players for Thompson ahead of the big night.

As tip-off approached, @NBA shared a video of a unique on-court angle shot on an iPhone of Thompson’s pregame introduction. And, during the comeback game, @NBA shared clips of incredible on-court moments, including Thompson making his first basket and finishing his first slam dunk, while also recapping the best postgame press conference quotes from his noteworthy night.

All promotional content directed fans to watch the game on NBA TV.

Results: The Klay Thompson comeback game was centered around a hashtag - #KlayDay. The hashtag led to more than 110M video views for @NBA across all league social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube) - making it the most-viewed regular season moment all-time on NBA Social at the time.

The NBA Instagram account drove more views (103M) than any other account on the entire platform on that day during a busy sports Sunday. The Instagram Reel featuring the courtside view of Thompson’s introduction ranked as the NBA’s most viewed single IG video ever with over 26.4M views at the time.

On TikTok, the @NBA account had four videos that eclipsed 1M or more views and reached more than 10M total views on the platform, making it the most-viewed day since the end of the 2021 Finals and the seventh-most-viewed day in our league account’s history at the time.

The promotion of NBA TV for this game across @NBA social generated excitement around the event and helped the game draw 844K viewers on NBA TV, the most-viewed regular-season game on the network since 2016.

Production

NBA

Credits

Andrew Yaffe
Head of Social, Digital & Original Content
NBA

Bob Carney
Senior Vice President, Social & Digital Content
NBA

Ashley Atwell
Senior Director, NBA Social Content
NBA

Adam Fedorko
Associate Vice President, Social & Digital Content Creation
NBA

Justin D'Apolito
Senior Manager, NBA Social Content
NBA

Jim Poorten
Senior Director, NBA Social Content
NBA

Peter Richter
Senior Manager, Social & Digital Content Design 
NBA

Jake Freeman
Manager, NBA Social Content
NBA

Jerry Jones Jr. 
Manager, Social & Digital Content Design 
NBA

Simon Cherin-Gordon
Associate Manager, NBA Social Content
NBA

Robert Gardner
Project Employee, Social Content
NBA

Carly Nevis
Project Employee, Social Content
NBA

John Orfanidis
Producer, Social Content Creation
NBA

AJ Ottomano
Content Lead, Social Content Creation
NBA

Leah Berry
Manager, Content Production Generalist
NBA

Gerard Nocera
Production Assistant, Content Creation
NBA

Andrew Merrigan
Production Assistant, Content Creation
NBA