One Way to Connect with an Aggravated Fan

Posted by: on Sep 22, 2009 | No Comments

A couple months back I wrote a blog post entitled “Thankful Gestures, Earnestly Given,” which included this line:

A small gesture, an honest thank you to some of your passionate user evangelists, a valued partner or vendor, or especially the too-often-ignored small customer, can go a long way towards creating a true emotional connection to you and your brand.

Well, here’s a slightly different take. A story of a major school* football coach responding, and surprising, a pissed off fan who wrote in after the horrible performance of the team in the season opener (“Coach’s gesture wins back UO fan“):

One disgusted Oregon fan asked Chip Kelly for a refund after the Boise State debacle — and got it.

Tony Seminary, an Oregon alumnus who lives in the Portland area, told the Web site Every​Day​ShouldBeSaturday.com that after he sent Kelly an e-mail with an attached invoice — Seminary’s expenses for his trip to Boise — the new head coach responded with a question:

“What is your address?”

A few days later, a check for $439 arrived, apparently signed by Kelly.

While this wasn’t a “thankful gesture” so to speak, and yes, it had a fair tinge of bluff calling to it, the effect was exactly the same:

“I think of Coach Kelly as a totally different person now,” Seminary told the Web site. “I have a different bond with him now. … Let’s just say he lost every game as an Oregon coach. You would never hear me calling for his head. It just wouldn’t happen. The guy showed an incredible amount of class.”

It was a small thing, maybe done out of anger, maybe done out of frustration at his own performance, or maybe done just because Chip Kelly is that kind of smartass. Who knows – Coach Kelly isn’t commenting. But it’s a wonderful example of surprising and delighting even your critics with a small, personal, and wholly unscalable gesture.

Nice work Coach.

Side Note: By the way, nice story by the Register-Guard, but it pulls significant quotes from a blog post – and original reporting – by EverydayShouldBeSaturday.com. The R-G cited the blog, but didn’t bother to post a link that I could find. C’mon old media, you can do better than that.

*Disclosure: I’m a huge Oregon Duck fan, if you haven’t noticed already.

Watching social media amplify one sports fan’s misery

Posted by: on Sep 4, 2009 | No Comments

As the name of this blog implies, I’m a huge Oregon Duck football fan. Huge. So last night I was geared up, ready to watch my beloved team kick off the season with a dominating performance against a ranked opponent on national television.

If you’re unfamiliar with how that turned out, wander over to ESPN. Or CNNSI. Or *any* sports news source you can find in the US. It was an ugly game, and it ended on a deplorable note.

What made it tougher as a fan, especially one who feels “plugged in” to various social media tools, to endure is the speed, ubiquity, and proliferation of reactions to the Ducks’ little debacle.

  • Twitter: “Oregon” became the #1 trending topic on Twitter shortly after our starting running back decided to play the role of UFC prize fighter instead of football player.
  • Twitter Part 2: ESPN posted (can’t find the link now) a “fan reactions on how Blount should be punished” query to its Twitter followers, and shared the reactions attached to the primary postgame story.
  • Newsvine: MSNBC immediately posted a fan poll via Newsvine on “How should Oregon running back be punished?” As of the morning after the game, there were over 6,000 votes (60%+ calling for him to get kicked off the team, in case you are curious).
  • YouTube: Hundreds of video caps of the soon-to-be-infamous moment are already floating around. Though, with impressive speed, ESPN has wielded some copyright fu on these and they are disappearing fast.
  • Blogs: Google Blogsearch reveals 12,000+ blog posts for “blount punches” – already.
  • Facebook: I watched several dozen posts fly around both during the game, and especially immediately afterwards, just from among my small circle of friends. Wall posts were made, videos linked, comments thrown about. And of course, every fan of rival teams gloated (deservedly) anytime they stumbled across a Duck fan. I’d also like to point out the awesome irony of this fan page, created long before “the incident” and selling Blount fan t-shirts with the slogan “You can’t hit this.”

I won’t even go into the amount of texting and emailing that happened among friends. In part this is all a kind of mass catharsis – we’re all sharing in our grief, amazement, and embarrassment with fellow fans and the rest of the sports world in realtime on a vast scale.

But it also makes me want to shut off the iPhone, close down Twitter, ignore my browser, to let it all die down lest I get reminded every few seconds about last nights game.

Social media. Double edged sword. Go Ducks.