Case Study: Super Bowl Gospel Celebration

In its fifteenth year, the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration is the first and only gospel event sanctioned by the NFL for Super Bowl Weekend. The concert series features Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum selling gospel and contemporary Christian and mainstream artists, marquee NFL players and the NFL PLAYERS Choir. Since its inception, the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration has demonstrated growth year-over-year, with recent sell-outs of venues in Super Bowl host cities including San Diego, Tampa, Detroit, Jacksonville and Houston. The event also serves as a fundraiser with a portion of the proceeds benefiting national and local charities. Over $450,000 and 5,500 tickets have been donated over the last eleven years. (Source)

Why They Engaged FrontGate:
SBGC engaged with FrontGate to help build their audience online, grow a fan base within the NY area (where last year’s event was taking place), to help boost ticket sales and to live tweet the event. They have continued with FG after the event to sustain their forward motion. As this year’s event approaches, we are working on building the fan base in Arizona (where this year’s event is) and working on original content for their new blog.

Target Audience:
Their target audience is Christian men and women between the ages of 20 and 60 who are interested in Christian music, gospel music, football, and the Christian lifestyle. SBGC specifically targets people based on the location of their upcoming event. For example, this year we are targeting new fans in Arizona because they are the most likely to be able to attend the event.

Campaign Details:
(Because the partnership is ongoing, this is a snapshot of the social media campaign and results from 9/1/2014 to 9/30/14)
Facebook: The social media campaign focused on increasing engagement on Facebook, while posting spiritual encouragement combined with football related content. We have found that response rates to posts that are filled with football players’ encouraging quotes are much higher than those that are strictly football posts. As a result, we are working on acquiring more quotes from football players allowing us to still hit on the NFL tie while posting what we know to engage people.
Twitter: The strategies for Twitter are similar to Facebook except we are including hashtags as well as 3-4 tweets targeting football players, which encourage them and let them know we are praying for them during their next game. Consistent posting is also a key detail of the campaign. For example, in September there were 53 posts that we created to fit the Twitter specifications and the target audience.

Results:
Facebook:

Growth – As of 10/1/14, Super Bowl Gospel Celebration has 3,156 new page likes, which brings the page total likes to 34,153, a 10% increase during September.

Impressions – Impressions on Super Bowl Gospel’s page show that our audience responds extremely well to biblical encouragement and quotes. September posts reached 171,788 people on average throughout the month, with the most popular monthly post (below) having reached 29,376 people organically on 9/8, with 2,121 likes, 124 comments, and 448 shares.