England and Wales Cricket Board's digital strategy to be driven by fan made video
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is overhauling its digital strategy and has recruited digital agencies Seenit and Little Dot Studios to help it engage more with audiences through new channels and personal content creation.
Seenit and Little Dot Studios will help the ECB engage with fans more
The partnerships will ultimately aim to strengthen the ECB’s ability to engage more deeply with cricket fans ahead of what is a busy summer for the ECB, with the ICC Champions Trophy in June and ICC Women's World Cup 2017 in July.
Video collaboration platform Seenit, whose portfolio of clients include the BBC, BT Sport and NBC, will let the ECB leverage fan-made content by giving it the ability to curate and share video.
Little Dot Studios’ role will centre on growing the ECB’s YouTube audience, but will also work to strengthen its online identity, explore new creative opportunities and try to achieve greater traction and engagement across the ECB’s social media channels. The London-based media company has a strong sports portfolio, having worked with the FIA for Formula E, ITV for live clipping of Euro 2014 and Channel 4 for the Paralympics.
“We’re putting fan engagement at the heart of our digital strategy and it’s through innovative partnerships such as these that we’re able to ensure that our fans can easily access all of our content,” said Nick Shaw, head of digital at ECB.
“What these partnerships can achieve for our fan base and the game is very exciting. It will bring fans into the conversation like never before and result in authentic and engaging content. This is the ideal moment to further promote the England teams, County competitions and the recreational game through new digital initiatives.
"It’s also encouraging to see the recognition our digital approach is getting, including the re-design and re-build of our website at the end of last year, not just from users but from the industry as a whole.”
The partnerships with the specialist digital agencies will help the ECB build on a record year on social, with 2016 seeing it accumulate 1.5 million new followers and over 2.4 billion impressions across all social platforms.
Sanjay Patel, ECB's commercial director, said digital was a crucial to growing the game amongs traditional and new fans and maintained that the partnerships marked “an innovative phase of this approach”.
“We’re confident that by working with both Seenit and Little Dot Studios we can help create engaging and authentic content that increases the reach of the game during a very exciting summer of cricket and beyond.”