At a time when people are increasingly able to ignore ads or just outright pay to get past them, it remains to be seen how well companies can capture viewers' attention during games and shows. But the NBA helped a select group get a leg up on the competition when it introduced the new concept of small ads on basketball players' jerseys.
Atlanta-based digital health company Sharecare began sponsoring the Atlanta Hawks jerseys back in August 2017, and the following year won the Partnership Award from the NBA. When the league was looking to start its pilot program two seasons ago, only around half of the teams found a corporate partner. The results, thus far, show that the companies who picked a smart team to sponsor tend to see good ROI.
For Sharecare, it's in its social media data, since as a private company there is no stock to improve.
On Twitter it's more of a slow-rolling incline; the followers have increased 5% since 2015. But there was a jump when people started seeing the logo, there's no doubt about that correlation. Maybe if more people knew Dr. Oz helped create Sharecare, there would be more Twitter memes to keep the momentum going, but alas.
It wasn't too long ago that the number of Facebook followers and likes were not in the millions for Sharecare. But ever since the preseason began in fall 2019, there has only been an increase in the amount of people interested in Sharecare on Facebook.
You can see the buzz pick up when the jersey patches got announced and shown off to the public. There's a similar spike when the NBA year kicks off in late September / early October.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.