The Case
SPORT24 is, without any doubt, the biggest sports publisher in Greece, having an impressive 17-year track record. As with any leader wanting to design for the future, they were concerned that their Social Media presence was not as ground-breaking as 2021 demanded. Enter Imperius: we were tasked with redesigning the whole sport24.gr Social experience. Things were pretty much simple: we needed to help SPORT24 steer to where the real internet action was.
The Challenge
When our collaboration with SPORT24 kicked-off in April 2021, we very-well knew that one of the greatest challenges would be to create top-notch, truly original content. Especially in an era when video is considered the highest form of OG content. Apart from being on the forefront of innovation and originality, we were tasked with a very specific mission: to recruit young blood (16-21), one of the hardest audiences to get for publishers that are well-established and are considered “legacy” brands.
The Approach
With “The Big TikTok Bang” being in full effect after 2 years withing the COVID-19 pandemic and the client’s competitors already starting to test the channel’s waters, we pushed ourselves to put our TikTok launch in motion. Our biggest bet was to design the whole content strategy from scratch, creating an agressive, yet sustainable and original approach for a sport publisher in the medium. We finally suggested working consistently around 3 content pillars: a) OG content from SPORT24 editor, athletes, coaches and analysts, b) curated content from popular sports accounts, adding a “24 touch”, c) repurposed #throwback content from the vast 24 Media video archive. Last but certainly not least: a TikTok-first show that would be aired a few months after launch.
The Solution
Starting immediately with daily posting of original content that strictly abided by TikTok best practices (sound, graphic elements, typography, hashtag selection), we quickly succeeded (less than 2 weeks) in surpassing our main competitors in terms of following and established once again the SPORT24 brand as the pioneering publisher in the Greek sports scene. A handful of great, both local and international personalities stood in front of our smartphone camera lenses: Nikos Dabizas, Panagiotis Giannakis, Lefteris Petrounias, Sotiris Ninis and more, captivating TikTok’s young audience with a blast. The exclamation mark of our efforts was the airing of the exclusive, street-reporting TikTok show (Synentefksi Typon), which was created to make SPORT24 readers part of the brand discussion and quickly became a staple, counting several episodes and “feeding” all the Social Channels of sport24.gr in several repurposed formats.
How does the scoreboard look after a few months? The first verified TikTok channel for a Greek sports publisher has managed to record more than 25K followers, 590K likes and a staggering 5M lifetime views.
Game. Set. Match.
