Humongo Summer Tour: People get hot over the Heat.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

People get hot over the Heat.

As we were approaching our visit with the Miami Heat, plenty of friends and followers had things to say. ("Kick LeBron in the cubes for us" comes to mind.)

Professional sports is one of those industries where everyone and their brother believes they are capable of making management decisions. (Coincidentally, advertising is another one of those industries.) People criticize player choices, management decisions, game strategy. Plenty of people think they might make better decisions. Most of your friends probably don't have strong opinions of recent management decisions made by the leadership team at Dell. But the Yankees? Or the Miami Heat? You bet.

We walked into the Miami Heat offices with plenty of questions from followers from across the Humongo Nation. Why didn't you have the announcement up on your website when LeBron announced his move to the heat? Why do you hate Cleveland? ;)

Like many businesses, there are things about running a sports team that are happening behind the scenes that you're probably not aware of. What seems like a simple and easy decision may sometimes have other factors for consideration that make the decision more complicated than it might appear on the surface.

Social media and marketing people criticized the Miami Heat for not updating their team's site or tweeting about the LeBron announcement immediately after the press event. Seems like a fair criticism, right? Jennifer, from the MIami Heat's marketing team sheds some light on the other side of the story. "We couldn't make the announcement until we had a contract signed." Until there was ink on paper, Lebron wasn't playing for the Heat, and therefore they couldn't update their marketing properties to reflect his decision. Fans forget that there are formalities that need to be taken care of.

We loved the fact that the social media team behind the Heat recognizes this fan passion. Even if that passion is coming from the side of another team. This is the landscape within professional sports, and that's core to the game. It's great that even in the midst of some Twitter hate from rival fans, the Miami Heat can keep their cool.

Watch our interview with the Miami Heat in the Humongo Nation Miami wrapup video!

Labels: miami