In light of the Black Lives Matter social justice protests in 2020, The Alliance: Los Angeles was formed.
The Alliance is the collaboration of the 11 professional sports teams in the Los Angeles area that have come together to address racial and social injustices, educational opportunities, and career development through sport - especially in Black communities. In addition, The Alliance LA’s mission is to expose the many careers in the sports industry beyond becoming a professional athlete. With that in mind, to celebrate Black History Month in 2021 we created a series to highlight professionals of Alliance team staff and had them define what Black Excellence At Work means to them.
In addition to speaking to Black Excellence at Work, they also touched on how sports' have impacted their lives. This is an important aspect of the Alliance and its partner, The Play Equity Fund. The Play Equity Fund, started by the LA84 Foundation, works to raise awareness and close the Play Equity Gap, the gap between kids and communities who have easy access to youth sports opportunities and play and kids who do not. The Play Equity Movement works to ensure that a child’s access to sports is not determined by their race, gender, zip code, or socioeconomic status. A common theme highlighted in the Black Excellence at Work campaign is the interviewee’s involvement in youth sports and the life skills that participation provided them and in turn, how that led them to pursue a career in sports.
The Alliance is a relatively new organization founded in the summer of 2020. So while The Alliance tasked us with celebrating Black History Month through the campaign, we also wanted to highlight and bring awareness to The Alliance's mission of exposing students from underserved communities to the many career opportunities available in professional sports outside of being a professional athlete.
We partnered with our clients at The Alliance to identify teams and staff members who were perfect fits for the Black Excellence at Work series. The teams also saw this campaign as an important initiative as it was an opportunity to highlight the diversity of their front offices and staff while allowing fans a chance to see behind-the-scenes at each organization. We were able to portray the dynamic and exciting opportunities within sport beyond being a professional athlete.
A significant challenge was to portray these individuals dynamically in the era of COVID. We were able to have a small and agile team visit many of the team’s stadiums and arenas to shoot each subject safely. It was essential for us to shoot on location as it allowed us to show each individual in their context and in an authentic way. For teams that had COVID distancing mandates in place, we captured their interviews on Zoom but still maintained a consistent level of post-production value regardless of circumstances.
The Alliance was still in its infancy at the beginning of 2021. Consequently, a campaign goal was to increase awareness of the initiative while hitting key Alliance objectives.
In Black Excellence at Work, we shed light on professional sports career paths as inspiration for youth and teens in the Black community. This representation matters at every level of each organization and is seldom highlighted in such a manner. The result was a series of informational and engaging videos that highlighted the many opportunities sports and careers in sports provide.
The Alliance makes a significant impact on the community youth and their exposure to careers in sports. Moreover, The Alliance sponsors internship programs with the teams, placing local high school students in roles to gain work experience.
At the beginning of 2021, we were in a growth stage of our Instagram audience and used only organic posting. We created videos that several of the Alliance team accounts shared.
Total Organic Video Views: Roughly 15,000 (14,796)
Average Video Views: 1644
