The NBA became “Social Media Santa Claus" on December 18, 2012 through its #BIGNBAXmas Twitter campaign that gave away dozens of prizes including a pair of tickets to all Christmas Day games, autographed jerseys from the league’s biggest stars, autographed photos, and items from NBA marketing partners such as adidas, ESPN, 2K Sports, Sports Illustrated and Rareink. The NBA asked its 6.4 million Twitter followers trivia questions about the league and its history to determine the prize winners. The #BIGNBAXMAS promotion garnered more than 440 million total impressions from giveaway tweets and another 13 million impressions from the 62,500 fan mentions throughout the day. Furthermore, several NBA players, partners, and campaign hashtags became worldwide trending topics on Twitter.The #BIGNBAXMAS giveaway is a deserving victor for this category for its volume and diversity of prizing, partner involvement, engagement metrics and cross-media promotion. The NBA gave away a haul of prizes most fans could only dream of. These included a complete set of NBA special edition BIG Color jerseys, signed jerseys from the likes of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Ricky Rubio (among others), a photograph signed by all 2012 NBA rookies, a number of Revolution 30 authentic NBA jerseys, video games, enough adidas gear to equip a small army and, of course, a pair of tickets to every single Christmas Day game. These prizes were given away at a torrid pace - every 15 minutes over an 8 hour period. The NBA has a large social media following on its own with 6.4 million Twitter followers and more than 15 million Facebook fans but we did not confine this promotion to merely our own assets. By working with marketing partners, we leveraged the social presence of the following companies: adidas, EA Sports, ESPN, 2K Sports, Rareink, Sports Illustrated and American Express. In additional to involving partners, we asked the final question on air during a game on NBA TV which gave fans an opportunity to win a $2,500 gift certificate to the NBA store. This question alone received more than 2,200 replies on Twitter and included a link to nbastore.com that garnered over 22,000 clicks. The final question wasn’t the only element of #BIGNBAXMAS to achieve tremendous engagement metrics. The promotion received over 440 million impressions on Twitter, 62,500 twitter mentions, 34,000 replies, 10 top worldwide trending topics (including the original hashtags #BIGNBAXMAS, #NBARooks and #BIGCOLOR) and over 1,000 replies per question asked. Furthermore, the Christmas Day games, which the #BIGNBAXMAS giveaway promoted, attained record viewership. The ESPN tripleheader and ABC doubleheader had the highest ratings in the event history.
