The NBA jumped on Snapchat very early and has placed an extremely high priority on finding innovative ways to connect with fans on the growing platform. In the two months of September and October 2014 alone, we executed three key activations. The first example was a Snapchat story that gave fans a tour of the NBA Office. For this activation, though, our followers had the added bonus of experiencing this tour with the perspective and commentary of one of the NBA's all-time great players and personalities, Dikembe Mutombo, who took over the account. What resulted was an unfiltered, informative and hilarious office tour led by the former NBA center. The second key activation was a partnership with Snapchat and the Cleveland Cavaliers to execute a Snapchat "Our Story" for LeBron James' first home game back in Cleveland. We became one of the first sports entities to work directly alongside Snapchat on the Our Story feature that is viewable among all users of Snapchat. Finally, the third activation was keyed by another partnership with Snapchat and our teams - the NBA became the first league to have custom Snapchat geo-filters in all of its arenas. We continue to push the envelope in engaging fans in this medium, and we have already sketched out future activations for our tentpole events.
We believe this entry deserves to win because, in many ways, we feel it would justifiably recognize the amount of time and effort our team has dedicated in brainstorming and executing unique activations on the platform. In the case of the office tour, we felt it was a first-of-its-kind story. While we have seen other brands give office tours as part of their Snapchat stories, never before had we seen a larger-than-life personality and celebrity, like Dikembe, lead the tour himself by taking over the account. The 220,000 fans who opened the story were not only getting an exclusive look inside the memorabilia-laden NBA office, they were seeing it through the eyes of Dikembe. They were thoroughly entertained by some of his office pranks, as evidenced by their extremely positive feedback on Twitter. As far as the Our Story and geo-filters, both partnerships with Snapchat required an intensive amount of preparation and resources on our side to push past the finish line. In doing so, the NBA became the first league to have custom geo-filters assigned to all of its teams' arenas and one of the first sports entities to participate directly in an Our Story. Ultimately, and in a relatively short time on the platform, the NBA has engaged fans unlike ever before and has set a precedent for exploring pioneering activations on Snapchat.
