Social Media Workshop With the Washington Mystics

The Washington Mystics are a professional women’s basketball team in Washington, DC, led by their head coach, Sydney Johnson. They were founded in 1998 and are a part of the Women’s National Basketball League. Today, Anna Brune, their Director of Social Media, came to UMD to discuss with the AMA how the Mystics, as a professional basketball team, engage with fans using social media while conducting an engaging workshop involving long form content.

About Anna Brune

Anna Brune didn’t begin her career with the Mystics. She is a UMD alumni who got started on her marketing path as an intern for the UMD sports marketing program in 2012. She worked her way up to her current position through social positions in various associations such as University of Tennessee, the Chicago Bears, the Noble League in Chicago, the Buzzer app, and Capital City GoGo. When asked by an AMA member, she shared that her favorite campaign involved collaboration with deaf students through Capital City GoGo.

Anna’s Contribution to the Mystics

As the Director of Social Media, Anna works with the social strategy of pushing the Mystics to gain engagement with fans. She oversees a marketing team who experiment with ways to publicize the team through social media for campaigns, game days, and sponsored content. Anna noted that sponsored content was a big portion of the Mystics’ campaign and was mainly pushed through fun short form content on TikTok rather than Instagram reels. This was a result of low engagement through Instagram and higher engagement on TikTok. The following statistics regarding the Washington Mystic’s social media campaign was shared:

• 47% of Mystics game day content is sponsored content and proves to be a key portion of revenue

• The main age group of the Mystics is 25-34, although the other age groups, 18-24 and 35-44 are still prevalent

• The two most prevalently performing sponsored campaigns for the Mystics were:

  • On the Road with CarMax (10.2% engagement rate compared to the usual ~4%, 433,133 impressions, and 12,937 average reach)

  • CarMax Youth Gameday Clinics (2.1% engagement rate, 181,207 impressions, 7,137 average reach) which flopped due to limited player involvement

• The two most important audiences to consider when pitching for a sponsored campaign are the fanbase and the sponsor

Today’s Workshop: Pitching Sponsored Content

Anna tasked the AMA with breaking into groups of ~7 to create a longform content piece (4+ minutes) for the Washington Mystics with CarMax as the sponsor which would hypothetically be released on YouTube. Things to consider included:

• What is the content piece?

• Why this content? How does it appeal to CarMax? How does it appeal to our fans?

• How will you promote the long-form piece on additional social platforms to drive fans to the full piece?

  
  

Multiple of the groups shared the similar idea of car karaoke with key players which would feature highlights on short form content specific social media platforms such as Instagram or TikTok. After sharing the ideas of all groups, the AMA put their heads down and voted on a winner. The winning group proposed an idea named “CarFacts” which involved taxi trivia with veteran and rookie Mystics players on their way to the Capital One Arena for gameday.

Closing Thoughts From Anna

At the conclusion of the meeting, Anna shared a piece of advice to all UMD students. She suggested that although it may sound cliche, building genuine relationships is one of the most important networking practices you can do while navigating your career path in and out of college. One way of achieving this, she recommends is writing handwritten thank you notes instead of sending emails, whenever possible. Anna Brune concluded her time at this meeting by sharing the quote, “don’t climb a ladder without pulling others up with you” with the AMA.

Thank you Anna for attending this meeting and teaching the AMA about the marketing strategies of an active WNBA team!

-Helena Malcom