Episode 199 Snippets: Jeramie McPeek, Social Media Consultant and NBA digital vet

Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 199: Jeramie McPeek
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 199 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Jeramie McPeek, Founder and Principal of Jeramie McPeek
Communications with 20+ years experience with the Phoenix Suns.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the full
interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast platforms and
at www.dsmsports.net.

Jeramie’s career path
Grew up a big Phoenix Suns fans and while attending college in 1992, he started working
part-time at the Suns Team Shop at the local mall (Metro Center Mall in Phoenix, since
closed)
“I started at the Team Shop selling Charles Barkley jerseys. That was the year they went to
the NBA Finals against the Chicago Bulls. It just was an incredible season. It was actually
the last time they went to the Finals and of course they're in the Finals now...As a naive 20-
year old I thought ‘Oh man, this team's going to be in the Finals every year with Charles
Barkley and Kevin Johnson and Dan Majerle, and that we were going to win all kinds of
championships…”
Jeramie spent 24 years with the Suns before leaving to start his own company

Recounting his Suns start
“I started full-time with the Suns in ‘95 when I graduated from Arizona State. (I) got a journalism
degree, I thought I wanted to be a sportswriter and work for SI someday. When I started with the
Suns full-time they hired me to work on their team magazine Fastbreak — that's really how we
communicated with fans at the time. [It was] a monthly magazine that went to about 15,000 people,
most of whom lived in Arizona, and that was our audience.
“And right around that same time, I happened to be in our PR Director's office [one day] and she
had a fax come across her fax machine from the NBA, and it was a memo. And the memo said that
the NBA was launching a portal on the ‘Information Superhighway’ and each team would be
responsible for a page within this portal and to keep it updated. She read this fax while I was in her
office and said ‘I don't know what this means.’

“She handed it to me and said ‘You do this.’ And Julie Fie — who's still with the team and
just an amazing ambassador for the organization — she's been with them for now 30 years,
I think, but she really started my career in digital because I didn't know what it was either.
“So she handed me this fax and I read it and I was like ‘I don't have any idea what this is
talking about.’ But, really, that's how I began my career in digital. So really a right place,
right time [thing] and [then I] just kind of grew up with it and fell in love with that form of
storytelling.
“Again, I was a writer, but loved to interview players and tell their stories. And now there
was a new way to do it and do it in close to real time. We'd write a story and we could put it
up the same day rather than wait two weeks for it to be published in the magazine and be
mailed to fans a week later. I really got to see that evolution of storytelling in professional
sports and entertainment and just fell in love with it from there.”

Storytelling principles that are timeless
“You know it’s funny, things have changed so dramatically over the years
and yet it really is the same. It is about storytelling. When we had the
magazine, it was about trying to really let fans see who the players were
and get to know them as human beings and see what they like to do off the
court and hear about what they did in the community and to build that
connection between the players and fans so that they did want to support
them and wanted to buy their jerseys and wanted to buy tickets to come
see them, and wanted to watch them on TV. And it's the same thing today.

“It's what teams like the Phoenix Suns are doing right now in the NBA
Finals. It's trying to give fans a look behind the scenes and not just talk
about what amazing players they are, what their stat line was tonight
— although that's important too — but also to really build that bond
with the players and show them in a different light and posting
behind-the-scenes photos on Twitter and video clips of them arriving
at the arena. And seeing what Devin Booker's car looks like...and what
fashion they're wearing as they walk to the locker room and giving
them the behind-the-scenes exclusive post-game interviews.

“So it's really the same thing, just doing it in a different way and in a
more creative way and of course in a lot of different channels, and a
lot of different posts. So rather than a 2000 word article that included
all that information and that storytelling of those quotes, now it's 45
tweets on a game night and Instagram posts and Instagram Stories.
So it's really the same thing just in a different medium now.”

About embracing digital and social with the Suns
“Early on, I was really fortunate that we had a team president at the
time, Rick Welts, who just retired from the Golden State Warriors and
he really wanted to invest in digital or ‘interactive services’ as we
called it back then. He was proud that we were the first to do different
things and he wanted us to be looked at as innovators and a club in
the NBA that kind of led the way in the space.

“So he really gave us a lot of resources, a lot of confidence and really
empowered us to do some creative and unique things during those
early days of digital and websites and live streaming video and all that
kind of stuff. So in a lot of ways we were looked at, not just as kind of
leaders in the space, but I think a lot of other teams were almost kind
of jealous of our situation. And not because we were some incredibly
creative geniuses in digital, but we had the largest staff in the NBA in
the digital area, we had all the equipment we could possibly want, we
were allowed to travel with the team, when teams didn't use to do that.

“Also, at the same time, the team got really hot. They signed Steve Nash and they had Amare
Stoudemire and Shawn Marion. And so the team became an incredible team on the court that
all the fans fell in love with. And we had a head coach in Mike D'Antoni that was just the nicest
down-to-earth guy ever, and he opened the doors to us and let us do whatever we wanted.
We could come into the locker room and shoot his pre-game and post-game speeches. He
would let us shoot video on the team plane...and we had a weekly talk show called ‘Nothing
But Net’ — we shot episodes on the plane, going from seat to seat interviewing Steve Nash and
Shaq and Grant Hill and these different players on the plane as we're flying from one city to
another.
“So we had just incredible access, incredible support, [and] a large staff. So that was our focus
back in those days, our focus wasn't about revenue. We had to kind of learn that as we went
and our sponsorship department, led by Lynn Agnello, who was our Senior Vice President of
Marketing Communications at the time.

“She came to us at one point and said ‘Hey, what can we do to incorporate this sponsor in some
of the things you do rather than just having a banner ad on the website, what else could we do?’
So Lexus became the title partner of our ‘Nothing But Net’ talk show. And we built out an entire
section of the Phoenix Mercury's website for the Arizona Department of Health Services called
‘It's a girl thing.’ It was all about elling young female fans of the Phoenix Mercury about the
dangers of smoking and trying to live a healthy lifestyle.
“So we started to work closely with her team to think of creative ways to bring the sponsors into
this amazing content we were producing. And it just kind of evolved from there. And then
eventually, social media became big and then it was like ‘How do we incorporate sponsors into
social media and do it in a way that's hopefully a natural integration and isn't just tweeting out a
logo or tweeting out a sales message from a sponsor.’

“It was an evolution for sure. It didn't come naturally to me early on; as a content
person and a storyteller, I didn't want to incorporate sponsored logos into what
we were doing. It really took time to evolve my own thinking on how to do that
and why it was important for the organization. Over time...we got to also promote
ticket sales and we got to promote the broadcasts and we've got to promote the
community relations efforts and the public relations efforts and what the Phoenix
Suns Charities were doing and also incorporate sponsors. So it became a big
juggling act. But it was something that I also thrived on and enjoyed. I enjoy
those challenges of how do we incorporate the sponsor in a creative way that
gives them value, but also is still valuable content for the fans?”

On being ahead of the curve with integrating sponsors into content
“I think I certainly tried and I learned, and we came up with a lot of great executions,
but there were also times where we butted heads with the salespeople. I try to
empathize with them as well because their job is just to sell, their job is to bring in more
revenue. So there were times when they had a partner that wanted 12 Facebook posts
and 45 tweets. The sales team was just trying to get the deal done. So they're putting
that stuff in the deal to try and sweeten the packages or get the deals done. And they're
not necessarily thinking about what that does on the other side.
“So there were times that we butted heads and had disagreements and arguments. But
I think for the most part we really worked together and kept trying to come up with
what would benefit everybody — the fans, the organization, and the sponsors. And
that's really when you win.”

Content strategy and how the Suns’s in-house team looked at themselves within the
external media coverage of the team
“In a lot of ways we had good relationships with the local media, the sports writers, the
beat writers, and the local radio hosts. But at the same time there was a little bit of
competitiveness there because we didn't want to always be second or third or fourth to
the stories. And yet there were a lot of stories we couldn't tell. As brand ambassadors
for the team we couldn't be writing stories that would rip apart a player's performance
or the coach's decision or the GM's decision. So those kinds of stories we couldn't
touch, we couldn't write stories about rumors and potential trades.

“So the local media was always going to beat us on those stories. But in
terms of finding out unique angles on players or things that the players
did in their spare time...their hobbies, their passions, their story, their
childhood history. So we would try to come up with those angles and
those stories that were really unique that showed our players in a
different light and figure out ways to tell those stories through our
social that nobody else told, or nobody else had the time to dive into
those stories in depth, or even the relationships, necessarily,with the
players to find out some of that information.

“But we also had a good relationship with our in-house content team.
We had Suns Productions broadcast in-house that produced all of our
television broadcasts. We were unique in that we as the organization
produced our own broadcasts and then had basically a rights deal with
the local broadcaster who aired them; but we produced them in house.
So they had a team that was also producing a lot of video content and
feature packages and unique highlight packages, so we had a good
relationship with them and tried to work with each other and
complement each other and bring them along.

“If we came up with some unique angle and set up something with
players and they would do the same. Or they would share their
packages with us to post on social media and our website and our
mobile app after they'd aired on TV, so that fans that didn't see the
pre-game show or the halftime show could see those features on social
media. We had a good relationship, but also a bit of a competitive
relationship as well at the same time because we wanted to stand out
with what we were producing.”

On the value of local media producing and telling Suns stories
“That's a whole another interesting angle that I didn't even think of when I was
answering your last question, but the in-house PR team — you know, a lot of what
they are kind of evaluated on and judged on from upper management is how many
stories they can get placed in the local media...So their focus is getting the outside
media to tell unique stories as well. So a lot of times they didn't necessarily want
us to tell something first because then the local media might not want to tell it. So
we certainly had great relationships with our PR team and I'm still great friends
with a lot of the PR people that worked for us back in those days.

“But there was always kind of a give and take; a lot of times they wanted
the local media to tell a story before we did. And we were like ‘No, but
these are our properties, this is where we sell tickets and sponsorship,
and we should want to get those eyeballs on our site.’ But that's just
working in an organization; everybody's kind of got — I won't say their
own agenda, but their own objectives and their own things that they're
judged on and that they're trying to accomplish. So there's always an
internal struggle, if you will, to work together and be good teammates
and at the same time get your own responsibilities and jobs done.”

About the goals and diverse audiences for the Suns on digital and social
“It's the type of thing you would have conversations about internally because there
were a lot of different audiences — you had your season ticket holders, your long
tenured season ticket holders who've been there forever, and you'd have your first or
second year season ticket holders. And you'd have local fans who buy tickets and come
to games, but they're not season ticket holders. You've got fans outside of the market
who are big fans, but they will never come to a game because they don't live anywhere
nearby. And then you've got international fans, too, that are following you from other
countries. And you've got even different audiences within each of those — men and
women, senior fans and kids.

“So it's a challenge to try and talk to everybody, and in different ways. I can't say that
we were ever the geniuses figuring out what that puzzle was and, and how to do all the
different pieces, but certainly there were times where we had certain content for certain
audiences that really would only appeal to them, and content for other audiences that
would only appeal to them.”
“There are a lot of factors to consider every time you're putting a story together and
figuring out how to write it, how long it should be, or should it be video instead? What
channels should it go on? Should it go in your game program, your printed publication,
or should it be on your website or should it be in your mobile app? Should it be on your
video talk show? Should it be on the TV show? I mean, there are so many different
channels and opportunities and places to put stuff [on]. It's a constant juggling act and
the conversations never end. You're always talking about where's the best place for this
type of content.

“Even between channels, even today, you move between Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
Reels and IGTV and Stories, and what's the best platform for this particular type of content? I
think those conversations are going on every day in every organization and will be for until the
end of time, probably.”
“And a lot of these channels have multiple ways to share content. You know, like Instagram, I
just mentioned, they've got three or four different channels built within Instagram now. Team
mobile apps are an incredibly important piece of the conversation. One of my clients today is
Yinzcam, the mobile app developer of 200 different sports teams, leagues and arenas around
the world and includes the Suns mobile app and a lot of the NFL and NBA mobile apps and La
Liga.

“So that's a great platform and a great way to share all those different types of content.
So fans who really gravitate towards audio can get the audio there, the podcast, the
longform. People that want to read the short articles or see the Tweets or what have you
can get all that content in one place.
“So it's a challenge for digital people today, but I think it's also what's fun about this
business. It's what I've always loved about it. You're not doing the same thing every day.
You've got all these different types of ways to tell the story and figuring out where and
how to tell it [and in] what form to tell that story in is what makes it fun. And for people
who are creative, I think they thrive on that and enjoy that a little bit...It's a little chaotic,
but it's also fun that it's always new and it's always challenging you in new ways.”

On the value of team mobile apps for deep fan development and
engagement
”You know back when I was still with the Suns, we were actually Yinzcam’s
first NBA client, we had their first NBA app; now I think they've got 23 of
them. But at that time it was really about for the organization and the
team another way for us to push out information, to remind people that
the game's on, remind them what channel it's on, here's the stories that
are on our website you can read on your phone. It was all about content.

“And all of that content is still available in the majority of team apps today, but it's also
much more about a business tool now for organizations. They're selling and activating
sponsorships through mobile apps now. There's mobile ticketing so fans have to have
the mobile app to pull up the ticket and get it scanned at the door and they can forward
their tickets to their friends. And there are season ticket holder member portals, so if
you're a season ticket holder and you log into the app, you can get a discount card at
the concession stand or at the merchandise stand, and you can see how many loyalty
points you've accrued from attending games, you can find your season ticket member
rep right there and contact them and say ‘Hey, there's a problem with my seat’ or
‘There's an obnoxious fan sitting next to me’ All that can go through the mobile app.”

“Then there's those unique fan engagement experiences like augmented reality.
Like the San Antonio Spurs just launched an AR portal that you can basically
scan your living room floor or your backyard or your driveway with their app
and it brings up this virtual Hall of Fame museum for Tim Duncan and you can
walk physically in your house and it looks like you're walking through the
museum and you can go and tap on a trophy and it'll pull up highlights from
that NBA Finals series that he won the Finals MVP. But it's also got sponsor
inclusion throughout the virtual museum that they've sold. You can buy a Tim
Duncan Jersey. So there's all this cool, unique fan experience as well that it
makes it fun as a fan.

“There are so many other elements of mobile apps now. There's mobile auctions, so
you can bid on your team’s game-worn jersey, your game-worn shoes. There's the live
podcast and the live postgame show; if you can't watch those on TV, you can watch
them in the mobile app. So there's all this additional content as a fan that you can get
through the team’s app,that you might be able to get pieces here and there — you
might be able to get a piece of the snippet from the post-game conference on Twitter,
and you might be able to get a live stream on Facebook of the training camp media day
or whatever, but to have one source where everything is at once — everything you used
to get from the website, but also your utilities, your tickets, your post-game shows,
some of them have their live stream of their games or the radio feed.

“So there's so much content in a mobile app now. That's the reason I think fans should
download their favorite teams app — it's not just to get the PR stories and the box
score, but it's all this other wealth of content that they can get to really dive in and
learn more about their favorite team and whet their appetite for what they want to
know about their favorite club.”
“And you want to order a burger and a beer from your seat and have it brought to you.
And you just do that through the app. You don't have to get up and go stand in a line.
There's all kinds of stuff. There's literally hundreds of features that Yinzcam offers and
other app vendors as well, that really make the apps unique, I think for fans today.”

On where voice and personality came into play for social media
“It's definitely important today...Finding your voice is tricky, and everybody's
voice is a little different, and sometimes you might have two or three people who
are running a Twitter account in an organization and trying to find a voice that
they all can tie into and use and be consistent with can be a little bit of a challenge.
But I think if you can come up with a voice that feels authentic and feels like a fan,
the voice of a fan, but also be professional at the same time, which is tough. You
know, some fans are going to be using a lot of profanity when they're watching a
game or using slang words that 99% of the fans may not understand or whatever.

“So you gotta find a voice that's fun and playful, but genuine and real,
and isn't just always upbeat and positive because fans aren't always
upbeat and positive. If your team loses by 40, you can't put a positive
spin on that and have your followers feel like they see that. Your team
just lost by 40, they’re upset, they don’t want to see your spin. So, in
some cases, that's where you maybe revert to a little bit more of the just
straightforward here's the results, here's the stats. But if instead you
can use, you know, a crying emoji or an emoji with the eyes drooping,
you know, you're sad. That expresses what a lot of your fans are feeling.

“So I think it's really about trying to be genuine and trying to be
authentic while not crossing the line and getting too sarcastic or too
aggressive or too offensive to other teams. There's always a balance
there and we've certainly seen the cases over the years where someone
at a team crossed the line and went too far and, next thing you know,
they're out of a job. So it's a fine line trying to find that balance of
being playful and being authentic without going too far.”

The increased professionalization and strategy with social media
“I think it's a hard question to answer because I believe every organization is different
and thinks about it differently. And it's such a subjective thing. Voice is such a
subjective thing in terms of you might have 10 people in the organization who all think
differently about what that voice should be.
“Some are gonna want it to be very straightforward and straight-laced, and some are
gonna want it to be very sophisticated and appeal to the high-end season ticket holders
who spend every day out on the golf course, and they don't want memes and funny
inside jokes and things that relate to pop culture.

“And then others that think ‘No, that's, that's who we want to appeal to
— the younger audience that is constantly using memes and jokes and
tying into everything that's happening in pop culture.’ So it's really a
subjective thing. I think the key is having an agreement between the
marketing people, the brand people, the digital people and social
people to all have those conversations upfront in advance about
talking through that, what that looks like, what should be the tone,
what should be the voice. And then having trust in the people who are
running the social channels....you trust them, you empower them.

“You've had the conversations, you've told them what you're looking for and
what it needs to be. And you have to trust that they're going to follow through
with that. But then also let them know that there's nothing wrong with if you
have questions about something coming back and saying, ‘Hey, what do you
think about this? Is it okay if we post this? I know this is a little edgy, maybe a
little outside what we normally do, but do you think this is okay?’ And being
able to text back and forth because you may not have time to meet up and talk
through it.’ But on a game night on the fly, in the moment, being able to text
someone and say, ‘Hey, this is what I'm thinking of doing.’ Are you okay with
it? It's a little edgier than normal.’

Being able to have that back and forth so you can adjust because in social, you really
have to be real-time in many instances and be able to react on the fly. But you don't
always want someone to just go with their gut instinct of ‘this is really funny. It's going
to perform well, but may not be the best look for the brand.’”
“An organization like [the Boston Celtics] that has that history and that heritage,
there's nothing wrong with them being different than what is becoming more common
on social. Every organization is different and each one has to decide for itself what
makes sense. And you can also react and evolve over time, too, and see how your
fanbase is reacting to things and change a little bit here and there if you need to.”

About Shaq’s early adoption of social media
“We could do a whole podcast on that alone. [I have] to give a lot of credit to a couple
people. Kathleen Hessert who worked with Shaq on his reputation media and media
management, who really recommended that he get on Twitter himself because there
was someone locally here in Phoenix that was impersonating Shaq initially. And was
really good at impersonating [him]; [he knew] the way Shaq talked and the things he
said and knew who his sponsors were. So it seemed like it was Shaq early on, and it
was just a fan having fun. Ward Andrews, I've got to give him a shout out, he’s the
fan,who's a big Suns fan and still today and coming to all the games.

“So Kathleen recognized that Twitter could be a great opportunity for
Shaq and suggested he get on it. And then there was a woman in our
office, Amy Martin, who I worked closely with in the digital space. She was
on the marketing partnership side, but we worked closely together to
integrate a lot of those sponsors that I talked about earlier. She was one of
the first people in our office who was on Twitter herself. She and Kathleen
knew each other and Kathleen said ‘Shaq you need to get on Twitter. And
here's this person in the Suns office who was on it and understands it’ So
Amy worked with Shaq directly to kind of get him going...

“It was a week after Shaq got on, I saw what she and Amy and Shaq were doing and
thought ‘Oh, I better get on this too because I don't understand this’. And that's when I
joined [Twitter] and that's when I created the [original] Suns Twitter account. And it
wasn't long after that Steve Nash and Jared Dudley on our team got on. So our team
was kind of one of the first in the NBA and sports, really, to get active because of Shaq
and really because of this fan initially.
“But that really started a tidal wave, I think, of quickly all these other athletes in other
sports started seeing Shaq... this big name [and] personality, and professional sports
and other teams and players in all different leagues around the world started to get on
Twitter, as well.

“It's taken time, it’s grown over time. A lot of players early on thought ‘I don't get it.
Why am I wasting time doing this?’ But now I think the majority of them do
understand the value there, even if they don't love it or aren't super active themselves,
they understand the value of communicating directly with fans controlling your own
narrative, controlling your own brand.
“A lot of them have consultants or people that work with them. I work with a couple of
professional athletes, myself, a professional wrestler and an NFL pro Bowl player. And
I work with them to help [them] think about how to use social, how to activate their
channels, what photos they should be posting, what kind of things they should be
sharing and activating sponsorships on their behalf.

“So I think it's really become important for athletes today and now it's
going to become even more important for college athletes with NIL.
It's been fun to see how that's evolved over the years and see players
get creative with it and take advantage of it and use it to really grow
their brand and their personality, as long as they use it wisely.
“Obviously we've since seen some bad examples, too, but that's just
society in general. You see people using social media in a dangerous
way and others that use it really productively and for good…”

On what motivates athletes most to get active on social media
“I think every athlete's different. Some of them really just genuinely enjoy
interacting with fans. It's like the old school chat room and they just love
getting on and talking with fans and seeing what fans are saying and having fun
with them or bantering with them or going back and forth with them. Some of
them really love that others hate that; they hate the fact that fans can criticize
them and critique them and make fun of them if they have a bad game or, or
judge them in a lot of ways. Some athletes get real sensitive about that. They
don't want to see any of that, any negativity.

“So for them, the ones that still see the value in social besides putting that [negativity]
aside for them, it's more about building their brand and hopefully being able to get
sponsorships and generate revenue through it. Others, I think it's more about brand
and less about revenue, but they want to portray who they are and who they are as
people, and for people to see them in unique ways and off the court or off the field.
“I almost look at Devin Booker like that, of the Suns, as a player that really is
cognizant of his brand and I think is really strategic and selective in what he posts and
how he posts and what he says and what the image looks like and what the video looks
like and what the caption is.

“He probably has somebody that, I don't know this for sure, but he
probably has somebody that works with him and helps him kind of
think through that. But I think brand is important to him and I'm
sure that's because he grew up as a huge fan of Kobe Bryant. Kobe was
all about his brand, so Devin is real cognizant of that, I think. And
revenue's probably a piece of it — sponsorships and that kind of thing,
are a piece of it. But for him, I think it's more about kind of who he is
as a person and wanting to put himself in the best light.

“Other athletes are all about the revenue and the sponsorship, and they almost don't even care
what they're posting about. As long as that sponsor is paying them to post something, it may not
even be a product they use. But if the sponsor, as long as it's not a negative product that makes
them look bad, they're more than happy to post it to make a few extra bucks to pay for their
family's vacation or a new car or they're putting money away for their child's grad college fund,
whatever it is.
“I think every athlete has a different perspective on it. I think it is really valuable to them if they
use it wisely and hopefully have people that can kind of help them and coach them along and
give them suggestions and ideas on how to use it, I think it can be really beneficial.”
“The foundation is a great way to put it. Those were the building blocks, but the objective is still
the same; the building looks different today. But it's still built the same way and in a lot of ways
has a lot of these same bricks and cement down at the bottom.”

Jeramie’s favorite social media mantra or guiding principle
“You know, we talked a lot about storytelling. I think just thinking
through the story and how to word things and say things, what it
should look like and just being smart about what you do. Put thought
into everything you do.”

The Suns player[s] that Jeramie will most remember for their personality / presence behind-the-
scenes
“Wow. I was there 24 years, that's a tough question, too. I mean Dan Majerle’s my all-time favorite
Sun. He was not the most athletic, the most talented, but nobody worked harder and he was also
just a really good dude. Great personality, really funny, just a great human being. So I always love
when I get a chance to run into him again.
“So he'd be one for sure. Jared Dudley had a ton of personality. Shawn Marion was a real character
and I enjoyed bantering with him all the time. I still have a shirt in my closet that — in the middle of
a giant media huddle during the playoffs one year, he just stopped in the middle of the huddle and
said ‘That is the ugliest shirt I've ever seen.’ And I didn't think it was an ugly shirt at all. I still got it.
I still wear it once in a while. But that was Shawn Marion. That was ‘The Matrix’.

The most memorable Suns game[s[ from Jeramie’s time with the team
“My favorite game ever was game three of the 1993 Finals. Because, again, I was a super fan.
Even though that was my first year of working there, I was a super fan. They lost their first
two games at home in the Finals to the Bulls and it just seemed so dire like that was it...they
were done. And they went to Chicago and Charles Barkley joked that they can take the boards
off the windows because there weren't going to be any riots tonight. And the Suns went out
and won that game in triple overtime. I think Kevin Johnson played 62 minutes, Barkley had
a huge game, Majerle had a huge game and it was just such an incredible, thrilling game. To
see them fight back like that and not give up and they weren't going to go down 3-0 to the
Bulls and Jordan and Pippen. So that was my most memorable game for sure.

“And then the second one I think would be...the Suns and Spurs in the Conference
Semis, I think. That was going to be the year the Suns won the championship, for sure.
That was the year they should have won. And Robert Horry checked Steve Nash into
the scorer’s table and it brought a bunch of the Suns players off the bench out of anger.
I was there in San Antonio at the time and the Suns were winning the game. And then
that happened right at the end of the game and it was like, our hearts just sunk because
we knew that all those players that stepped off the bench were going to be suspended
for going out onto the court. And sure enough, they were suspended and the Suns lost
the series and the Spurs went on to win the Finals, sweeping the Cavs 4-0. And that was
our year. So that's one of those painful games that will always stick with me. It wasn't
the most memorable on a fun side, but the other side.”

The biggest thing Jeramie instills in the students he teaches
“I'm actually going to be teaching a sports digital strategy class at Arizona State University this fall
along with Marissa Mast of the Coyotes who I'm sure you're probably aware of; we're going to be
sharing a class.
“But I think one of the things I try to teach [and] really drive home is to be open to learning new
things and trying new things. Because especially in the social media space, things change so fast. A
lot of times it can be easy to dismiss something new, like TikTok or like Reels or Instagram TV or
whatever it is. These things are constantly popping up and you're like ‘Ah, I don't have time for that.
That's not going to catch on, I'm going to focus on what I know and what I'm good at.’ But you have
to be open-minded to try new things because you don't know what's going to change, what's going to
catch on and what's going to be the big new thing.

“You know, now Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces — those are platforms I really haven't
jumped into myself yet, but I need to, and I know that it is important to learn new
things. So that's one big thing.
“The other thing I would say is just relationships, how important it is to build
relationships. And that's not something I necessarily was cognizant of when I was at the
Suns. It wasn't something I was thinking in my head ‘Oh, I need to build good
relationships with all these people because someday it may benefit me. But it has. In
my business today, I'm really blessed and thankful that since I left the Suns, my
business has really thrived and it's really doing well and I've had lots of different cool
clients and projects to work on.

“But it's all been because of relationships. It's not just been because — not to pat myself on the back
— It's not because I'm good at what I do necessarily; you know, hopefully I am and my clients are
happy with the work. But it's because of the relationships I've built over all those years that people
want to hire me or want to recommend me or if they hear about a project somewhere that needs
social media help or digital consulting and they think ‘Oh, you should talk to Jeramie. He's a really
good guy and he's good at what he does.’
“So relationships are so important and it's important to get to know the people you work with, learn
what they do, how they do it and build those friendships because it'll pay off later. And also because
it's great to look back over the years when your team’s in the NBA Finals and you can look back and
have 50 friends or a hundred friends that you worked with over the years that you can now text and
have fun with and relate to and say ‘Wow, can you believe our old team is in the Finals and going to
win a championship?’ It's cool to have those relationships and that's more valuable and important.”

“And I do encourage my college students whenever I teach a class to reach out
to people that you do want to have their jobs and ask ‘Can I buy you coffee and
pick your brain?’ You know, in 24 years with the Suns that happened to me,
probably three times and all three times, I said ‘Yes, of course.’ You know every
day I have coffee, so why not let somebody buy me coffee and give back to a
young person. And I think most sports executives or entertainment executives
will be willing to do that. Now a lot of them at the very higher levels of
organizations, they may just be too busy to even see an email or read an email
or respond. But chances are, if they did and they saw it, they'd be like ‘Yeah,
sure, I'll give 10 minutes to this young person and give them some advice.’

“I think a lot of young people were intimidated to do that or nervous
to do that, or they don't want to try or are scared to try. They're scared
of the rejection that they may not get a response, but you'd be
surprised how many people in sports would be happy to do that and
happy to give back because they were in the same spot [at] one time.”

Which apps that Jeramie uses for his job could he not live without
“Well, can I say Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Those are the native
apps, those are the three that I use constantly, of course. But in terms
of apps, in terms of creating content my favorite now — and I just
discovered this one six months ago probably — is Splice. I absolutely
love it for creating video and editing videos. It’s got so many different
tools; I've probably used 20% of the app. There's so much there, I need
to even learn more, but I use it all the time and I love it. It's fantastic.

“And it's got an incredible audio library, too. It's got thousands of
different tracks, royalty-free tracks that you can use as background
music, so it's fantastic. ImgPlay, Image Play — I use that a lot as well,
especially for creating GIFs and stop-motion type files. Those are the
two I probably use most...There's a ton of others that I use from time
to time…

“Canva is another one I use a lot. I've got the professional version of Canva and
I use that a lot. It's amazing. Like the video library — I just created a video for
the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee last month when the NFL announced
the actual date of the next Arizona Super Bowl in 2023. So I jumped onto
Canva and I thought ‘I wonder if there's any chance there are video clips of
Arizona that I could pull together some kind of video.’ And there were tons. I
found video clips of the Arizona desert, of Sedona, the red rocks in Sedona, of
Scottsdale, of the lake in Tempe, downtown Glendale, of flyovers of the
stadium. So I just pulled all these clips together and was able to make a really
cool video using Splice, but from clips I pulled out of Canva...”

Jeramie’s favorite NBA arena outside of Phoenix
“I've not been to the new arena in San Francisco for the Golden State Warriors;
I'd like to see that one because I hear it's amazing. But MSG is the favorite just
because of the history there and not only history for the NBA, but WWF and old
concerts and Muhammad Ali. So that's a fun one.
“I really like Barclays Center, as well, you know, across the bridge [from MSG].
That's much more modern obviously, but I've been to that one quite a few times
and really like that, as well. The Milwaukee Bucks have a nice arena...Those are
some of the ones that jump out.”

What can traditional pro sports teams and leagues learn from the success of professional
wrestling and the WWE?
“Wow, this is definitely a whole nother podcast. I could easily talk for hours about wrestling.
You know, it's funny — people that don't watch wrestling, especially sports fans, a lot of times
will just dismiss it out of hand as ‘Oh that's fake.’ But yet they don't mind watching The Walking
Dead and they go to the latest Marvel movies and all these other things, which are, you know,
they're not real, they're stories.
“And that's what professional wrestling is, it's storytelling at what I would say at the finest in
many cases. If you don't follow it you don't understand that it's not just about the good guy
against the bad guy, having a match — it's stories that are built up over months and years. Many
times if you're really into it, you understand the feud that's gone on between two wrestlers for
the past 10 years and across three different wrestling promotions. So there's all this depth to it
that you don't see if you just watch five minutes of a show.

“It's such a unique form of entertainment, as well. There's athleticism
involved. It's a combination of sport plus live theater plus Cirque du
Soleil plus a magic show because they want to make it look real, and
comedy — it's like all those things combined. So it's a really unique
form of entertainment that I don't think the average person
understands at all; they just dismiss it as just childish, fake stuff for
people that are not sophisticated if you will. But if you really study it,
you start to realize there's so much more to it.

“In terms of what sports properties and teams can learn I think WWE
and AEW, and there's other wrestling promotions as well, they do
some of the best digital content there is out there. They're every bit as
good as the major professional sports leagues and terms of using every
channel available to them. WWE is everywhere and they produce live
streaming shows all week long. Every single day they produce a live
streaming show and their behind-the-scenes content and feature
packages and their in-depth storytelling on their wrestlers, their
talent, their performers is incredible.

“And I've got to give a big shout out to Craig Tello. [He’s] an old friend of mine. He's
now with EA sports, but he was kind of one of their leading driving forces of the WWE
digital experience for the last 10 years. He’s somebody I look up to and is a mentor to
me and somebody I have learned so much from, and his team of content producers are
incredible.
“So really, even if you can't stand the idea of wrestling, if you spend some time taking a
look at their Instagram account, their Instagram stories, their TikTok, their Twitter,
their Facebook, their Facebook Lives, you can learn things and get ideas from them
because they do an incredible job. They have a really creative, talented team. And AEW
as well. They've got [a great team] as well. And I'm a big AEW fan also.

On pro wrestling’s digital professionals not knowing the scripted outcomes
“The digital team [for WWE] — they don’t know who’s going to win or lose. They may
have an idea just like most fans going into it have an idea that if Roman Reigns faces
John Cena at SummerSlam next month at Allegiant stadium in Las Vegas, chances are
Roman Reigns is gonna win because he's the big star now. And John Cena is seen as the
older star, who's going to put him over to give him the rub if you will. So fans probably
have an idea, so the content team could kind of plan in advance — this is probably
what's going to happen. But really it's just like an NBA game going into it. You may
think The Phoenix Suns are gonna win this game... but you don't know for sure.

“So you plan all the content going into it. Who are the players on the
team that you want to feature? Who are the wrestlers that you want to
feature in profiles because they have a really big marquee match? So
you want to follow them throughout the day as they're preparing and
they're arriving at the stadium and they're getting their ankles taped
up and they're stretching,they're warming up and what's their
mindset going into the match

“And post-match, you know, win or lose; ‘how are you feeling about what
just happened?’ You're going to put together those clips and those TikToks
and those Reels. So it's very similar in terms of the content team, what
they're creating and how they're telling the stories. The matches themselves
obviously are planned out and there's a select number of people who know
what those results are going to be — the wrestlers themselves and the
producer of the match and Vince McMahon — there's a handful of people
that know what's going to happen, but the content team doesn't necessarily
know. So they have to cover it like it's a real live sports event.”

The best meal to get in Phoenix and where to get it
Jeramie said he’s not a big foodie but shouts out Tarbell’s,
a restaurant in central Phoenix”
“I've worked with Mark Tarbell, who's a celebrity chef
winner of the Iron Chef years ago [and is a] big Suns fan. I
worked with him for a couple of years on social media for
the restaurant and his second restaurant, The Tavern,
which has an incredible lobster roll. So I'll give a shout out
to those two.
“Those are great, um, great locations and great
restaurants, really unique. And it's one of a kind, the only
place you can find it. It's not like they have a chain around
the country or anywhere else. So I'll give a shout out to
Mark Tarbell and his restaurants. But I also have to
mention Dan Majerle’s grill in downtown Phoenix, a great
grill right near the arena. So if you're coming to a Suns
game, that's a must stop-at as well.”

Who’s on the Phoenix Suns Mount Rushmore?
“That's not that hard. Definitely [Charles] Barkley, Steve Nash, Devin Booker...So the
fourth is a little tricky because those are the three most obvious choices. I mean, if they
win the championship, Chris Paul would have to be in consideration, but he's only been
with the team for one year. So I'm not sure if hIe could put someone on Mount
Rushmore if they've only been with the team one year.
“Connie Hawkins is one of the all-time legends and their first true superstar. So I'd
probably say Connie Hawkins right now today. If you ask me again in a week, if the Suns
win the championship then Connie may have to get bumped by Chris Paul, we’ll see.”

Game 7 in the NBA Finals for the win and Jeramie must any Suns player all-time to take a
buzzer beater shot for the win
“Boy, I don't think there's a right answer there because there's probably a handful that
would be equally reliable in clutch. Right now, I don't think it'd be hard for Coach Williams
to choose between Devin Booker and Chris Paul. I think either of them would be a great
option, which makes them that much more dangerous in a moment like that, because you
don't know who's going to take it.
“Steve Nash would be money. Dan Majerle would be money. Raja Bell would be money.
Paul Westphal, the late great Paul Westphal. So there's a lot of options. I don't even know
who I would say we'll draw up a good ATO. I'll go with Booker just because he's the hot star
right now. I love Devin Booker. I was there when we drafted him as a rookie. I knew when I
realized that he hadn't even been born yet when I started working for the sons in ‘92, that
it was time to go. It was time for me to move on and do something different. But I'm a big
Book fan. So I'll go with Devin Booker.”

Jeramie’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
Allison [Harissis], Senior Social Media Manager with the Suns
(@_allieH); Tana Hughes, Suns Social Media Specialist (@TanaHughes),
Cody Cunningham, Suns Business Communications Coordinator
(@Cody_Cunningham)
“I’ve got to give them equal credit...They deserve a lot of recognition right
now and they're doing a great job and they all produce great content…”

Where to find Jeramie on digital and social media
Jeramie is @Jeramie on all platforms — Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, TikTok

Thanks again to Jeramie for being so generous with his time to share
his knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Episode 199 Snippets: Jeramie McPeek, Social Media Consultant and NBA digital vet

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