Episode 251 Snippets: Savannah Hollis of the Seattle Kraken

Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 251: Savannah Hollis
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 251 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Savannah Hollis, Senior Manager of Social Media for the
Seattle Kraken NHL team.
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.

Savannah’s Career Path
“I went to school for psychology because I was like, ‘I definitely want to
be a psychologist. I want to work with athletes, be a team psychologist
one day, understand kind of the why behind what they do, or help them
to work through problems that happen.’ [That was] something that I
thought was fascinating. I got halfway through and I was like, I don't
think I love this [enough] to do this for 16 years. So I ended up switching
my major over to communications. I had no idea that working for a team
in a communications capacity was even an option. Like, I don't know if I
just lived under a rock or something, but I was just like, ‘You can do this
and get paid?’

“So I kind of dove in, ended up taking a couple of years to work at
various levels of internships for the Nashville Predators. I started out
doing game night communications staff, so working a lot on the press
bridge, getting to know the writers, starting to get to know people
within the organization, helping out with just different projects that
they needed. I was a full time communications intern the year after
that. So I balanced that with my senior year of undergrad. I graduated
and struggled to find a sports job…a lot of people don't know this,
actually. I took about six months and worked in trucking, [doing]
logistics. I was learning how to manage gasline haul truckers and
docks and all of this crazy stuff; I had no idea this was even a thing.

“It wasn't my cup of tea, so I decided to go back to grad school. During this
year, I was still doing some part time help for the Predators for the game night
staff. I went back to grad school, shout out Belmont, and then was the graduate
assistant for hockey operations my final year in Nashville so learned a ton. I
worked with some of their analytics folks on how to kind of learn about
analytics and realized analytics wasn't my strong suit, so I kind of transitioned
into doing work with immigration, so like learning how to do the immigration
paperwork for players, coming up with different books, like guidebooks for
when you have your prospects out for development camp, trying to put together
some stuff like kind of a resource guide for players when they and their families
moved to the city— things like that to help really make them feel welcome and
make them feel like they're a part of the organization, which was super fun.

“I feel like I learned so much there about how the PR side works, how to tell stories, but
then also how to build relationships, and what kind of goes into the hockey operations
side. Like these folks, oh my gosh, I worked really closely with the scouts — these folks
travel so unbelievably much and they're rarely in the office. They miss so many things
with their families for the betterment of this team. I always will say our scouts are so
under-appreciated and just under-recognized and I just am always in such awe of what
they do.
“So I worked really closely with them my final year, [and then]...I was like, I've been with
Nashville for about four years now, I think I'm at that point where I could do another year
here, but then it's going to be like how do you get that job, right? Like if you're still doing
these part-time or unpaid roles, how do you get that time? So I ended up applying to a
bunch of different things. I was offered a season long assistantship in the AHL down in
Texas with the Dallas Stars AHL team. I went down there, did a little bit of everything…

“I think I was still figuring out [what I wanted to specialize in]. It's a great question,
right? Because I love that [hockey ops] side of it. I mean, it's like everyone's dream i
to have the in to the team side, right? It's cool, you feel like you're a part of
something. But I also loved the creativity that came from the comms standpoint
and in Nashville — I'll clarify this, when I was there, it was definitely comms and
that kind of PR set, it wasn't as much the social and digital. There was the written
component and some video features that someone on the staff would make, but it
was primarily that kind of true PR team. So you learned a lot, right? You learned
how to tell stories. You learned how to understand storylines and how to build up
certain players and not. You work so closely with hockey ops, so you're still kind of
a part of it, but there's t that creativity that you get to dive a little deeper than I
think you can in other spots and really kind of figure out how to make people care.
And I grew up a hockey fan, but the thing that drew me to that was feeling like I
was a part of something else, something that was bigger than myself.

“I think, when it goes back to school, the motivation, the reason why I
wanted to do this is because I want other people to feel that. Sports
gave me something to look forward to. It brought me together with
people that I'm friends with and some of my best friends in the world
have come because of my sports background. Whether it's working or
just having a team in common, things like that. It creates this
community and I think it's really cool.”

On the interplay of hockey ops and PR in collaborating around narratives and news
“I think that's actually a really good question. It is something that you're taking into
consideration, right? Like, you always want to find that balance, but I think from a
broader standpoint it comes back to, and I don't know if this is everyone, maybe
this is just me, but I always try to think of, like, what's the worst case scenario? If
we do this, what is the worst thing that could come of it? Like, say last year we're
pumping up [rookie] Matty Beniers. He's having an unreal season, the team's doing
really good, and we're pumping his tires, and then all of a sudden, halfway through,
he hits the wall and then you're like, oh, we put him in a bad spot because now all
these fans have been used to seeing us pump him up and now he's maybe not doing
so well and all of a sudden now he's getting just destroyed because of that. Because
now fans are noticing that he's not very good.

“So it's a balance of just trying to think through how you promote
someone and you shine light on their accomplishments and you kind
of build that fan connection without doing so in a way that's going to
hurt them if something goes wrong. So that's kind of what we look at
and, again, I don't know if that's just me and my crazy brain, but I just
think with the background that I have that's something that's always
been really important to me.”

On starting with the Texas Stars following her years of experience in the NHL
“So NHL versus AHL — super different. Obviously the game stays the
same…Like I told you, I really love the creativity side. I was really into trying to
figure out how to tell stories. I got an assistantship, I think it was Broadcast and
Media Relations assistant was the title…So I went down there, I'm not a
broadcaster — did not do any broadcast, so we'll just sweep that one aside. But
I did a lot of work, taught myself how to do graphic design because that was one
of the things that we had to help out with was creating some graphics. Doing
social — I had never done social media before, had never really touched a
website before; most of my background was on the comms side, right? You
know, reading and editing and proofing the media guides or helping come up
with written stories or stats or things like that.

“Going to the AHL is really what helped me to get into this space because
you have to do everything. The staffs are so small that, you know, if you're
in charge of PR, oftentimes the PR person is also the broadcaster and also
has to help with team services on occasion, or they have to help with all
this other stuff. So for me, I was like, okay, I'm coming in as the assistant,
I'm taking on some PR responsibilities, managed the press box, helped
with game notes, wrote press releases, also did social, also did the
website, also did graphic design. And again, I’m not the only person, but
it's, like, everyone has those skills so that they can step in and pitch in
when they need to. I was super lucky and then I was graduating grad
school and they ended up extending me to full time. I'm so grateful
because I learned so much.

“But obviously, like, you want to start working in the NHL again, right? At the end
of the day, I love hockey and I would have stayed [with Texas] forever had I not
gotten an opportunity to go back to the NHL, which is what happened with [the]
Florida [Panthers]. And at this point because I had diversified my skill set from
hockey ops, from communications, and I'd learned all those new skills, I was able
to apply for a variety of jobs, got a call back from the Panthers — shoutout Ady
[Adelyn Biedenbach], my old boss, she gave me an opportunity to come back to the
big leagues and I ended up joining the communications team as the social media
coordinator, which was super cool, given that, again, my background was in
comms. So, you know, I still had that tie in. They still gave me opportunities to do
different comms work, but I was also able to fine tune more skills. I learned more
Photoshop, learned how to use nice DSLR cameras, learned how to create content
plans and build strategies and learned how to engage with fans. There were just so
many opportunities that I got there that I'm forever grateful for.”

“At that point, because it was let's see, I think Ady really kind of
started their social. She's still there now. But at that point they had
had a coordinator or a manager who had moved on to work outside of
sports. So I came in as the coordinator and it was just me. So I was
managing, you know, the Panthers Care account, their community
account, did most of the management of their PR account, managed
the main accounts, would help out from time to time with the arena —
again, like this was back in 2016, 2017 so most teams really only had
one, maybe two people if you were lucky. It's crazy that even since
then it's changed so much.”

Getting the opportunity with the Kraken
“So actually, one of my one of my very dear friends in this league had met the
folks from Seattle at the time at the [NHL] All-Star game. I think it was in San
Jose that year. And it was my second year with Florida. It was me, him and
another gal were all in a group chat together, so we had always [said] like, oh
my gosh, how cool would it be to go to Seattle? Seattle's so cool. It was mostly
tongue in cheek, because you're just like, oh, surely they're going to find
someone. It's never going to even be a possibility. And then all of a sudden I get
this text being like, ‘Hey, so I met these people, I talk to them about the stuff. I
actually think that this would be an amazing fit for you.’ And I was like, No.
And they were like, Yeah. And I was like, Are you sure? And he was like,
Absolutely, just talk to him.

“So I ended up connecting with [their] digital manager at the time and he and I
chatted. It was just an informal call and it was mostly just like, we're trying to set some
stuff up, what do you think? What do you recommend? Like, what products do you
guys use? So I kind of laughed just being like, Oh, they were just looking for
information, kind of like a contact to help. So, again, I didn't even think of anything of
it.
“So he ends up sending me an email being like, Yeah, we're looking for this job. And I
was like, Is this one of those soft sells where they can't really approach me, so I have to
express interest? And I literally called five people and I was like, what do I respond
with? I'm so confused. They helped me type this email out and I was just like, this is
awesome. I would absolutely be interested in something like this if you think that it
would be a good fit; if not, totally fine, I have a whole list of other people I can send
you. So it's kind of like, you know, you gave them both options so that you didn't set
yourself up to get hurt…

“He ended up responding, we went through the interview process — this is the worst
interview I've ever done in my life. I bombed all of these in my own opinion, and I was just
saying like, I'm never going to get a call back. Said that after the first one I got a call back.
Said that after the second one, I got a call back and then they wanted to fly me out. We
were in the middle of the season and I was like, I literally can't leave. I'm the only one here;
if I leave, who's going to do social while I'm gone? Like, it's not an option. So I was just like,
I can't, here's why I could come out after the season. But they were in a bit of a rush to get
this done, so, again, I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. I get an email on a
Monday, which my mom worked in HR for like 14 years so I've always been under the
impression that if you're going to offer someone a job, you do it on a Friday. They take the
weekend, they think about it, they get back to you Monday; Monday or Tuesday you send
out like your rejection emails. And so I get an email on Monday saying like, Hey, do you
have a few minutes to talk? And I was just like, Oh crap. I'm not kidding. So I fully
prepared, I was at the office I was like, yes, I just went up to the top level of the rank to be
like, Yeah, it's fine. I didn't get the job. Cool.

“So I'm up there fully expecting [to get told she didn’t get the job], I start to
ask him about the weather being like, Oh, how's the weather down there? And
I was like, This is kind of a weird conversation to start off with the weather,
but like, okay. So we're chatting and all of a sudden he goes, Yeah, we'd love
to offer you the job. And I was like, I'm sitting there…I was speechless. And he
was just like, Hello. And I was like, I'm so sorry, I'm processing right now…So
I ended up accepting and then I actually gave my two weeks [notice] the day
that the Panthers had hired a new coach. So it was like the craziest day
because we're announcing this coach. I am trying to find a way to grab my
boss in the middle of this and tell her that I'm putting in my two weeks and I
was just like, Oh my God, I'm so stressed out. It was the most insane day of
my life. Then I came out here and have been with the Kraken ever since.”

On starting with the still-unnamed Seattle NHL club and what the
staff looked like and objectives were when she started
“It was interesting. Technically, I was employee 29 to get hired
between us and the building, which is wild to think about. Side note
here, Zach Peggins, on my team, he was the second employee ever
hired by the team. And he has done everything from like…He didn't
get into social until after we launched the team name, but he was
going around passing out flyers to get people to come support the
arena stuff down at Seattle City Council. He would knock on doors,
make signs — it's crazy, he’s just got such a crazy background.

“So it was us. There were a couple other folks. Again, we were all kind
of like one group, but there were folks who were kind of dedicated to
the arena, folks dedicated to the team. So when I got here we had my
boss, who was the manager of digital, a VP of Marketing, EVP of
Business Ops, a marketing manager and a graphic designer. And it
was like us and then it was everyone else were all VP or higher. Like, it
was us and then the executives and some sales folks, and I was like,
Am I qualified enough to be here? Everyone here is really talented…

“It was such an adjustment, right? Because you're going from working in season,
working crazy hours…I was like, gosh, these times are so flexible. Like, you come in at
nine, you leave maybe around four, it was great. But, to your initial question asking
about goals and what our strategy was at that point — it was really about building
and generating interest within the organization because we knew we weren't going to
be starting till 2021-22 at that point. We had a lot of time before we were going to
announce things like team name, so it was really just about educating people, getting
people excited for hockey, telling stories about hockey, telling stories about the NHL,
keeping people up to date on like, okay, if you are interested in our team, you want to
learn about hockey, but you're a newbie, let's go into the background. Let's
understand why positions matter. Let's understand what the difference between a
forward versus a defenseman is or, you know, why we use certain gear. We were kind
of just like, what is interesting, right? Like, as a new hockey fan, what are you curious
about? What do you want to know and let's let's look into it.

“We did a ton of great storytelling, too. My old boss, Cam, he did this
great series. There's an ice rink up in central Washington called the
Winthrop Ice Rink, but it's outdoors; NHL regulation sized rink. We had
a team of staff who went up and played in a tournament there because
they were all learning hockey and we did a whole content series. It was
really freaking cool. So, you know, we're just finding little things to kind
of get people excited, to gauge interest, to build brand awareness and
recognition. Then the closer it got to brand launch the more interest
you're getting. Because at some point it goes from being, like, okay, you
guys are coming in a year, what the heck is your team name? You start to
kind of then play into that and to start getting people excited about like,
oh, what's our name going to be?...”

On building the brand and adjusting during the tumultuous Covid years
“It was super cool. And then, you know, Covid hit, right? Then you go through the Black
Lives Matter movement you start to really think about social justice and these impacts.
And we started really thinking about as an organization, like, who do we want to be? Like,
who are we and what do we stand for? I think one of the coolest things about us is from the
very beginning, even prior to a lot of that, we wanted to be a little different. We wanted to
make the game more accessible, we wanted to show that it doesn't matter who you are or
what your background is, what color your skin is — we want you to feel like this is a place
that you could be and you could relate to and you could succeed in. It's something that I
always look back on and I mean those couple of years were hard for a lot of people, you
know, myself included. I moved up to Seattle, I had one friend here that I knew from high
school, I had my dad's cousins who I didn't know super well until I moved out here, and
then coworkers. Thousands of miles away from family, secluded in a tiny little studio.
You're just like, What am I doing?

“I look back at those times, and one of the things that I think to me
was really encouraging or gave me hope to kind of go through was
how we grew as an organization and some of the stuff that we did
within the community and the storytelling and that engagement and
the awareness and it's just it's been really, I think, cool, and it set a
really strong precedent for us, and I hope it set a good example for
other organizations and other people in the industry.”

On fan development strategies for the Kraken early on
“Coming here I had never been to Seattle prior to moving here. I think I drove
through once with my friends who live in Portland and we took a trip up to Canada
and then literally drove from Vancouver back to Portland, so we drove through
Seattle. I'd never been here otherwise. So when you talk about strategy and that
tone and that voice I had to rely on a lot of coworkers or just I had to spend so
much time doing research, talking to people there I would meet and really trying to
understand what does this city care about? What does speak to the Pacific
Northwest? What does speak to a Seattleite? That was really challenging, right?
Being someone who's, like, okay, I'm supposed to build an online brand presence
for this city that I've never been to. I think I underestimated how challenging that
was going to be at first, but it's also one of the things I think that pushed me to
really grow.

“But again, it goes back to we really did want to engage the community. The amount of
fan listening groups that our CEO and (also) at that point our head of hockey hockey ops,
who was Dave Tippet, they would sit down and they'd do these fan focus groups. They’d
talk to people, like, What do you think about this? What do you care about? What do you
want to learn? I tried to watch the videos from those or ask our marketing team
questions about it because that's the type of stuff that you learn [from]. You'll see we
actually are getting ready to do this here in a couple of weeks, but once a year we try to
do these fan content polls; we want our fans to help dictate what we're doing because
they're the ones engaging with it. Like if you pay attention you're going to see that stuff,
but you also want to empower your fans to build a positive community, because I think
the worst thing any brand can do is just be like, No, we know what’s best and turn into
that really corporate account who doesn't actually engage or listen to their audience and
then becomes irrelevant, right? The more you engage, the more you listen, the more you
work with them, the more positive of an experience it's going to be for everyone.

“So that really was our goal. Seattle is a city that is so invested, they care so
much. And Seattle's a city of just — they want to be the best. You have so many
incredibly smart and talented people who live here, but there's also so much
culture, right? Like, the amount of Native American tribes out here, we're
actually partners with Muckleshoot, the tribe there; they’re going to be our
jersey patch sponsor, they're going to be probably one of our biggest partners.
Learning more about that, learning more about Native American culture,
learning more about culture from people who are Asian American because
there's a high population of Asian Americans here. It's so unbelievable. And
you get to learn about that and continue, again, to just advocate for people to
be better and try and just shine a light where you can shine a light and just
remember to try and be a voice for everybody and not just a small subset.”

“I feel like back in the day, social was just so like, here's what's
happening. And people don't want that anymore, right? I mean, like,
gosh, you could have this beautifully polished video that you've spent
years working on and the concepts are awesome and it performs okay.
But then you have this raw video of like someone just screaming after
an amazing goal and that outperforms anything you do the entire
year. And it's because it feels real. It feels raw and in the moment and
it allows fans to to really connect with it. The other stuff, there's still a
place for it, it is still impactful, it still matters, but you're starting to
see a shift in what people care about and a lot of times it's
authenticity.”

Strategy around brand launch and maximizing the early tentpole events
“Brand launch was one of the most stressful few weeks of my existence. Like,
obviously we had been planning stuff for a long time, but there are so many
different factors that go into timing of that, right? Once we were kind of at a place
where we actually have a legit [launch] day and it's not just like maybe this day,
maybe this day, and it was solid we were like, Oh, snap, we're doing this right now.
I meanI think there were probably 4 or 5 nights where I got maybe three hours of
sleep because I was just like, I don't know, your brain's just going. You're thinking
like, oh, what if we did this? Or what if we did this? Or, Oh, I need to finish up this
thing or I need to work on this thing. I wish I could show you the docs that I have
because I had a schedule that had posts going out like every 15 minutes for an
entire day. Then when we actually got there, I think that we did not even a quarter
of them, which is fine, right? Because it worked and that's part of it.

“You do all this prep work, you can gather a ton of stuff, but there's also an element of you have
a good framework in place that allows you to then be flexible and pivot. And that was one of the
things that I think was really cool about what we did, we were really able to say like, okay, does
it make sense to do all of this or should we pivot and let some of these things breathe, let some
of them have this space to create that impact? And it was awesome. It was funny — because it
was in the era of Zoom, I noticed like, gosh, they were doing these virtual seminars; if you ever
go to the big conferences, they were doing conferences virtually. So they had all these breakout
sessions. We were [thinking] and being like, okay, once we do the name, then what? And I was
kind of like, What if we did like virtual breakout sessions? And our marketing team, our comms
team took that, ran with it, and we had this really cool thing where we did deep dives with
Adidas and the designers, we had our community team join on, we had hockey [ops] join on,
like our GM, AGM — it was so cool, all of these things that went into it that made it so
successful. Because not only were we announcing this thing, but then we are offering people this
really intense look into why we did it, what to expect, and really we showed them why they
should care. I think that was kind of what helped us to hook everything.”

About the expansion draft
“Oh my gosh, that was insane. So my boss is our VP of Communications. He
and I worked out of where hockey ops is based out of to just get everything
prepped. Like I was there to help take photos and to have these kind of cool
behind the scene moments that, I don’t know, in 25 years we're going to want,
right? So we worked out of there, the hours were insane. Again, it was one of
those things where I think I got like two hours of sleep the night before because
you're just going through everything, scrubbing stuff, making sure we have all
of the graphics ready and we can start versioning things out. There's just all of
this prep work that goes into it. Then the next day we drive to the airport, we
collect the six guys who were here and you're just like, Oh my God, we have a
team. It was so crazy…

“We had a good idea of what [the picks] were going to look like, but obviously
there's a level of secrecy, right? You know, non-disclosure type of stuff. So we
had a good idea. We knew who the six guys that were flying in were, so we were
able to do some prep work for them. Like, they had jerseys created and and
stuff like that. And yeah, it was just crazy. We went through, had to scrub
[social]; you do your standard thing, which I think probably most teams do is
any time you get a new player you go through the socials, just give it a peruse,
make sure that it's clean. And it's so funny to think back on that and kind of be
like, Oh my God, all of the work that went into getting all of this ready and then
you're still trying to find handles and social profiles, but you can't follow
anything but you're pretty sure this is the right one, but then also not super
sure because it hasn't ever been used and you're just like, but we can't ask. It
was just such a fun, funny experience.”

On planning season coverage and thinking about the resources and staff outlay
“It's super collaborative. You know, I think a lot of it we were pretty sure that we wanted to try
and advocate for a third spot on the social team. But it was funny because they're like, you
know, there were so many things that factored into [it]. Initially we were going to do a delayed
hire and then we were like, Oh, maybe actually we push this back because it's the first season.
And again, I'm going into my 11th year working in pro hockey [now] [and] our inaugural
season was the hardest thing that I've ever done. It was so much fun. It was stressful, it was
crazy, it was chaotic, there were a lot of challenges, but it was so much fun. And you learn so
much from it. But, I also know as busy as we were — we were joking, we always joke around,
we say that year one you're just trying to tread water, right? You're just trying to keep your
head above water because everything's a first, right? And you'll be halfway through something
and you're like, wait a second, this isn't in place yet. Oh, my God, like, I have to create this new
process in addition to doing this thing that I'm so used to there being a process in place and
you're just like, Oh my gosh, now you're trying to do five things at once instead of one thing.

“So just going through that, you kind of feel like you're just treading water. Then year
two, so our last season, we kind of thought of as like our first real expansion season,
right? Because you go from just like everything's the first, you have all of these crazy
milestones, you have players coming in for the first time, a brand new fan base, you're
also dealing with Covid restrictions still to last year was the first year we were really
able to get out into the community. So, you know, having school visits, having guys go
visit hospitals, ball hockey clinics, all sorts of things we weren't able to do that the first
year we got to do last year. So we kind of thought this is our true expansion year,
right? Like this is the year where we're kind of fine tuning things. We're getting stuff in
place. We were able to advocate after our first season [with] how busy we were like,
Hey, here's the reason why we need a new person, here's some metrics from other
clubs, here's why we think this is a good fit and we were able to successfully advocate
for that. I think at the end of the day those conversations, I don't know what they look
like for most teams, but those start pretty early because it's a long process.”

On developing the Kraken’s social media frameworks and guidelines
“So I think our first year — and I'm going to start by saying we are so lucky
that our executive leadership team has bought in — my very first day
working for back then it was NHL Seattle, our CEO Tod Leiweke pulled me
into his office, introduced himself, we got to chat and he goes, I just want
you to know that I don't want you to feel like you have to get every single
post approved before you hit send. He was like, We've hired you for a reason.
Run with it and do what you think makes sense. You know, there's obviously
still stuff you have to go through the correct approvals, but it's that vote of
confidence. Not every team is like that. I think it was just really cool to see
and to be able to kind of have that buy in from the very beginning.

“You know, I think just with my experience working within the league
I was able to earn a lot of that trust with our leadership, with my
bosses. So year one it was a lot of just like we're going to test things
out or we're going to have some fun with this, we're going to see how
it goes. We know what our general voice and tone is, but we also don't
know what this team's going to look like. We were hoping we were
good, we weren't sure. These guys had never played together before,
in a city that most of them probably haven't really ever been to. New
coaching staff. There are so many factors that go into that.

“So we kind of preface it by saying we do know that we don't want to
do play by play. We're going to focus on highlights because when
you're scrolling through, typically that's what people want is
highlights and score updates, so kind of follow that route. Then,
again, it was just kind of playing around with it, right? Seeing like,
okay, if we have a high scoring game, we find that people will engage
more if we do a carousel of goals rather than an individual post for
every single goal, right? So just kind of playing that by ear and being
able to to take chances and to take risks.

“I think we leaned a lot into to humor and keeping it real. I mean, as lame as
that sounds, our team, unfortunately, we didn't get too high in the standings
that first season so we leaned into humor, right? It's like, oh, let's find a way to
laugh at this. It sucks. Like, we're also fans of our team, we want us to do well,
but we're not going to try and sugarcoat it. Like, I have challenged myself in
this; both my teammates, both the kids on my team, their name is Zack. So
[the Zacks] I told them, I was like let's never just say final [after a loss]. Let's
find a way to do something else, right? Like, if we have a bad game, is there
something that we can do to still build up a player who performed well? It's
just something to do to poke fun at ourselves or to acknowledge that it sucks,
right? Losing sucks. No one likes it and the team shouldn't pretend like it's
okay. So that's something that we've challenged ourselves to do.

“But going into year two we were kind of like, I don't know if that's going to fly for
two years in a row. You kind of have to think about fan response because now fans
are starting to get it. You know, we made some moves in the offseason and we had
Matty Beniers coming in for his first season. The pressure was a little higher, the
stakes were a little higher. So we still wanted to incorporate the tone and the the
lightness, but we wanted to also have fans recognize that we do have high
expectations for ourselves, too. We're not okay with with being at the bottom of the
standings. And I think we did a really good balance of that; like, there were a couple
times where we still integrated the funny final score graphic and a joke. There were
times where we were just like, Yeah, this really sucks. And there were other times
where were just like, You know what? We didn't win this one, but look at how good
you know, (goalie Philipp Grubauer) did, right? He had some sort of crazy save
percentage and just absolutely crushed it and it was a goaltender battle. You find
different things to to relate to your fans.”

On making the most of the Kraken’s successful past season and playoff run
“Our biggest thing last year and, again, we talk about this a lot, but our focus
whenever it comes to our team doing — I think you're starting to see the
memes are becoming a little bit more spicy these days, right? And teams
aren't afraid to kind of rag on each other — and there's a time and a place for
that for sure, but I think our big thing was, like, we would rather build
ourselves up instead of tear others down. There are certain teams, you know,
where maybe we have good relationships with the admin so we can plan
some fun back and forth or some fun banter. But at the same time, we want
to focus on building our team up. Again, there's always a place for the spicy
comment here and there, but it's not, I think, the focal point of our strategy.

“So when we're talking through this, we're planning all this stuff, that was
one of the big things that was kind of at the forefront. Like, let's find a
way to keep building this up because this team is special and, you know,
we've got it now, we don't know if we're going to get it again. You're never
guaranteed anything in this league. You have to work for it every single
game, every single shift. As cliche as it sounds, it's so true. You know, a lot
of people didn't peg us to make the playoffs last year, let alone beat
freaking Colorado; like, are you kidding me? So a lot of it was just let's
focus on building it up now, building these relationships now, building
the goodwill now so that we have that kind of there [and] we can start
forming those connections with our fans and really continue to grow
them in an environment that is really positive.”

“It's funny, right? Because it's like, we won our first game against the Canucks
in team history this past year, and we had a bunch of stuff and we're like, Oh,
it'll be fun because that's an easy rivalry, right? That's an easy one to kind of
poke fun at. But at the same time, they had just gone through a coaching
change, their team wasn't doing well and we were just like, You know what?
Like, why? Why make them feel worse about this when the team's already in a
tough situation? It doesn't make sense. So we really ended up being like, you
know what? We're going to scrap most of this. Let's just run with we can build
ourselves up. We can focus into the positives that came from us rather than
just being like, you have this team, they're in a bad spot and it's like, well, no,
because that could be us. And I've been there. I've been with teams that have
been in bad spots before and it sucks. You don't want to make people feel bad.”

On how monetization strategy started and evolved as the Kraken built
their social media strategy from scratch
“We started integrating all that stuff way back in the day. I actually
work really closely with our partnerships team. We've got a really
great crew here. One of the things that I stressed really early on was
we're not an ad, right? Like, we're not somewhere where people would
just be like, post this graphic and tell people to come to our website
and buy things. It's like, no; let's integrate, right? Like, let's
incorporate into things that we're already doing. Let's make this feel
organic.

“The one project that I'm so proud of is we have this series called
‘Uncharted’ with Filson. This project has been my baby since 2020 when
I first thought about it. It's taken so many different iterations and life
forms and there have been so many variables with it. We took two of our
guys hiking, we have another episode coming out in a couple of weeks, so
shout out that. We took Jared McCann fishing and immersed them into
the Pacific Northwest. It was a cool content series that felt very Seattle,
but it integrated a partner and also integrated what matters to the
partner, which is getting people outside and integrating them into the
wilderness and kind of telling some of that story there. So it's something
that we're really proud of when it comes to to sponsored content.

“Again, integrating people into things that we're already doing. So if we have like a
game preview, how do we integrate partners into that? So we have a couple things
that we're working on right now, different game day elements and how do these
look and how can these evolve and be better? Even if it feels sometimes like it's a
logo slap, usually there's a deeper reason to doing it, right? It's saying, okay, we
know that — I'm just going to [invent] something, this is not real, but say we have a
partner who really focuses on data and analytics and we have a graphic that we do
for a game day that shows the different stats of the game. It might feel like a logo
slap, but if that's something that's important to them, but it's something that's
important to us, why not integrate those two things together because they match
and they feel holistic. Rather than just being like, We're going to put a random
plumbing company logo on this graphic because we just need to put something on
there, you know? So we try to be a little bit more thoughtful with our approach.”

On the approach to new platforms and features that require time and
resources
“A lot of it is trial by fire, right? It's being willing to put yourself out
there and trying new things. I think with both TikTok and we're
seeing it now with Threads, too, we've kind of prefaced to everybody
ahead of time, we're saying, hey, we're going to take a couple months,
we're going to see how this platform develops, we're going to test
some things out. And once we get to a point where we feel like we
have a real strategy that is impactful, then we can start doing broader
activations on it, right?

“I think TikTok was a really good example of that, where, I'll be honest, I love
TikTok, but oh my gosh, it's so stressful. Like it moves so fast and so I didn't have
a ton of time to dedicate to it, which is one of the reasons we ended up hiring Zach
Zeman on my team to come in and help to manage that voice and that platform,
because that is something that requires time and dedication and consistency. So
we've really done a lot of trial by fire. It's let's try something, let's see, does this
trend actually resonate with our audience or with people who are seeing our
videos or do we care more about this? One of the weirdest things we have found,
in addition to BookTok, which I'm sure if anyone's listening, they've probably seen
the Kraken on BookTok, but the thing that we've seen a lot is people are fascinated
by the equipment staff. Like, we could post stuff about our equipment staff, I don't
know, changing skate blades with their bare hands every day and probably get
hundreds of thousands of views on every video. It's unbelievable.

“Obviously, you know, we tapped into BookTok a little bit there,
which is cool. It's a really interesting community and I think it's been
interesting to see how the rest of the league, once they kind of realized
what we were doing, kind of bought into it which I’m lowkey so proud
of my team for kind of diving in there. And just engaging with the
community that most sports leagues kind of ignored for the most part.
So I think on that front it's been cool and it again goes back to that
our executives have trusted us and luckily we haven't done anything
to break that trust yet or hopefully ever.

“I mean with Threads I think we're all pretty smart and know that it's not
going to be the same platform in about six months. So for us it's just like,
okay, let's see what works. If you look through our Threads profile, there's
kind of seemingly random posts. Like, I snapped a photo of Mount Rainier
this last week, and I was like, oh, popped up from the depths to take a look
at Mount Rainier because the mountain’s out — it's a very Seattle thing.
It's kind of random, but still gets a couple hundred likes, which I feel like
for Threads is pretty good. You know, we'll announce breaking news on
our player signings, coach extension, things like that. So again it's a lot of
trial by fire, a lot of just kind of seeing how other brands are using the
platform, how creators are using the platform, how general users are using
it and integrating it and trying new things and seeing what works.”

Savannah’s favorite or most memorable player[s] to work with
“I mean, I feel like it has to be [Roberto] Luongo, right? Like, I
worked with him his last NHL season. That dude's a legend, so I feel
like it has to be him.”

Savannah’s favorite guiding principle or mantra when it comes to sports,
social media
“Keep an open mind…So I think for, for me it's helpful in a lot of senses.
You know, when it comes to new content, new ideas, letting other people
have voices in the social world, even if they're not the main social people.
Training new team members; like, social can be a hard one to kind of get
out of that day to day and to let some of the reins go and you have to have
an open mind, right? Because if you don't trust the people that you work
with, if you don't listen to new ideas, if you don't try and constantly get
better and keep that open mind on ways to do it, you're going to get
stagnant and eventually fall behind.”

How has Savannah found the transition going from day to day person and doing
everything to becoming a manager of people?
“It is a hard transition. I think if you ask Zack Peggins, one of my direct reports,
he would probably say it was a little intimidating, because I think I've tried to
learn to not micromanage. I think it's a really easy trap to fall into, you know,
because you're so used to like, okay, I know the tone, I know the voice, but there's
also a level of it is okay if things aren't always 100% the way that I would do them.
Here's maybe a bit of a better metaphor — if you have one singular goal and three
people trying to achieve that goal, you're probably going to have three paths to get
to that goal. And there's no one to say which path is necessarily the right one.
There's the path you would take, but the path someone else takes could still be just
as successful. So it's trying to remember that I think, has really helped me the
most

“I mean, it's hard, I think, with social because there's such a, like, I
can see my work, I can see what I'm doing. So when you start to come
out of the day to day and look more at strategy, look at more people
management, look at more concepting or sitting in meetings, it's
harder to see the amount of work that you're doing. So you're like, Am
I still doing something here, you know what I mean? Because you're
so used to being like, Well, no, this is everything that I've done. Look,
I'm working. I'm working hard, here are the metrics to back it up. So
as you become a little bit more higher level, it's definitely an
interesting process and a bit of an adjustment, but keeping an open
mind and being willing to listen to your team, too, it's huge.”

On generative AI and Savannah’s perspective so far and potential utility for her
team
“I think right now we're still kind of operating under the, like, let's kind of keep
loose tabs on it. Like, we have some fun posts planned that the team's working
on to kind of come up with some funny, more just tongue in cheek content; like
meme type stuff rather than super serious. Like we're using this to help write
copy and stuff like that because I don't know, this is going to sound stupid, but
it does feel like cheating a little bit to me, So I don't know. I still haven't fully
made up my mind on it yet, but I think that there's definitely a time and a place
for it. I think you can have fun with it, but I think — I don't want us to take
shortcuts and rely too much on it and start to take away from our own creativity
because we're relying on someone else to do it for us.”

Who is the most objectively famous guess Kraken fan? And who is the most intense Kraken
superfan?
“Okay, I would say the most famous Kraken fan is, I don't know if a lot of people know this,
but Lana Condor. She follows us. We actually worked with her for our brand launch. She
did some little spots for us, follows us, she's been out to some games; super cool. It’s funny
because, like, I don't know, you were just like, oh, wait, yeah, you're a normal person, too.
So it's been really cool to see her. And it's funny, like, whenever she posts about us, I've
definitely noticed we'll get at least a couple hundred followers from it…
“Then I'd say, most intense, we have a lot of really intense fans. But I would say in terms of
most intense famous fan, probably DeeJay Dallas from the Seahawks. He loves the Kraken
and we love him; he's so great. And it's been cool, he actually, for his headshot, he did the
[Brandon] Tanev headshot with the big ghost eyes and brought that to the NFL and was
like, This is sick. It's so cool.”

Balancing hockey fans vs. Kraken fans in their content strategy
“It's got to be a healthy mix, right? I think one of the really cool things is,
again, I've been a hockey fan since I was a kid, right? So I maybe bring more
of the like, well, this is how we can reach, like, the avid fans. Zack, employee
number two, Zack Peggins on my team didn't grow up a hockey fan, so I
think we've had a really good synergy in terms of being able to say from a
diehard versus a newcomer, how do we tell the story and find that balance?
And, you know, there have been times where he's like, look, like, I'm going
to be honest, putting my fan hat on, he’s like, I'm scrolling through and I see
that [and] I don't care. And I was like, Really? And he was like, Yeah. And
I'm like, But why? We kind of like talk it out and it's really cool.

“And I think the other part of it is remembering that this is a no judgment zone. Like,
we are new, and if you want to be a fan of us, that's freaking awesome, and we welcome
that. We want to build this organization, we want to build this team, we want to build
this sport, and it doesn't matter if you're new, if you've been watching hockey for
decades and you've just started to adopt us, if you've never seen it before and you found
us from BookTok, great. Like there's no judgment here. Ask the questions you want.
“Like, our first season, we went to overtime the first time in Columbus [and] we lost,
but we still got a point. Our fans had no idea that you could still get points when you
lose. And so I was like, Wait a second, we should do a story on this. So we did a story on
it and it performed pretty well. So there's no judgment. If enough people ask
something, sure, let's talk about it, let's figure it out and let's educate people. Because
again, we're new, too, there's zero judgment here and there should never be judgment
for people trying to learn something.”

The social media platform or digital channel where the Kraken drive the most
revenue, and the one they have their eye on as a great growth area / a platform or
channel that they can really drive more value from
“I mean this is probably the standard answer, but I think for the last few years
you've probably seen the most revenue through our Meta ads. So, you know,
Facebook, Instagram, you typically tend to see the most clickthroughs…The way
our sponsored content is set up is we kind of attach it to series, so we kind of look at
the performances as a whole. We do evaluate based on platform, as well, but really
we focus on that bigger picture of, like, is this engaging? What's the engagement
rate? How many people are clicking through? And we kind of look at it holistically
to kind of see, okay, great, we've noticed maybe there's one platform where it just
really isn't hitting and then we'll evaluate that. But we do kind of kind of think
about it a little bit more big picture than kind of individual platform.”

“Then for growth opportunity, I mean, I feel like the easy one to say is Threads,
right? Because it is, honestly, kind of the first real competitor to Twitter right
now and it is going to change so much. But I mean, they have access to so many
more people than Twitter does that I'm kind of interested to see how this goes
the next couple of months to see if they can actually get that like meaningful
engagement on there versus Twitter…I also think TikTok is still really kind of
that big one right now. One that's maybe a little underutilized, I think, within
the sports advertising world, is probably Snapchat. I mean, you look at the
numbers on there of like kids under 18 and it is unbelievable and it's one where,
like, I wish I had more bandwidth to really dive into that and figure out how we
could have more of a presence there. But it's definitely one that I think is is
undervalued probably across most orgs.”

The best meal to get in Seattle and where
to get, and the best meal to get in Nashville
and where to get it
“I mean, you got to go fresh seafood if
you're coming here, right? Like you can get
a good steak anywhere, you can get chicken
wings anywhere, pizza anywhere, [so you]
got to go seafood. I'm a big sushi fan.
There's a place called Moshi Moshi over in
Ballard that has some of my favorite cuts of
of fish, so I would absolutely take anyone
there. It is my favorite, I take my family
there a lot. It's so good.

“Then I'd say for Nashville, oh, my gosh,
okay, there are so many places. But one
of the goto's that I always try to get
when I'm there is hot chicken. I will say
I think Hattie B's is highly overrated.
Prince's is one of my top [choices], but I
also really love there's this place called
Pepperfire. Pepperfire used to be really
close to where I used to live in East
Nashville, but they moved to West End.
But those two — so Prince’s or
Pepperfire would be my goto for hot
chicken there.”

Savannah’s favorite piece of content or post that the Kraken have produced
“This is kind of an embarrassing one, but we still laugh about it to this day. So on brand launch [day],
Zack Peggins, who ended up actually coming onto my team a couple months later, Chase Johnson from
our brand team, and then a guy named Paul who was with one of our agencies actually helped me with
all the social that day. So I assigned everyone a platform, that was what we manned, really focus on fan
engagement and at the end of the day, going through all of our all of our content and all of a sudden I
saw this random post that was just all caps said,’ we can't wait’ or something like that. It had like a
million exclamation points. And I was just like, I didn't send this. I was like, Who sent this? And so I'm
like looking and I asked the guy who was overseeing Twitter with me and I'm like, You know who this
came from? He was like, No. And I think what happened is, this is back on the old TweetDeck where it's
like if you accidentally hit a shorthand key it would change it from a DM to a tweet, and I think that's
what happened. So we just had this random tweet that was like, ‘we're so excited’ or ‘we can't wait’ or
whatever it was and it had over 2 million impressions, like crazy numbers.
“So, every now and then, we'll resurface it. It's just so funny to me still. So I think it's one of those, like
a little embarrassing, but just because we don't know quite how it got there or why it performed so well.
It’s funny.”

Which Kraken player’s stock should we buy heading into the 2023-23 season?
“I mean, look, Matty [Beniers] is the obvious choice. I'm still mad that he got
snubbed for the Lady Byng this year, but it is what it is. I think he's the easy
choice. I also think, I mean, Vince Dunn had a record year last year. We just
signed him to a big deal, so I would love to see him continue to just absolutely
crush it out there. And then obviously Philipp Grubauer really came into his
own last year; you saw back in the playoffs [he was] just absolutely dialed.
Those are three guys that I would love to see just dominate this year. And who
knows? I'm still holding out that one day we're going to get Yanni Gourde just
going nuts and he'll end up being our All-Star or something. It'd be so cool.”

Savannah’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“This is definitely like more of a focus on sports social, but I love Jess
Smith on Twitter (@WarJessEagle) and she's got a blog (Social ‘N
Sports). She's great. I think she just has such good insights and she
follows so many different brands and finds these really incredible
pieces of content. Honestly, like if you're getting into the social space,
you're curious about sports social or just social in general, she's
someone I would absolutely recommend to follow.

“I'm going to also shout out Zack Peggins (@ZPeggins). He's freaking
hilarious. I just think he's so great. I love following his Twitter. Like if I
were a Kraken fan, he would be one of my top follows of a Kraken
employee who's just a great follow. He's funny, you see some of the
memes that don't always make it out to [the] main [accounts], just a
classy dude, just hilarious. So he's great.
“And then also, if we're talking athletes or people that I enjoy following —
Jack Grealish [of] Man City [@JackGrealish on Twitter and IG]]. This guy
is a gem. I'm very new into my soccer fandom, but Jack Grealish has
made me want to follow the Premier League. It's unbelievable the reach
and the personality and just the fun that he has.”

Where to find Savannah and the Kraken on social media
Savannah is @hollissm for her personal Instagram and @hollisimages
for her more Kraken-heavy Instagram and she’s on Twitter @hollissm
The Kraken are @SeattleKraken across all platforms

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Savannah for being so generous with her time to
share her 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 251 Snippets: Savannah Hollis of the Seattle Kraken

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