At the 2019 Pan American Games, held in Peru, the Brazilian Rowing Team was composed of 20 athletes competing in the 12 events of the program.
Even though the National Olympic Committee is the main source of news for this type of event, I saw this as an opportunity for the National Rowing Federation to take advantage of the interest generated by the Games to increase our online audience.
However, some obstacles made content creation difficult. The organizing committee of the Games informed us that it would not broadcast any of he races live and the NOC would not be able to take pictures of all five days of racing because the rowing course was located 180km outside of Lima, the event’s official headquarters.
Countdown
The Lima 2019 campaign began with a countdown celebrating Brazilian achievements in rowing history over 15 editions of the PanAm Games.
Posts on social media invited the audience to follow the event on the Federation’s profile and to learn more about our rowing champions on the website, with a complete list of all participants.
Along with the countdown, the Brazilian Rowing Team was profiled on our social media, always with links to a full profile page on our website. The Federation held a media day with the team for individual and collective portraits. All photos were shared with athletes and their clubs, in order to help them with their personal profiles and to maintain a unified standard for the National Team.
Daily Races
Starting with the Heats, the Federation’s social media published the results of each race in real time.
The official rank was taken from the Lima 2019 website and the lack of images was overcome with the help of the Brazilian referees who worked at the event: they sent us pictures of each boat that left for the races in real time by WhatsApp. On podium day, the NOC was on the course taking professional pictures of the team. In total, there were 24 posts in 5 days of coverage.
On our website, articles were published at the end of each day with the highlights of the day’s races and the schedule for the following day. At the end of the event, an article celebrated the results.
Key Results
- Lima 2019 became the Federation’s highest viewed event on social media in 2019, with 27% more views than the second highest event of the season.
- The Countdown increased site visits by 45% prior to the Games and the users’ time online increased by 14%.
- Greatest reach on Instagram in two seasons.
- Second event with the highest engagement rate on Twitter.
- 74% above average interactions on Facebook.
- The women’s team did not win any medals, but their posts had 25% higher reach, with similar engagement to the men’s team posts with their medals on the podium.
Photos by Wander Roberto and Vitor Silva