12 Aug Beyond The Metrics: Chris Wescott, Director of Social Content, Learfield
At Zoomph, we champion the power of partnerships, marketing, business intelligence, and social media. Our Q&A series puts the spotlight on industry leaders, giving you an inside look at their expertise, strategies, and perspectives – beyond the numbers. Join us as we uncover valuable insights straight from the minds shaping the industry.
Tell us a bit more about your background
I earned my degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2011. Before my current role with Learfield Studios, I spent time in a variety of digital media, content, and social media roles in sports, including Head Writer at the Edmonton Oilers, Manager of Content at the Chicago Blackhawks, and Director of Content Strategy and Social Media at the New Jersey Devils. I’ve always had a passion for sports and originally wanted to be a play-by-play broadcaster and reporter, but after trying my hand at the latter for a few years, I realized my true calling was more on the content strategy side.
Tell us a bit more about Learfield and how you are helping your clients:
My current role with Learfield is unique in that I get to touch on several different areas of our business. I manage a team of social media content creatives stationed at different college athletics departments around the U.S. and help them ideate, pitch, sell, create, and value branded content for the school’s social media channels. I also help develop distribution strategies for our content at Learfield Studios to make sure we’re reaching the optimal audience with our content organically.
My primary role, however, has become building and growing our content analytics tracking capabilities across Learfield Studios. It is about finding out how we take all the content we’re producing at our partner schools, track it, and gain insights into its performance and success, and then develop action off it. It’s developing and managing our tracking process and tweaking it as our industry changes or to fit our evolving needs as an organization at Learfield’s large scale, so we can support our leadership and teams with data. It’s challenging and rewarding.
Share a professional accomplishment that you are extremely proud of, or share a campaign, organizational success, or win that you are proud of:
I am blessed to work with some incredible teammates here at Learfield and have had before as well at my previous stops. It has given me many opportunities to be a part of big wins. Assisting on the distribution strategy for Learfield’s Emmy-winning Iowa Women’s Basketball series, Crossover at Kinnick, was a pretty great feeling. And I’m also very proud of what our content team accomplished in New Jersey, winning the Stanley Award for Best Marketing Campaign for the third jersey release, and taking home a Hashtag Sports Award for Most Creative Engagement During the Sports Pause coming out of the pandemic were great accomplishments.
On a more personal level, I filled in on play-by-play for the Devils on multiple occasions my last two seasons there, including a month-long stint, achieving a childhood dream.
What is your favorite part about working in the sports industry?
It’s going to sound cliche, but the people. The amount of talented, creative, and hardworking people I’ve had the pleasure to work with or be around and learn from in this industry is unbelievable. I think seeing what others accomplish only drives you to work harder and learn new skills or think differently. And then along the way, there are also these milestones and memories you are a part of that will always stick with you, whether that’s a huge game, a playoff victory, a player’s milestone, a league event, or whatever it is that reminds you of how cool it is to work in sports. So for me, it’s the people and it’s the moments that only sports can give you that are my favorite things.
What is a trend you are keeping an eye on in the sports industry?
Not so much a trend as just what I am looking out for… Who is the next truly creative and original brand to rise to the top of the industry and showcase what a purposeful brand identity can do for a sports franchise? How your team shows up on social media can do so much to grow your fanbase and create lifelong fans, and I want to see which team is the next leader in the industry in that regard. Social media is constantly evolving, but I think the best creatives use that chaos and change to their advantage, and their brands are the ones that usually rise to the top.
What advice would you share with young professionals who want to work in the sports industry?
Diversify your skill set and grow your toolbox. The best thing I ever did for my career was learn a little bit of everything instead of being specialized in one thing. It helped me understand the full picture of the content journey and set me up for opportunities and success along the way. I started out wanting to be a journalist or broadcaster but learned how to publish my content to websites and social media, learned analytics and social media strategy, taught myself to shoot, edit, and produce, and even did a little graphic design. I know when I am hiring, I am always looking for someone who is willfully and purposefully working on themselves and their skills, because they can adapt better than others to changing landscapes and organizational needs. They are the ones more poised for success, regardless of the challenges of the day. You can have your specialty or expertise, just increase your knowledge base to include more of the content journey, and I assure you it will set you apart and help give you more opportunities.
What is one skill you wish you had learned earlier in your career, and why?
How to gather, understand, intellectualize, and articulate content performance. Early in my career, I was interested in how the content I was creating was performing, but I never quite understood it and did not know how to drive growth from it, or how to communicate it to leadership. If I hadn’t learned this, I wouldn’t have the opportunity I have today with Learfield. I wish I had learned it sooner!
What is your favorite product feature or specific use case of Zoomph that you’ve used at Learfield?
Using the API capabilities to pull specifically tagged posts across all the social platforms into a data warehouse where we are able to see a more complete picture of Learfield Studios as a whole, our schools, and their branded content performance has been invaluable. At our scale, it’s difficult to pull in the pure volume of content and then parse out performance by school, campaign, account, platform, etc. Zoomph has allowed us to do that with great success and are good partners in finding the best way to do it.
Do you have a favorite experience or memory from your time working in the sports industry?
I have so many that come to mind, and it’s hard to choose. Recently, it was the first college football game I was able to attend on the sidelines as part of Learfield. I had worked in pro hockey for so long and that was incredible, but I’ve always been a huge football fan so being on the turf at a major program was a uniquely cool moment. College athletics are such an awesome cultural experience from the fan perspective, and my first time on the sidelines was super memorable. From my past, I already mentioned doing play-by-play with the Devils, so I think I will say the first Edmonton Oilers playoff run after their long drought ended and I was doing post-game walk-off interviews on the big screen. I was interviewing Jordan Eberle after a win, and it felt like not a single fan had left the building. They were screaming and cheering so loud as I was talking to Jordan, we couldn’t hear each other. So, we had to duck back into the tunnel, and I told him what my three questions would be, and we’d cue up timing based on when we saw the other’s lips stop moving. We went back out, did the interview, and still couldn’t hear a thing. I had goosebumps with how cool of a moment that was and how crazy the fans were that night. It’s what sports are all about.
Besides your own, what is one city you think everyone should visit at least once, and why?
Las Vegas. It’s where I proposed to and then later married my wife, Lauren, so it’s special to me. Beyond that, the food can be exceptional if you know where to go. And there’s something there for everyone.
What would be your ideal/perfect vacation?
Orchard Park, NY on a crisp fall weekend when the Bills are at home. Cajun Honey Butter BBQ wings at Bar Bill at some point on the trip. Nothing better. I suppose Italy with my wife would be a great runner-up.
Do you have any pets? Tell us everything you want us to know about them!
I have a 15-year-old dog named Barney. He is a Yorkie mutt, and a little under 5lbs, and is Canadian. My wife and I adopted him from the Calgary Humane Society when he was 7. Now that he’s older, his favorite thing to do is be pushed in a stroller and smell the breeze when we go for walks. He is the most chill dog, a perfect loyal companion, and office mate. We call him our EVP of Barketing in our Learfield pet chat.
