It’s the Friday prior to March Break, and Christina Litz, the CFL’s newly promoted senior vice-president of content and marketing, is in the airport departure lounge waiting to board a plane bound for Austin, Texas and the annual SXSW Festival.
Right now, she is struggling to hear over the repeated boarding calls and announcements coming from the PA system. “Can you get a little closer to the phone?” she asks early in the conversation, requiring her interviewer to adopt an awkward hunched-over position while hollering questions directly into the phone’s mouthpiece.
“This is where our league is really supportive of getting the latest information to bring to our 104-year-old franchise,” said Litz of attending SXSW. “I’m there to learn from those innovators and bring that learning back to the league.
“It’s all part of a new approach to make sure we’re investing in innovation.”
Litz is nearly two years into her CFL career, having joined the league as vice-president of broadcast and media assets in April 2014. She arrived from Corus Entertainment, where she spent nearly two years as vice-president of digital content and engagement. Prior to that, she held content roles with both Rogers Communications and Telus.
She has played a key role in the development of the CFL’s digital platforms, while also revamping its content strategy through partnerships with Facebook, Twitter and the U.S. multi-channel network Whistle Sports (a partnership the league is keen to grow, said Litz).
In her new role, she is charged with attracting and engaging what she described as “the next generation” of CFL fans, who are increasingly consuming snack-sized content online. “People are consuming content, whether it be entertainment or football, on other platforms,” said Litz, who is overseeing a revamp of both the league and individual team websites to ensure they are mobile responsive.
Her SVP role is broad, encompassing everything from building on the league’s broadcast partnerships with TSN and RDS (as well as its U.S. broadcast partner ESPN) while overseeing content creation and distribution strategies, as well as the league’s brand positioning and promotion.
Digital content has emerged as one of the key pillars in the league’s engagement strategy. In November, it launched an internal group responsible for developing, creating and distributing digital content.
In addition to the videos created in association with Whistle Sports, the league also introduced a new weekly YouTube show called The Snap Wrap that summarizes all of the CFL-related online activity from the previous week.
The league is also introducing a new online stats tool built in association with SharpHat, a New Jersey based company that has previously worked with the NFL. The tool is also expected to assist the league in developing additional fantasy products, which have already proven popular with younger fans (for example, 41% of the 15,000 active users of a pick’em game introduced last year were under 34, according to Litz).
But, while the new CFL is attuned to the power of digital, it continues to rely on old-school methods to recruit fans. That includes a new out-of-home campaign currently being developed in association with Toronto agency Bensimon Byrne, which developed the new logo and brand positioning introduced last year. While Litz did not disclose full details about the campaign, she described it as a continuation of the “What we’re made of” positioning introduced in November.
The marketing is expected to be highly visible in Toronto, where the Argonauts’ move from the Rogers Centre to BMO Field will be one of the key storylines for the 2016 season.
Currently, about half of all Canadians engage with the CFL during a typical season, with engagement increasing during the playoffs and Grey Cup. The objective, said Litz, is to deepen and extend the league’s relationship with its casual fans.
“All of the excitement that happens in the playoffs and the Grey Cup is happening in every game,” she said. “It’s reaching out to that casual CFL fan and getting them to engage with us at all points in the season.”
The league has also entered into a new partnership with Adidas that includes both team jerseys and a new line of CFL-related lifestyle clothing. “It’s like nothing we’ve seen before for the CFL,” said Litz.
The league is also exploring additional collaborations with other clothing lines for team and league apparel, which will be featured when it relaunches its online store in May. “Even if you’re looking at a typical 55 or 70-year-old fan, they want to look cool too,” said Litz of the new apparel lines. “It definitely has a fashion approach that I don’t think we’ve had for a long time.”
Litz’s appointment is one of several announced by the CFL in recent weeks. They include Glen Johnson being named senior vice-president of football; Kevin McDonald as vice-president of football operations and player safety; and David Cuddy as senior vice-president of finance and business operations.
