Zachary Chapman has spent much of his career at the intersection between sports and the digital world.
Zachary Chapman
Chapman, vice-president of digital and publishing sales at ESPN, was an early employee at Wired Magazine, worked at Sports Illustrated and led the digital team at NBC through the Olympics in Beijing and Vancouver.
On Tuesday, Chapman spoke at The Canadian Media Directors’ Council‘s 20/20 Vision conference. Here’s a look at how Chapman and the rest of ESPN are tackling the changing media landscape.
Maintaining a singular mission
ESPN has a simple goal: to serve sports fans wherever they are, whenever they want content. Everything the company does has to help accomplish that mission, Chapman said, explaining the clarity of the ESPN’s purpose helps guide the company through global growth, shifts in media and changes in the sports world.
“All revenue aside, content and distribution aside, we think ‘What are we going to do to make the fan happy and how are we going to deliver content to the fan in the best method possible?'” he said.
Aggregating editorial under one umbrella
ESPN has more than 16 stations around the world, including ESPN 2, Watch and ESPNU. Each is designed to serve certain niches of sports fans. This spring the company took steps to bring its editorial together, in part by selecting a single editor-in-chief, Chad Millman, to oversee ESPN magazine and all the company’s digital properties and to regularly comment regularly on ESPN channels.
Every ESPN writer now writes for the magazine, ESPN.com and the rest of the company’s digital properties, Chapman said. He explained the idea is to simplify and serve readers content suited to their interest and location, regardless of which property they visit online.
Making content with every platform in mind
When ESPN produces content, Chapman said it’s conscious of how it will appear on tablets, smartphones, big screens and even for video-on-demand. As its audiences shifts towards mobile and other less traditional devices, he said the company has had to change the way it produces content. At ESPN, 60% of content is now viewed via a mobile device.
“Less and less people are watching on TV,” Chapman said, noting a growing slice of ESPN viewers also watch via devices like Roku and Xbox. “Our consumption is trending that way.”
No silos on sales teams
ESPN takes a similar approach to sales, where teams are encouraged to sell ads on all of its platforms, without quotas for certain media.
“There’s no, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get my magazine dollars.’ Or ‘Hey I’ve got to get my TV dollars, my digital dollars,’” Chapman said.
Instead, sales team focus on what media is best for the client, instead of what’s best for their own silo. “Ultimately, if the client’s happy and the advertising message is put forward in the right way, it’s going to serve the fan in the best way possible,” he said.
Concentrating on data
More than 39 million consumers have signed up for ESPN accounts, largely because of its online fantasy sports leagues. Because so much of its audiences signs in online, Chapman said the company is able to track their behaviour, which is a boon both for ESPN and its advertisers. The registered users have created a wealth of data ESPN taps into to learn how to most effectively serve both content and ads.
“If you start taking a look at what we can do with that data to serve people the right messages at the right time – and the right content at the right time – it starts to get staggering,” he said.
