FRIDAY CHALLENGE OVERVIEW
Ever wonder what your favorite players like to do off the field? If you've thought about what life is like inside an NFL training facility, Friday Challenge is the series for you. The social media team at the Minnesota Vikings has spent countless hours asking players to solve puzzles, sing songs and even go through a haunted corn maze. The crazy thing? They love to do it! The result is the Friday Challenge. Take a look at some of the best examples of this inexplicably awesome series.
CORE STRATEGIES
- Create a personal connection to the players for audiences
- Make digestible content that didn't take itself too seriously
- Challenge players to think on their feet without utilizing football skills
- Provide situations that allow for natural reactions between players
- Bring the audience along on the journey of solving a problem or challenge between the players
- Leverage player interest in participating in an unscripted reaction series
- Utilize in-house social media production talent vs working with an outside agency
- When appropriate, collaborate with partnerships to include branded objects seamlessly into the series
PROCESS
Every week, the social media team brainstorms what the player's Friday Challenge will be. When considering the ask, many different things are taken into account, such as team wins/losses, current player mentality, special holidays or partnership asks. The social media producer then gets to work on setting up the challenge. Often times this requires purchasing and sourcing items for the set, as well as thinking through the necessary camera angles needed to capture the reactions. On Thursday of that week, the auxiliary locker room is transformed into the Friday Challenge set. As players exit the locker room, they will see a sign directing them to the set where they can begin to solve the puzzle. The reactions are captured on camera and then morphed into social media clips that debut on Friday (hence the Friday Challenge).
In an interesting twist this year, the Friday Challenge went offsite for the first time (to a haunted corn maze, no less). This buy-in from players to trust the team was huge and opened the door for infinite possibilities as the series continues.
NOTEWORTHY EXAMPLES
You can see the rest of the Friday Challenge videos on the Vikings Instagram page.
RESULTS
The Friday Challenge is not only a player favorite, but a favorite amongst fans, as well. It stands apart from other social series in the sense that the product can be as creative as the team wants it to be. It has also produced significant "stars" who participate each week, allowing fans to root for someone as they watch. Through the social team's experience and learnings about the hobbies of each player, the product has evolved to keep those interests in mind (Alexander Mattison's passion for rapping/singing, etc.). In addition to the player buy-in and fan engagement wins, the series has generated impressive social media stats that indicate its on-going popularity.
SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT
In total, the Friday Challenge series has generated 13.45M video views, 201k interactions, 11.3M content impressions and boasts a .23% engagement rate across all platforms.
- Interactions: 27,452
- Engagement rate: .05%
- Content impressions: 5.87M
- Video views: 2.38M
- Interactions: 165,724
- Engagement rate: .67%
- Content impressions: 3.12M
- Video views: 2.21M
- Interactions: 8,540
- Engagement rate: .02%
- Content impressions: 2.32M
- Video views: 396,236
TikTok
- Video views: 8.47M
The Friday Challenge continues to be a popular social series for the Minnesota Vikings. With endless creative possibilities to cover, there is no ceiling on what this series can do as it continue to generate positive relationships with players, partners and the social media team.