ICYMI: How Offball hosted a WhatsApp group chat with LeBron James & friends

And why every brand should have a group chat strategy

I’m not a big sports geek but I was immediately intrigued when I heard that Offball invited 1,000 football fans to spend Draft Day in a group chat with LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Paul Rivera and special guest CJ Stroud.

Members could follow along, react and reply in real-time as the guys chatted.

So, I called Offball co-founder, Michaela Hammond, to get the backstory for you on this partnership between WhatsApp, OffBall and James’ The Shop.

If you’re not familiar with Offball, it’s a new’ish sports media company that describes itself as curating the best of sports culture — the types of things being talked about in group chats, happy hours, and cookouts. See where I’m going with this?

Why am I so fascinated with the company’s WhatsApp chat? Because if you look at the data, the headlines, the rise of Discord, and even one of my best performing newsletters referencing the power of group chats, they all show social audiences retreating from the feed to DMs and group chats.

And I don’t think we’re talking enough about what comes next and how to reach people as social media loses the ‘social’ aspect!

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ICYMI: I need to know, what inspired you to coordinate and host this next-level group chat?

Michaela Hammond: From a very high level, when we launched Offball, an editorial metric that we had for ourselves internally — and what we chose from a content perspective — was ‘What are the stories and content and things that people are sending around in their group chats?’ That's the metric. If it's not a story that's inspiring people to talk or react then we tend to focus elsewhere. That’s always been an organizing function for us as a company since we launched.

I used to represent professional athletes, that's my background. So I know that social media today is a promotional vehicle for athletes. It's where they post their news, their announcements, anytime that they have to make a statement, it's not where they're engaging with people. It's not where they're engaging with fans. So, how do we create something for them that's exciting to have actual, direct engagement with people.

ICYMI: How did you happen to partner with WhatsApp on this?

MH: WhatsApp was a natural place to collaborate with on what this concept could be because of the way the platform was built. Group chats are very common on WhatsApp - but that additional layer of engagement within group chats was what helped bring this together.

I come out of the era when Twitter was a really amazing place to have second screen experiences. This isn’t anti-Twitter, but I think it's just a recognition of wanting to tap into that same feeling that you got when a game was going on and all your favorite content creators were posting funny stuff on Twitter and it was just so fun to follow along. It made the game or the Grammys or the Oscars or whatever, more engaging and more fun, and that conversation has shifted more to group chats So, we thought, ‘What if we got people to bring their group chats to life?’

The collaboration with WhatsApp, started with the functional question of ‘Can your product allow for this? Would it allow for us to bring to life an actual group chat?’ And they were thinking big and willing to be innovative in this space so they worked to figure out how to use one of their existing products “Communities” and allow for a public viewing group chat.

ICYMI: Which product is that?

MH: The Chat is built on an existing product feature on WhatsApp called Communities. People already use it for larger community based chats, like neighborhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces. Community admins can connect multiple groups together under one umbrella, and admins can send important updates to everyone through the Community Announcements. For The Chat, WhatsApp made all of the talent into Admins, so they are the only ones able to post live back and forth conversations, while limiting the broader community to replying to specific comments with threaded replies and/or emoji quick responses.

ICYMI: How did you think about the mix of talent participating?

MH: We always wanted this to feel like an actual group chat. So there has to be some natural and authentic connectivity between the people participating. It's hard enough to do that when you're interviewing somebody, but texting… You have to understand people's tone of voice, how they normally text, and more. And then, ‘Who are their friends? Who are the people that are relevant to them in their lives?’ It's not a forced celebrity interaction, these are people that are actually texting each other.

ICYMI: Some people didn’t believe it was really LeBron and , have you guys thought about how to tackle this? Would it be worth adding an AMA-style selfie?

MH: Yes, definitely. People need to know that it's actually them. I think people could tell it was actually LeBron, Maverick, PR and CJ Stroud texting because of how they were talking and interacting, but got similar feedback that a selfie would have but everyone’s doubts at ease. I can attest though, it was actually them.

ICYMI: Because I’m obsessed with logistics and operations, can you explain how this happened in real time? Did the guys have help typing or can LeBron James really type that fast?

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