claptonrocks Posted February 28, 2021 Report Share Posted February 28, 2021 1 hour ago, T-Dub said: Hey we're all in this shit soup together. What can we do but bitch about it? 🙏.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|High School Harry| Posted February 28, 2021 Report Share Posted February 28, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spicoli Posted February 28, 2021 Report Share Posted February 28, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claptonrocks Posted February 28, 2021 Report Share Posted February 28, 2021 15 minutes ago, spicoli said: Lol... That was rich.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted February 28, 2021 Report Share Posted February 28, 2021 2 hours ago, claptonrocks said: Point takin..your right... Everyones right to express their thoughts regardless of what anyone else thinks is proper.. Well, except me. I do get to decide what is proper. I own a Ban Hammer!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|High School Harry| Posted March 1, 2021 Report Share Posted March 1, 2021 Some good LOL stuff here. This is from an article about A,J, Green probably leaving on Bengals Wire... "The American Psychiatric Association has termed “Carlos Dunlap Syndrome,” or CDS, an illness that occurs when one is so sick of playing for the Cincinnati Bengals that he loses his love for the game of football and appears to have lost athleticism and or skill." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claptonrocks Posted March 1, 2021 Report Share Posted March 1, 2021 6 hours ago, High School Harry said: Some good LOL stuff here. This is from an article about A,J, Green probably leaving on Bengals Wire... "The American Psychiatric Association has termed “Carlos Dunlap Syndrome,” or CDS, an illness that occurs when one is so sick of playing for the Cincinnati Bengals that he loses his love for the game of football and appears to have lost athleticism and or skill." Seems hes getting the ax in Seattle as well.. Maybe hes just past his prime now.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|High School Harry| Posted March 1, 2021 Report Share Posted March 1, 2021 5 minutes ago, claptonrocks said: Seems hes getting the ax in Seattle as well.. Maybe hes just past his prime now.. Probably just too expensive. I can still see him going to Cleveland. Whatever, he had a solid, secure job here and cut off his nose to spite his fuck face. AND we got a free 7th round draft pick out of it. Woo hoo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claptonrocks Posted March 1, 2021 Report Share Posted March 1, 2021 38 minutes ago, High School Harry said: Probably just too expensive. I can still see him going to Cleveland. Whatever, he had a solid, secure job here and cut off his nose to spite his fuck face. AND we got a free 7th round draft pick out of it. Woo hoo! I never truly understood what his beef was here.. Not enough snaps?... Hopefully with that 7th round pick for him they draft a placekicker to compete with Fat Randy.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_C_Deadpeople Posted March 1, 2021 Report Share Posted March 1, 2021 2 hours ago, claptonrocks said: Seems hes getting the ax in Seattle as well.. Maybe hes just past his prime now.. He did a respectable job for the Hawks, although he did go full ghost in the playoffs. Just too pricey for a part time sort of good pass rusher. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claptonrocks Posted March 2, 2021 Report Share Posted March 2, 2021 3 hours ago, I_C_Deadpeople said: He did a respectable job for the Hawks, although he did go full ghost in the playoffs. Just too pricey for a part time sort of good pass rusher. "part time sort of good pass rusher".. Center of a bullseye ..nailed it!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
membengal Posted March 2, 2021 Report Share Posted March 2, 2021 I’ve avoided this thread from the most part, because folks have dug in opinions on ownership etc, but for better or worse, if you want to actually hear from the 4th generation , Elizabeth Blackburn was on the Dehner and Morrison pod that just dropped today. “Hear That Podcast Growlin’” if you don’t normally subscribe and are searching for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_C_Deadpeople Posted March 2, 2021 Report Share Posted March 2, 2021 In the interest of fair reporting - here is a positive article on the Bengals social media and marketing, from the Athletic: Bengals’ new voice: How team’s social media, marketing seek fan reconnection CINCINNATI — Elizabeth Blackburn reads the comments. Yeah, those comments. “I’m deeply entrenched in Bengals Twitter,” she says. Twitter can be a dark place and the underworld of Bengals fans on social media has a history of some of the ugliest and most vitriolic responses in the NFL. It comes with the territory for a franchise without a playoff win in 30 years, a beacon of criticism in its own community and owner Mike Brown constantly bearing the brunt of three decades of fan frustration. Brown is Blackburn’s grandfather. The 28-year-old daughter of family ownership vice presidents Troy and Katie Blackburn was raised understanding just how ugly it can get. And how the organization she loves as much as anything and always saw herself working for one day was viewed in the social stratosphere. “Growing up here in Cincinnati my whole life and people knew who I was and who my family was, I like to think I have tough skin,” said Blackburn, who graduated from Dartmouth with a double major in economics and engineering and worked in business management and analytics in San Francisco and New York, including a brief stint at the NFL office before moving home in January. “And I really value feedback. I really think it’s important. You can at least hear it then you always decide what you want to do with it. But I’m a big believer in feedback and transparency. So it’s not like I read all the comments or anything, but it’s been a really helpful way for me to have a pulse of the fans and the media sentiment.” An interesting development occurred in the last year surrounding that sentiment. Despite a disappointing 4-11-1 season, fans were connecting and engaging with the Bengals on all their social media platforms at levels never seen before. The Bengals historically were more likely to go viral for social fails and known for a forgettable, robotic profile essentially used as a dartboard for fans seeking a target. Their accounts played as behind the times and befitting the image traditionally used in criticizing the franchise as a whole. Blackburn joined at the beginning of 2020 and ownership created a position that didn’t exist, as she took over as director of strategy and engagement. Working along with director of communications Emily Parker, they created another position that didn’t exist, director of content. They tabbed Seth Tanner from a wildly successful engagement and game presentation team with the Kansas City Chiefs to take over. They also gave freedom to social media coordinator Sam Schwartz. Reorganization, adding and refocusing their human resources put together a group more on par with those across professional sports. Buoyed by the arrival of Joe Burrow, the Bengals owned the third-highest engagement rate of all NFL teams and the highest growth (+168 percent) year over year. Their total engagements grew more than every team except Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay and the total audience grew more than every non-playoff team. Those numbers paint a nice picture of success. More importantly, the Bengals produced an online personality that resonated. Fans noticed the difference. Salutes to their work came on a regular basis. In the COVID-19 season where live fan interaction was limited, the social connection was the obvious first prong of installing the vision Blackburn pitches and went public with last week. Next will be improving the gameday experience and hoping to use many of the same tools that brought success online into the stadium to energize a notoriously stale environment. It’s improbable this took until 2020 to truly invest in social media and aggressively managing their public profile. And, yes, it’s on-brand to go into the family pipeline to lead the charge of such a massive undertaking for an organization valued at roughly $2 billion. That doesn’t discount the significant early momentum. Can they keep it up and will it even matter if the team can’t flip success on the field? Tough to say. From their angle, the investment and acknowledgment of the need to reconnect with fans rooted in simple truths echoing in the dark corners of Bengals Twitter where Blackburn entrenched herself. Prove to fans you’re listening. Prove you’re trying. Prove you care. It’s quite the plot twist that the 28-year-old great-granddaughter of Paul Brown might be uniquely positioned to dust cobwebs off the team’s image and plow in-roads to spark change on the back of the Burrow bounce. “Even regardless of what I thought, I want our fans to know how much we care,” Blackburn said when asked about past criticism of the organization not caring about the fans. “I personally care so much and love Bengals fans, and so regardless of what I thought or what anybody thought, I’m just purely focused on the upside of, I want all of our fans to feel like we care, and we appreciate them.” ‘You feel that desire to engage’ Tanner remembers when he was most nervous during his first season as director of content for the Bengals. He was still sitting at his house in Kansas City, unable to even move to Cincinnati yet after being hired in March. The new feel for social media made an appearance and raised a few eyebrows during free agency. But the draft and arrival of the No. 1 pick, Burrow, would be the moment he’d thought about since pitching ideas during the interview process at the combine. What better way to welcome Burrow to Cincinnati than to light the cigar. “That’s the moment I’m gonna remember forever,” Tanner said. “And I’m so grateful that — I don’t make team personnel decisions or anything like that — so I put all this prep work into this one concept. So I’m so glad it worked out the way it worked out to where we drafted Joe Burrow. And we got to use the concept. So, I think I’m always going to remember that.” The concept came back the next month when the cigar theme was part of a well-received schedule release video and people were taking notice of the change in tone with the Bengals online voice. It included the open to the video using footage from a schedule release video from the previous year that had not gone over well as a self-aware nod to the past criticisms. To be the Bengals and rebuild this image, Tanner, Blackburn and Parker agreed there couldn’t be a reluctance to show humility as part of the path to doing better. “I love my team, because they are so willing to participate, they’re self-aware and they love to be a part of the conversation and they know that a lot of people saw that as a miss in years past,” Tanner said. “I think overall is a statement we wanted to come together as a team and just be like, ‘Here you go. We’re hitting it this year, and we’re gonna nail it moving forward.’ That’s another part of this personification of our accounts is that we have a level of self-awareness to what we’re doing. We want to make sure that we’re not tone-deaf to what the fans are feeling, and if that means poking a little bit of fun at ourselves. I think that’s all part of it.” As long as fun was involved, it played. Blackburn was sold on Tanner by his desire to embrace weirdness at every turn. Whether a fake group text of the draft picks responding to Burrow’s ploy to send memes or using a South Park character to reference how banged up the team was entering a game or making Burrow’s favorite SpongeBob SquarePants essentially a recurring character, it was a deviation from the more serious tone of the past. The numbers suggest it worked. “You feel that desire to engage,” Blackburn said. “Twitter can be a dark place but Bengals Twitter has a lot of optimism and just desire for this fun social media. I mean, Chad (Johnson) was ahead of his time. Can you imagine if Chad had Twitter in Twitter’s current form? That just sort of what comes to mind, and I was aware of that and hopefully, Emily and myself and our team are tapping into that more than we have in the past.” That meant keeping up with trends and always staying in the mix. “Personality, and then timeliness and relevance,” Blackburn said. That meant when Vonn Bell blew up JuJu Smith-Schuster for the most memorable play of the season on Monday Night Football, Schwartz chimed in with an ideal, simple caption to take the moment viral. Many of these strategies exist as Social Media Marketing 101, but the successful response and rollout of them consistently showed the difference a simple strategic investment in an area of the team can do to help the image and connection with consumers. It also connected with players, like Jessie Bates III, who enjoyed a powerful push from the social team to get the safety who graded as the best in the league by PFF into the Pro Bowl, including an impressive hype video that he happily posted for all to see. “That’s the best I’ve seen,” Bates said of the team which also took public umbrage when Bates ended up snubbed from the squad. Clark Harris couldn’t stop laughing when he saw a video the team made pretending the long snapper downing a punt drew a massive reaction in a bar in their campaign to send him to the Pro Bowl. Going that route was a product of understanding him as one of the team’s most outgoing personalities. “They thought I was going to be offended because it wasn’t a joke, but it was a fun video,” Harris said, still laughing about it. “I was like, I don’t give a s—, I get no publicity I’ll take anything.” Tanner credits the collective creativity of those working in the office that’s been a focus since he first arrived and a big part of the reason he ended up in Cincinnati after three years with the Chiefs. “Emily and Elizabeth sold me on this job because they gave me reassurance that they’d give me the backing and support that I needed in order to accomplish the things that we need to get done,” Tanner said. “It’s a testament to the team that I have in us collectively coming up with this vision of where we want to go and them all buying into the concept. They are super talented individuals that are coming together and doing something completely new. That’s always uncomfortable territory to enter. Change is scary, but they’re all about it and they jumped in feet first.” ‘It’s a Taylor Swift concert’ All eyes in this reconnection effort turn toward the gameday experience, with anticipation of the seats potentially returning to a more normal look in the fall. The Bengals finally will change their uniforms after years and years of fans pleading for a fresh look. A leak of names on the façade inside Paul Brown Stadium on social and video captured by Fox19 suggest a Ring of Honor could finally be in the offing. These areas are staples of Bengals fan angst over the years. Right next to those items on the list was the lifelessness of gameday. Tanner comes from a direct background with in-game experience, so being able to turn toward this project hits maybe more in his wheelhouse than even attacking social media. The parallels between how they attacked fixing social and hope to mend gameday stand out. Blackburn keeps focus on “fun, creative and engaging,” but isn’t spilling secrets. But if looking for tone, Tanner shared the joke he’s been making if you want to know where his mind lives. “I want to get Cirque du Soleil dancers down so people come down on these ropes on the canopy like monkeys or something,” he said, reiterating he’s just joking. “They’re up in the canopy and they come pouring down.” Circus acts may be far down the list, but again the team is refining roles and adding more focused human resources to those in the mix to create a different personality than the one previous. They are investing and caring about it in ways we haven’t seen in the past. They started with customizing four different season-ticket packages based on the different needs of fans and have different projects they hope to roll out throughout this year. The endgame would be a “higher energy” more memorable day that’s “still authentic to the Bengals,” according to Blackburn. She points out the show of the Chiefs, where Tanner worked previously, as one of a few guiding lights. She laments missing out on big college gamedays in choosing Dartmouth but wants pieces of the major Saturday atmosphere to be woven into Sundays. One other inspiration doesn’t exactly connect with the normal football pipeline. “It’s a Taylor Swift concert,” Blackburn said of the pop icon, whose last tour comprised 53 shows across the globe with 2.6 million attendees and grossed $346 million. “My friend, she was like 42 years old, and every time a Taylor Swift tour was starting, she would talk about it nonstop, and couldn’t wait for the tickets to drop and I watched the Netflix movie or documentary of her tour. And it’s not so much the lights and glitz but it’s the passion from all of her fans who are there and she does such an amazing job making every show feel different and give every fan, whether it’s your first or your 100th show, it’s special and unique. And I want every person ever to want to come to every Bengals game here at Paul Brown Stadium because it’s an amazing experience and you know you’re getting something different every time.” Nobody is saying the Bengals will reach the cool factor of arguably the most popular musician in the country in one season. Well, at least not with a whole lot of touchdown passes by Burrow. But they are going to try. “I can say, Seth and Emily would vouch for me, I’m saying, I’m going to move as aggressively and quickly as possible,” Blackburn said. ‘I’ve gotten pretty good success so far’ Three years ago, after another losing season and committing to give another run to then-head coach Marvin Lewis, the beleaguered Bengals fan base raged, made obvious by the growing banks of empty seats and suites inside the stadium. In an interview after that season, Brown stated that winning would be the only thing that can bring fans back. He wasn’t wrong. At its core, the Bengals and most teams are limited by their record in fan satisfaction. “They’re going to come when we win,” Brown said to The Cincinnati Enquirer. “In some ways, ours is a hard market. It is the fact that our people are judgmental about us.” The comment sat as well as 30 years without a playoff win. That’s where Blackburn, Parker, Tanner and their team hope to change things. Creating a true sense of passion, pride and community takes time. And take more than a few memes. Can it be done at all here given the history? Can it be done without winning first? Does the rest matter without victories? “It definitely helps,” Blackburn said. “We want to and need to win games. It has to happen. And we want that to happen more than anything. But in terms of creating community, my philosophy or bar on the experience and community itself, is it needs to withstand the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and sometimes communities, built even stronger and tighter through tough times. And, you know, I don’t want that to be the case but I want Who Dey Nation and the fans in our stands to feel bonded and special. Period.” In a video about the new season ticket packages, Bengals fans were referred to as “more resilient than any other fan base.” You don’t often hear admittance of struggles fans have had to endure in this type of promotional material, but Blackburn called that inclusion “very deliberate.” It plays like a nod back to the self-awareness in the schedule release video. The Bengals seem to be taking ownership of the narrative that precedes them in the quest to change it. The idea of implementing the vision Blackburn laid out will inevitably be little more than corporate buzzwords if not followed up with an actual difference felt in action. The good news in that respect after the success of revitalizing social media is there’s a small sample size of success and reason to believe. The next task of searching for galvanized passion and community will be far more difficult. Blackburn and her group want fans to know they are trying. More importantly, even in the dark corners of the internet, they are listening. And now fans might actually have the direct line to the front office they’ve claimed to lack for decades. When asked who is most likely to veto one of her ideas — her mother, father or grandfather — Blackburn laughed and couldn’t really answer the specific question asked. “You know,” she said. “I’ve gotten pretty good success so far.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-Dub Posted March 2, 2021 Report Share Posted March 2, 2021 When asked who is most likely to veto one of her ideas — her mother, father or grandfather — Blackburn laughed and couldn’t really answer the specific question asked. “You know,” she said. Yes we do. Glad to hear she's more than some social media lolcow though, that's nice. Let the "KatieTroy Brown, Step Down!" era begin! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie_B Posted March 2, 2021 Report Share Posted March 2, 2021 So do we think the new uni's will be put out before FA or before the draft? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
membengal Posted March 2, 2021 Report Share Posted March 2, 2021 Draft. I think I have heard April for that reveal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted March 3, 2021 Report Share Posted March 3, 2021 23 hours ago, membengal said: Draft. I think I have heard April for that reveal. Ohh, new uniforms and a double major from an Ivy League school running the team Twitter feed. Feeling like 8-8! Woo woo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazycat Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 Ya know I'm glad they went all in on the "social connection group" with all the added personnel, how about doing the same for the scouting staff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_C_Deadpeople Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 1 hour ago, crazycat said: Ya know I'm glad they went all in on the "social connection group" with all the added personnel, how about doing the same for the scouting staff? Mikey probably has the communication staff scouting already Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|High School Harry| Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 On 3/2/2021 at 2:08 PM, I_C_Deadpeople said: ‘It’s a Taylor Swift concert’ Way too long to read but +1 for mentioning Taylor Swift. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_C_Deadpeople Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 15 minutes ago, High School Harry said: Way too long to read but +1 for mentioning Taylor Swift. Too long to read? Jeez, so much for my 1000 page books I read lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|High School Harry| Posted March 4, 2021 Report Share Posted March 4, 2021 4 hours ago, I_C_Deadpeople said: Too long to read? Jeez, so much for my 1000 page books I read lol Also, not enough pictures. How can anyone mention Taylor Swift in an article without adding a picture? Sacrilege. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-Dub Posted March 5, 2021 Report Share Posted March 5, 2021 7 hours ago, crazycat said: Ya know I'm glad they went all in on the "social connection group" with all the added personnel, how about doing the same for the scouting staff? They don't have any grandchildren qualified to scout NFL talent. Screwing around on Facebook etc is playing to their core competencies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|High School Harry| Posted March 5, 2021 Report Share Posted March 5, 2021 How about on Draft Day, when our number one pick is announced, he is presented with a brand new new design Bengals jersey? That would be cool. Especially if Taylor Swift made the presentation. But even with out her, still pretty cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claptonrocks Posted March 5, 2021 Report Share Posted March 5, 2021 12 minutes ago, High School Harry said: How about on Draft Day, when our number one pick is announced, he is presented with a brand new new design Bengals jersey? That would be cool. Especially if Taylor Swift made the presentation. But even with out her, still pretty cool. Very good idea minus Swift.. Munoz would be a great choice though.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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