What Being Cliff Paul Taught Me About Humanity
Tales from a social engagement manager that played the good guy and managed to learn from it.
I’m not a big basketball fan. I inherited my favorite team, The Los Angeles Lakers, at an early age and tuned in to see them actually play an average of 2 games a year. Somehow, I got the assignment of helping develop the social strategy for my then client State Farm’s NBA season campaign. The creative work was amazing and as a social team we were tasked with coming up with an equally amazing social campaign — heated debates ensued and the result was bringing the lovable star of the campaign to life with his own Twitter account. Not an earth shattering concept, however, successful campaigns rarely are.
The star of the campaign is named Cliff Paul. He is a warm, savvy, smart and helpful State Farm Agent who discovered he was separated at birth from his twin brother Chris Paul, All-Star NBA Point Guard for the Los Angeles Clippers. Although they had grown up living very different lives, they both shared an innate ability to assist — let’s say they were “Born to Assist.” On Christmas Day, Cliff Paul was introduced to the basketball world on Twitter and from that day on I became Cliff Paul. Little ol’ me — the “not that big of a basketball fan” had the honor of being Cliff Paul!
As Cliff Paul I traveled across the United States and met some amazing folks — including my very supportive brother Chris Paul. No surprise, over the course of the NBA season I learned a lot about not just basketball but people; people love puns, ignorance is not always bliss and people love a good guy.
Lesson 1: People Love Puns
Like LOVE puns. Some of our most engaging posts were puns. In fact the entire campaign revolved around a pun. For State Farm this pun, assisting on the court being compared to assisting off the court, helped bring the brand into the world of basketball in clever way that resulted in real leads for State Farm with a 8% lift in purchase intent.
Lesson 2: Ignorance Is Not Bliss
Seriously, people want to know what the hell is going on. One of the major points of conversation around the campaign was whether or not Cliff Paul was a real person outside the commercials. Admittedly, we helped ignite the controversy with strategically timed news stories and influencer tweets. Fans began to speculate. How did they both end up with the last name Paul? Did Chris’s mom sue the hospital for negligence? Does Chris ever hook his brother up with tickets? Is Cliff Paul really just Chris Paul with a mustache?? You would think for a generation that grew up with characters like Superman well established in pop culture these wouldn’t be real questions, but they were. We further provoked fans’ questions by placing the brothers together over All-Star Weekend in Houston. These incidences resulted in huge spikes in conversation, 66 million Twitter impressions and multiple trending topics.
Lesson 3: People Love A Good Guy
One of the greatest revelations from my experience as Cliff Paul was the support, love, and admiration Cliff earned. As someone who has managed communities online for some time I’ve seen my fair share of offensive, mean, hateful, asshole comments. That was my norm pushing out branded messaging to everyday people — fielding their resistance and dickishness — but Cliff Paul was very different. People wanted Cliff to win! They loved when he mentioned hanging out with his long lost twin. They were eager to learn about his childhood. They cheered him on when he helped. When the few trolls attacked him and dared to question his existence, fans barked back at them. We saw the love spread offline with fans dressing as Cliff at Clippers games. They wore the “Cliff Kits” we handed out at games with pride and waved Fatheads of Cliff with enthusiasm. Cliff became the “good guy” fans were excited to see and hear from. For me this type of positive response to a “nice guy” being nice was affirmation of the human spirit. Maybe the Internet is not full of jerks — dead set on bashing everything in sight.
As the 2013-2014 season kicks off, new Cliff Paul spots will pop-up and the story will continue. Even though I no longer run around as Cliff Paul, I can’t help but keep an eye on @CliffPaul and his interactions. I hope you’ll do the same!
