-: My name is Farren Benjamin.
I am the Head of Sports Partnerships
at a company called Tagboard based in Seattle, Washington.
So Tagboard is a social media aggregation
and redisplay tool.
So I lead all of our sports partnerships
and I work with all of our sports teams
whether it's ranging from your NFLs, your MBAs,
MLSs, NFSs and beyond all the way
to your college athletics to your minor league sports teams
and to one-off events like marathons.
I help bring user generated content and social media
to screens, video boards, digital properties,
websites and beyond.
So, my job is to help these teams get all the content
that's coming out from the fans
on game days and throughout the year, day after day,
and kind of help them push out this content
to all their platforms for everybody to see.
Yeah, so a lot of my role as the Head of Sports
is a lot of out bounce so a lot of relationship building.
So whether it's people that I've met
at conferences and conventions,
whether it's people that I've just talked to,
whether it's from here at USC
and connections in the in the L.A. area.
Whether it's people that have used the product before
and suggest it to another client,
a lot of what I do is reaching out for new business.
So reaching out to clients
that we don't currently work with
to gain new business and to gain a new relationship
and kind of help and see if there's a way
that I can help them grow.
So I look at ways, especially for college athletics teams,
to enhance that overall experience.
So if you're gonna bring in social content
to a football game and you want fans
to go on their phones, open up Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, and use a hashtag,
hashtag fight on, and you want them, or USC selfie.
If you want them to continue doing
that every time they walk into a sporting event.
You want to continue to do that throughout all of them.
You don' just want to put it at a few
you know hey here, we're gonna do it here,
we're gonna do it there.
You know I express to my clients I want them
to put Tagboard and bring in content anywhere
and everywhere that their fans
have a touchpoint with their team.
So I do, you know one of my passion projects
is representing NFL players for everything off the field.
So overseeing and working with them on the marketing,
the PR side of things, the social media,
and my two worlds blend really well together.
I, for instance this year, the Minnesota Vikings
are a very very innovative partner of Tagboard's.
Coincidentally, a young man named Mike Hughes
who I worked with this off season leading up
to the draft, he got drafted by the Vikings.
So it's kind of funny that my worlds
will sometimes come together like that in nice harmony.
When teams are in season I'm going to visit clients.
Whether it's my Tagboard clients and watching
what they do in stadium or whether it's going
to watch my NFL guys in the field.
Out of season it's a lot of kind of little work.
So, right now for instance, L.A. Rams and all
of our NFL teams are out of season.
So my job is this off season is to find times
to go and visit them at the facilities,
start to plan for the season.
What can we do this upcoming season
that will innovate and take your game day experience
to the next level.
So a lot of it is kind of that traveling around
that I can do here from Los Angeles
and possibly hopping on flights
to go visit new clients and potential clients
to meet with around the country to see
if Tagboard is something they can work with.