 Live from Boston, Massachusetts. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering HB Big Data Conference 2015. Brought to you by HP Software. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live here in Boston for HB's Big Data Conference here in theCUBE. Our flagship program, we go out to the events and expect to see the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder. Let's look at it. I'm John Vellante, founder of wikibond.org. Best research in the business and in tech. Our next guest is Sean Darty, director of digital and social media engagement at NASCAR. Super excited to have you on. Big fan, love what you guys do. You guys are really creative. Absolutely have a great brand and great audience. So welcome to theCUBE. Thanks, thanks for having me. So we love engagement. We talk about systems of engagement, systems of intelligence. We actually have the crowd chat out there. We are in love, social media. Cause that's what people are doing. They're dialing in what their friends are doing. That's right. And they need something to talk about. So what about NASCAR? That's right. It's really popular. Well it's really, you know, social has become such a key to the second screen experience. Like people just don't watch TV anymore. They watch TV and talk about what they're watching with their friends or with people they only even know possibly online. So at NASCAR, we want to be part of that conversation. But we also want to keep tabs on trends around our race events and what people are saying specific to the race broadcast. And so we built a solution that enables us to get a better handle on the social conversation around our sport, which will enable us to be faster and more efficient at responding and answering fan questions. But then also something that will allow us to deliver insights back to our whole industry. So our racetracks, our teams and our drivers, they can all leverage and take advantage of this platform. You know, we've interviewed sailors and we've interviewed NASCAR drivers on theCUBE where they use big data for instrumentation, specifically cars, right? Because there's so much edge they can get if they have the data. Tire pressure, wear and tear, all kinds of stats and they run that in and helps them. Now when you look at you guys are doing some cool stuff because now it's the fan experience. That's right. That's interesting, right? Talk about that. How do you guys manage the franchise and the fan experience and the role that digital is now playing? I mean, digital was great, websites, we put up email marketing, landing pages, promotional pages, but now it's so real time and you have so many awesome events. How are you guys transitioning to all that? Because it's super cool. So we monitor a lot of the real time trends and what the fans are saying around our race event. And so what we look at the overall picture, we're taking in the entire conversation around the sport. So if somebody uses the word NASCAR or mentions a driver or a track or one of the race hashtags, we'll be able to see those trends. And so what we, in our fan and media engagement center room in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have a system that is set up to just to see what's trending at any given moment. And so to help with that fan perspective, what we do is see what's trending and then possibly deliver them additional social content that will help complement that race experience. So if it's a great save or a great pass made by a driver, we can cut that up and include that video highlight in our social feed and give that additional experience to the fan. And the data is changing to the format, right? So you said in the second screen, Facebook's got a lot of traffic lately on video. Highlights are great, Snapchat's booming, Vine kind of quietly, but they're still there. They're still there. They're bigger than Snapchat. I saw a stat on that. So these are all new channels. How do you manage that? I mean, that was big as a stab. I have a great team. Give us some color into what's happening there because you're just doing it right. Yeah, well thank you. Our team is roughly split. I managed a team of about nine people. So it's including me four on the content side, content strategy, four on the analytics side and the live engagement side. But they work very closely together to figure out what kind of content is working, what kind of content is not working. What is trending in real time during our race? What do fans want to talk about? What is on the mind of our partners? Because our partners are such a key part of our industry and our ecosystem. We want to make sure that we're delivering value for them as well. So what's the tech behind this media center? Maybe talk about the peace parts. How are you bringing it all together? It's an HP solution. It is based on the Haven platform. So we have a bunch of disparate data sources from the social web and from online media that we take in. We use Hadoop to collect that and ingest it. And then JBoss will analyze and perform some what we call entity extraction. So we know if somebody says, for instance, I hope the 24 wins today. We know that they're talking about Jeff Gordon, even though they might not reference him by name. And then we use Vertica for data access searching. And then on top of that, we have a tipco spot fire as a BI tool and then a Raven, which is our kind of query and search tool. And the visualization comes from- That's from a tipco spot fire. How was that all utilized? You're yourself and your team of eight others. Sort of consume that in real time. During our live events, we'll usually have two people in the command center room and it really starts with the overall conversation. So we can see of all the people that are all the social buzz that's going on around NASCAR, when do spikes in top social moments occur over the course of the race? So a specific event like the green flag, start engine commands, a save, a pass or a wreck on the racetrack, culminating in the checkered flag, all those specific events will drive an uptick in conversation and then from there, we can drive in and we can dive in and get additional details to what that sentiment and what that buzz is in the moment. And then what's the next step? I mean, sort of the post event, is there a post event engagement strategy? Yeah. What's the objective there? We segment the, while the live events going on, we do segment the data based on specific topics of interest. So we can look at fan sentiment around broadcast. So what people are saying about on-air talent, pre-race segments, volume of commercials, even the on-screen graphics and the chyrons people have opinions about, and we can package all that information up and show that to a broadcast partner like a Fox or an NBC. And that's the real-time fan sentiment about their specific broadcast. We can do the same thing for tracks and help them manage that event experience, people tweeting photos from the track, people expressing excitement or maybe even issues with concessions. We can help track that and help our track partners manage that event experience as well. And then for drivers and teams, we can analyze fan sentiment around both the race in real-time, whether fans thought it was exciting or not exciting, or fan sentiment around specific drivers and kind of what's the brand around that driver? And you've been at this for not quite a dog year, but... Yeah, this will be year three of the platform. Yeah, okay. So we launched in January of 2013. So it's starting to get pretty mature. What can you tell us about sort of, how are the metrics look? What are you tracking? What's the business result? It's funny, it is getting mature, but there's still so much potential with the system and then new social platforms are coming to the forefront. It's like every single year. Yeah, it's like Snapchat and Meerkat and Periscope. So it's a constantly evolving platform. We've seen tremendous growth in the first three years of our operation. It's been immensely valuable for us, not only to provide analytics and research back to our industry, but our own internal business units who might be managing like a marketing campaign or a local attract activation. Just having something that allows us to measure empirically what's going on in our industry has been hugely valuable. We got a question from the crowd here. Hey, Furry, you're asked about mobile and their experience there. Yeah. What's your experience with mobile? Obviously, mobile's hot. Yeah. Your fan base, you go web app, you go mobile app, native, responsive. We have a suite. Our NASCAR.com site is responsive. It acts more like a news platform, like Monday through Thursday, but Friday, Saturday, Sunday, once the cars are on the track, that's right. And we offer a live event experience where fans can check out a live leaderboard with live commentary from our digital editorial staff. We also offer a couple of mobile apps, NASCAR mobile for the phone and iPad, and then NASCAR RaceView for the iPad as well. Did you see Twitter had a deal with the NFL recently? Yes. You're starting to see that. Yeah. The hashtags on TV, direct response vehicle opportunity. Yeah, and they're doing a lot with live video in stream as well. And so that's a huge area of interest for us, for both Twitter and Facebook, because we want to meet the fans where they are, where they spend more time. And our social vehicles are a way for us to reach new fans that might not have considered NASCAR. Are you seeing any patterns in terms of consumption of different media by demographics? I mean, I'm sure you do, but maybe can you share any of those with us? I mean, are millennials more or less likely to be on Facebook or Twitter? What do you see? It's a mix. Across the board? Yeah, I think it is. Our fan base, like most digital fan bases are, they tend to skew pretty young, although we see a lot of engagement with our older fans as well, particularly on Facebook. The hardcore fans? Yes, yeah. So that's the challenge with digital is appealing to the hardcore fan while trying to reach the new one at the same time, yeah. So I mean, you know, Twitter's in the news a lot. A lot of people are sort of criticizing, you know, Twitter, financial analysts are concerned about them, but still a massive platform. You know I'm bullish on Twitter. And I know you are, but that's why I'm asking. And we use it a lot because it's more real time. I'm wondering what you're seeing in terms of where do you see the utility of the different platforms, you know, from your perspective? Sure, Twitter for us is real time. It is capturing the conversation of what is happening in that moment. And that moment can be a sporting event, a concert, a news event as well. Facebook, we see a lot of interactivity and a lot of engagement, but because of the way that the Facebook algorithm works, the content typically has a longer shelf life. And so we will post less frequently on Facebook than we would on Twitter. But then there's other platforms that we're on as well where we have a vine where we're getting very creative with generating excitement leading into the race, showing clips from practice or qualifying. And Instagram as well is one of our fastest growing platforms in terms of user base, but that's where we have that iconic imagery of the driver celebrating in Victory Lane, for the more lasting imagery. Photojourn, photo, that's exactly it. Millennials are all over Instagram. And obviously they're on Twitter too. But it makes sense what you're saying about Facebook's algorithm. How do you serve, I mean this is kind of, we're kind of inside baseball now at this point with the media business kind of inside of it. You're your own media business. Vertical media is booming. We've seen NFL, MLB, they're all doing a great job. You guys have a distinct user audience, you know. That's addressable now, certainly measurable. How do you sell advertising and promotional? What's the new native, if any, but whatever word they're calling? I mean it's the word's native advertising, but basically it's just you have an audience and you have supporters, advertisers. We do some promoted content now for tune in and just try and reach, you know, kind of look-alike audience. We're working with Twitter and Facebook is still pretty early stages, but you know we're talking with them about getting more native video, which I think that those sites are trying to monetize against that as well. And then we do monetize our digital platform as well. What would you, how would you describe your biggest challenge? I mean there's so many of them. You talked earlier before about just keeping up with the various social platforms, but what's the one big thing you wish you could have that you just don't have today that would change, you know, move the needle for your business? We have so many race events over the course of the year. We run from February to November. It's one of the longest seasons in professional sports. It's a huge ton of content. Yeah, there is no office. It's me. Yeah. Because after the championship race, we have the awards banquet in the next year and we're already getting ready for Daytona 500, which it's great. It's always exciting. Really being able to support and grow by having great content. You know, I think that that's our next area of growth for us as a social team, which will help us grow as a fan base, help us reach new audience, you know, bringing on people that do, you know, graphics, like graphic design, graphic artists, you know, even animators. I've seen some of the best social content. The storytelling. Exactly. Social is so much more, or these days, so much about storytelling and less about kind of that conventional marketing direct response. I think there's enough utility in digital, where it's going in my mind. Things you're talking on really show, like, digital is a utility, it's value, and the audiences understand what it is when they see it. So you can elegantly have a solution. And the 49ers are doing this with Levi Stadium. They built a whole new in fan experience concept that they align with. So it's really not the old way of jamming, messaging at people. It's really a new way of telling the story, provide value. Can you tell their story? It's pretty interesting. They don't have people looking at the big giant screen. They get trying to get the second screen experience, which sounds similar to what you were talking about at the top of this. Yeah, that's right. And that's something that we're also looking to do as well. And the 49ers have done a great job. They've been following those guys. Yeah, I do follow them on social. Six second touchdown, every camera. Yeah, that's awesome. It's really cool. They can't distribute outside of the venue because of Comcast. Right. Hello, Snapchat. But we're trying to do that as well. Authorize camera holders in those stands. Right. Distruptive technology. It is interesting. And we've launched this year on Snapchat and partnered with them on their live story. So that shows the fan perspective for what it's like to be at a race. And that's something that, you know. It's great in the moment program. It is great in the moment. It's awesome. One of the clips was the car's going by and the fan was taking the video and his hat was literally blown off like as the car was just, you know, zoomed by. And it's just the roar of the engine. Snapchat is like the bottle and still my story. Yeah. And then they're putting in now, I was watching the Outside Lands concert. My daughter was at this weekend. I wasn't there just seeing if she would pop up. She didn't. But you know, you're in the moment and the shaky camera is the production value. That's right. That's right. Whoa. Yeah. And it's a little bit of curation. That's nice content. It is. It is. And we hope to do more of that with them. On the facility side, you know, you mentioned that, you know, Levi Stadium. I think they've done a great job. You know, we're also trying to, or we are in the process of completely revamping our crown jewel, if you will, Daytona International Speedway. It's a project called Daytona Rising. It's going to be ready for Daytona 500 next year where they have completely built up stands, modern amenities, wider concourses, lounge areas, you know, things that... What's your relationship? Yes. What's the relationship that you guys have to the stadiums? Ownership, co-ownership? Well, NASCAR is a private entity. And then the stadium or the tracks, the 29 that we raced at for our national series are roughly owned by two public companies. And then there's there a few independent companies as well. The venue activity. Yeah, we work pretty closely with them. But the NASCAR ecosystem is unique in that it's not like other professional sports leagues where the leagues collectively own the team, like everybody's an independent entity. So the tracks are independent of the sanctioning body and the race teams are independent of the tracks. The drivers are even independent of the race teams. They're all, everybody's an independent contractor. So, you know, back to our original story with big data, you know, trying to develop a solution that meets everybody's needs has been an interesting process because a lot of times the goals are different and their key metrics are different as well. It's an MLB what 15 years to pull off their move. I mean, an MLB advanced media unit started in 2001, really. That's right. Trying to get it rolling. And now they have HBO now. Like they've done it. They've done a great job. Well, right now you have a very political system franchise as you get. I mean, it's kind of like independent owners. So that's great stuff. We'd love to hear more. I mean, were you located? I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. Great. Keep in touch. Absolutely. Sharing your story in the queue. That's right. We can look forward to collaborating and getting more information. Thanks so much. Sharing the NASCAR, social media story, digital, the future of digital is really about a whole new set of experiences in the moment, real time, diverse content elements, crowdsource, you name it's all happening. The sharing economy meets consumer generated media meets everything. So it's the queue bringing all that to you. We'll be right back after this short break.