Day in the Life of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Director of Social Media
Super Bowl LIX, slow elevators, and a Gatorade shower: Julie Bacanskas gives us an hour-by-hour account of the team's big win.
In my time writing this newsletter, I have learned a lot about what social media looks like across various industries. One of the most grueling I’ve come across? Sports. The hours are long, the fans are passionate, and the emotions are high. Still, those who love it love it.
For today’s newsletter, I asked Julie Bacanskas, Director of Social Media for the Philadelphia Eagles (and Link in Bio subscriber!), if she’d document the day of the Super Bowl. Julie was only just able to find the time to put this together—another proof point that it’s a grueling industry. It was worth the wait. She wrote an hour-by-hour account of the team's big win, from their Slack system for video content to how she captured the iconic Gatorade shower. In total, her team published an impressive 310 pieces of content on Super Bowl Sunday, leading to 483M impressions, 20.6M engagements, and 139M video views. Below is a thrilling peek into what it’s like to do social in one of the most high-pressure industries during one of the most high-pressure games.
9:00 a.m. To kick off the day, we had a full social team gameday meeting to go over all our plans, assignments, required posts, report time, etc. for the game. We have a social gameday meeting ahead of every game (usually on Fridays).
Since there was SO much content to plan out and get through for Super Bowl, we ended up meeting the morning of the game to make sure all last-minute items were included in the plan. Once everything was settled and our rundown was in place on the social side, we then met at 9:30 a.m. with the full digital team (site, app, editorial, photography) for one final run through of all the day’s digital executions! Everyone then had a few hours to prepare on their own/spend time with any friends and family ahead of the game.
11:30 a.m. The majority of the social team rode over to the stadium on our early bus, which is our equipment team’s bus. We do this so that everyone can get laptops, connectivity, etc. set up at the stadium. Each NFL stadium is so different that we’ve found it’s very important to give ourselves plenty of time to ensure all technology is working and to find the best routes to the locker room, field, press box, etc.
For the Super Bowl, since so much press is in attendance, our team was split between the main press box and an auxiliary press box. I went early to ensure we located the aux press box and to check that everyone on the social and digital teams had their seat for the game. We also go over early for content capture. The rest of the crew took photos and videos of the field and the locker room with jerseys hung up to give fans a first taste of the game day environment.
12:26 p.m. Once everyone on the early crew was settled, we all took a moment to take in the experience. Having started with the Eagles in 2015, Super Bowl LIX was the third Super Bowl I’ve worked for the team, and I’ve now learned how important it is to give yourself the time to soak in the moment. There’s a lot of hard work and long hours that go into each season. Sports social is a beast. You’re working seven days a week for the most part and always have to be on because you never know when something will pop up, like a roster move or a big announcement. You must be ready for anything. Getting to end the season with a Super Bowl appearance is not something I take for granted! The team (including some of our video production team) went down to the field, took some photos, and then went back up to the press box to prepare for the fun to begin.
While we waited for player arrivals, the full team ran through the rest of our pregame schedule until player buses departed the hotel. We have content planned out for every 30-45 mins pregame to help build excitement as we get closer to kickoff.
2:15 p.m. Player buses departed from the hotel, which was just a short drive from the stadium, at 2:15 PM. We had one member of our social team capturing video content of our players getting onto the buses. Our photographer also took photos that we used and that were also sent to the players, so they had access to post the images as well. We send our social video content through Slack and then our team pulls photos from Photoshelter. We work through video and photo edits and sends those finals for posting through Slack as well. We discuss in the moment what is being posted where, which videos we’re editing together, etc. to ensure we’re posting the best content for our fans.
For this post, Jamal on our team was capturing the departures. Josh on our team was then editing the different formats. For Jalen Hurts’ video, he edited both a 9x16 and a 4x5. We used the 9x16 as an IG Reel, which we posted as a collab with the NFL account and was our top performing pregame fit video on the platform that day!
4:00 p.m. Warmups began right around 4 p.m. At that point we had someone from the team head down for content capturing and followed the same workflow we did for hotel departures. I also went down to the field shortly after to test out a new pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses we’d been given. We ended up using the glasses more for postgame (our Short Form Content Specialist Kelsey captured postgame content with them), but it was great to get a feel for how they worked early on, including some mess up test photos…
5:18 p.m. I filmed the Eagles entrance with Bradley Cooper and our friend Declan. We met Declan at the NFC Championship game after working with MD Motivator! Declan’s story touched us so much that with the NFL, we helped to fly him and his family out for the game. Bradley Cooper helped surprise Declan with that news and then at the game, we took it a step further. This moment was a surprise, even for me, up until 4:51 p.m. Bradley Cooper and Declan CRUSHED the intro, which gave me goosebumps to film (reaction of them following the broadcast intro was what I filmed)!
5:36 p.m. I made my way back up to the press box at this point and learned NOLA has very slow elevators. Silly as it seems, knowing that was hugely helpful postgame. We made sure to give ourselves plenty of time to get down to the field later on.
6:15 p.m. The game is underway. We all have assigned responsibilities to make it clear who is doing what during the game. I work on posting to our Instagram feed. We communicate in the moment what formatting we’re using (Reel or carousel) depending on the play or moment that’s being posted. Josh on our team is responsible for cutting the correct formats and getting them over to everyone for all the different placements since we use 9x16, 16x9, and 4x5 sizes.
7:25 p.m. The full social team took a moment to enjoy the halftime performance! We didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves with a 24-0 lead in the Super Bowl, which personally was a very different experience than my other two Super Bowls. On TikTok though, we knew from our 2022 Super Bowl appearance that a timelapse of stage set up performed extremely well. We took that learning and made sure to execute on that content idea again! It brought in 7.2M views and 810K likes for our TikTok account.
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8:46 p.m. At this point in the game, we knew our lead was large enough that myself and one other from the team could head down to the field to prepare for capturing postgame celebratory content. The first thing on my list was getting into position for the Gatorade dump we knew was coming. I was in prime spot to follow AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith as they dumped the cooler on head coach Nick Sirianni at approximately 9:06 p.m. Shortly after capturing that video and sending it up to the press box crew via Slack, texts from my friends and family began pouring in. I’d been all over the broadcast, which was not my intention (I much prefer being BEHIND the camera, not in front of it) but it now makes for an incredible memory for me personally. Once the clock hit zero, we then went into full content capture mode, filming anything and everything from the on-field celebration!
9:40 p.m. My first Super Bowl in Philly, SBLII, I was not granted on field access and was only allowed in the press box, so being on the field for this one I knew I had to take a moment and really appreciate it! Between the on-field filming and locker room celebration, I took a few minutes to take photos to remember the moment and of COURSE had to grab some of the confetti.
9:53 p.m. Once we wrapped on-field celebrations, we went right to the locker room to capture the celebration happening in there. This went on for about an hour…I’ll be honest that I thought I’d never get the cigar smell out of my hair. Thankfully I did and it was 100% worth it. We ended up posting this content on the 11th, two days after the Super Bowl.
For Super Bowl LII, we had a posting cutoff time to allow the social team the opportunity to enjoy the win, and we followed a similar structure this time around. So, while we captured the locker room celebration content, we chose to hold it and post once we were back in Philadelphia. Once the celebration in the locker room began to die down, the full digital team (plus tackle Fred Johnson) got together to take a photo as well
12:43 a.m. We all got back to the hotel close to 1 a.m. and were able to go enjoy the win with our friends and family at our postgame party. I was thankful to have my parents and younger brother with me for the trip! We celebrated the night away as Super Bowl Champions. Go Birds!
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this was such a clever idea!
Go Birds!!! 🦅 I love this breakdown. It’s making me emotional 🥹