Right now, the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) is the first organization to use PhotoShelter AI to power a real-time social media workflow during their Championship Series. This cutting-edge artificial intelligence solution is helping the PLL team work faster and maximize fan engagement.
Since the start of Training Camp on July 20, the numbers are staggering:
- PLL has performed 2.65M interactions on Instagram, topping the MLS (1.81M), NWSL (2.18M), PBR (1.04M), and NASCAR (856k)
- 20,000 images have been added to PhotoShelter and tagged automatically
- PhotoShelter AI has identified 40,666 players, averaging 2.7 players per photo
- PhotoShelter AI has tagged 18,085 brand marks
- Automated photo delivery to athletes has led to a 200% increase in posting by players week over week, and on average, players now have a 12.2% engagement rate on Instagram
“The AI recognition of our photos will help us save hundreds of hours tagging and organizing photos, enabling us to share content with our partners, players, and fans faster than ever before,” says Tyler Steinhardt, Director of Marketing for the Premier Lacrosse League.
Check out the video to see how it works:
Other than NBC’s production crew, the PLL’s media team is the only media allowed on site at the quarantined tournament in Salt Lake City, UT. They’re responsible for pushing images out to a number of stakeholders in real time, including but not limited to:
- The league’s social media channels and website
- Each team’s social media channels
- The players’ social media channels
- Press partners
- NBC Sports
- Sponsors like Adidas, Gatorade, Ticketmaster, Vineyard Vines, Capital One and more
Demand for imagery from the tournament is extremely high – PLL photographers expect to have delivered 50,000 photos in the next few days.
The lightning-fast automated workflow allows the PLL team to keep up with the speed of the story, and meet all of their stakeholders’ needs, even with a smaller-than-usual team on site.
Let’s follow an image step by step.
A star lacrosse player scores the game-winning goal on the field and a photographer captures the moment.
In seconds, the photographer sends the photo via FTP to the PLL’s cloud-based visual media library on PhotoShelter.
RosterID tags Archers #13 Ryan Ambler through a combination of facial recognition and jersey data.
BrandID recognizes and tags partner logos, like Adidas and STX.
And ObjectID combines data to add the most relevant, accurate general keywords, like “helmet” and “jersey.”
Right away, the image is searchable by anyone who has permission to see and download content from the PLL’s media library, from the social media team to external media partners.
The winning moment ends up on the @PLL Instagram account…
As well as the team’s @PLLArchers account…
View this post on Instagram
And, because athlete-tagged images are instantly routed via Greenfly Connect to the athletes’ phones, it also generates engagement on Ryan Ambler’s personal account.
It’s a fully automated end-to-end real-time workflow.
Sound like magic? See it for yourself!
PhotoShelter AI can be built and trained to serve the needs of any creative team, in any industry. To see how this cutting-edge technology can help you save time and cut out steps, get in touch with our team today.
