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Chris Ruder wanted Spikeball to be known as the<\/em> beach game when he founded the company in 2008\u2014so much so that he made it the product\u2019s tagline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It turns out that playing on the beach isn\u2019t necessarily representative of the game\u2019s clientele. \u201cWhen sales started coming in, I realized that most of our customers didn\u2019t live within 100 miles of a beach,\u201d Ruder said. He ended up scrapping the original tagline and going with \u201cFind Your Circle\u201d instead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Regardless, it\u2019s not appearing in any massive ad campaigns: The company has, for the most part, forgone more traditional types of advertising, instead taking cues from sports like Formula 1, which have relied on storytelling and community to build the brand and the sport.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Summer\u2019s an important time of year for a sport like Spikeball (which is actually called roundnet, but that\u2019s a whole different story). Frequency of play is 100x higher in the summer than in January, Ruder said, and mid-April through early August marks the time when sales tend to, well, spike.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As a result, it\u2019s also when players are creating the most content around the game. And for better or worse, 99% of that video content is of \u201cwhat happens on the field,\u201d Ruder said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While it\u2019s fun to watch, videos of players diving to make sure the ball doesn\u2019t hit the ground don’t exactly provide viewers with much background on the sport and its players. So, in addition to that type of content, Ruder said he wants to follow the Netflix documentary formula, citing the success of the streamer\u2019s tennis series Break Point<\/em>, its golf series Full Swing<\/em>, and the F1 series Drive to Survive<\/em>\u2014the last of which helped boost the sport\u2019s popularity among viewers and advertisers in the US. (While there\u2019s no roundnet docuseries in the works at the moment, ESPN aired a 30-minute program called The Story of Spikeball<\/em> last year.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe are trying to get better at storytelling,\u201d Ruder said, noting that he wants people who see the brand\u2019s content to be able to learn about the athletes playing. \u201cThat\u2019s what I think really makes people invested, and we haven\u2019t spent a whole lot of time on that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This year on Valentine\u2019s Day, Spikeball started a series on its blog called \u201cSpikelove,\u201d which featured a married couple who met playing roundnet. To help keep the content coming, Ruder hired a production company run by two roundnet players called the Roundnetwork to film tournaments and capture stories beyond the action on the field. So far, the Roundnetwork has made videos about the Spikeball Richmond Major tournament, and is working on coverage of the College National Championship, which took place in May, Ruder said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The email newsletter guaranteed to bring you the latest stories shaping the marketing and advertising world, like only the Brew can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that we continue to do more and more [storytelling], and that\u2019s going to draw more people in,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe they\u2019re not going to play, maybe they\u2019ll just become spectators, and they\u2019ll watch a little bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another sport Spikeball is taking a cue from is pickleball. Ruder said he and his team have been experimenting with prototype paddles similar in quality and shape to pickleball paddles, which he hopes to release this year, ideally capitalizing on overlap between the roundnet and pickleball communities. A popular pickleball TikTok account recently posted a video of people playing roundnet with paddles, which has nearly 20,000 likes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Spikeball is also gearing up to release a new \u201cmammoth\u201d set with a wider base that stands higher off the ground and comes with a slightly different ball, all changes that Ruder said will hopefully contribute to longer rallies that make roundnet \u201cmore entertaining to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Outside of Ruder\u2019s early efforts to document more personal stories behind the game, Spikeball relies on players to generate about 90% of the content for its socials, according to Ruder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Spikeball hashtag on TikTok has almost 300 million views, and the brand\u2019s account has more than 1.3 million followers and over 26 million likes on its posts\u2014twice the amount of likes as Nike, Ruder said. It has an additional 510,000 followers on Instagram.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The team tries to post once or twice a week on Instagram and TikTok, but if there\u2019s no good content to share, \u201cwe\u2019re not going to just post garbage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On top of that, Spikeball\u2019s paid media budget is \u201cnext to nothing,\u201d Ruder told us. The brand spends the largest portion of its advertising budget on Amazon, and runs some ads on Google, but Ruder said the brand doesn\u2019t allocate significant spend to social campaigns, other than anywhere from $50 to $1,000 for occasional test campaigns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And while Spikeball\u2019s largest social audience is on TikTok, \u201cI literally don\u2019t think we\u2019ve spent a nickel [on that platform], even though we\u2019ve got the numbers that we do,\u201d Ruder said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At the core of Ruder\u2019s approach is to continue to focus on telling genuine stories, whether that\u2019s through short-form user-generated videos or more professionally filmed content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe highest compliment I get when people are sharing with me what they liked about Spikeball, is when they somehow talk about that authenticity,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want people to think Spikeball is this preconceived brand that people are perfectly crafting behind the scenes. It\u2019s something that this community has had a hand in making and shaping.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nStory time<\/h2>\n
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