The Kansas City Chiefs have no right to be pissy toward the fans. We are the ones paying for their salaries. Shame on you, Chiefs. Oh, and congrats on 50 years of being in KC. 10 years of greatness, followed by 40 years of pathetic profiteering. Clark Hunt sits in Dallas siphoning Kansas City dollars.”
Keep in mind the customer's (fan) perspective as context for this situation. The Chiefs had not drafted a quarterback since 1983, and it was 2012! The Chiefs hadn't won a playoff game since 1993. They were in the middle of a nearly 20-year playoff-win-drought. The Chiefs lost seven playoff games in a row, and they were spending millions below the salary cap.
Early in the 2012 season, when Travis sent the tweet, the announced amount under the cap was $26.6 million; it was later adjusted to $16.1 million. In 2011, when there was no salary cap or salary floor, the Chiefs spent the least in player salaries. Beginning in 2013, teams had to spend at least 89 percent of the cap or be subject to penalties.3,4
The NFL football is serious business to paying fans in America. And being under the salary cap for multiple years in a row had angered many Kansas City Chiefs fans.
The rant made the front page of Reddit. Some readers were mad at the Chiefs. Some were mad at Travis, calling him many different colorful terms. The story began to go viral because of this activity.
Once it made the front page of Reddit, the social media shit-storm gained strength and started being referenced on big news sites and the local media.
One local disc jockey in Kansas City named Lazlo started going off about the situation on his broadcast that day.
Lazlo has a show called The Church of Lazlo in the afternoon in the Kansas City market. He was yelling about how people behind their computer screens are keyboard warriors. How weak and ridiculous they are! Lazlo (on air) said, (paraphrasing)
“The Internet trolls would never talk like that in public, like they do on the Internet! That ASSCLOWN on Reddit, who was talking about the Kansas City Chiefs rude tweet today, Oh! they told him to get a clue? Boo hoo! Big freaking deal!”
One of TW's buddies called him up and said, “Hey Travis, Lazlo's talking about you and your Reddit post and the Chiefs deal. You should call into the station and chat with him.”
So, Travis did. He couldn't get through the phone line, so he sent a text to the Church of Lazlo show saying, “Hey this is Travis Wright @teedubya, the guy who got the tweet from the Chiefs, and if you want to have a conversation, let's do it.”
Lazlo called Travis, and immediately they were on air. In the digital world of media today, it is all about attention and trust, and Lazlo couldn't pass up the chance to hype the story for his show's gain. Lazlo was chomping at the bit to destroy an Internet troll, live and on air. At first, he was echoing some comments from some Redditors, trying to make Travis look like a whiny idiot. It was clear that he had an angsty attitude about keyboard warriors and disdain for Internet trolls, who are always louder and braver behind a keyboard. Little did Lazlo know that Travis is that loud in real life, too.
On air, Travis stated many of the reasons why KC Chiefs fans should be fed up with the Kansas City Chiefs at that point. He mentioned a litany of strategic, management, and cultural errors that the organization had made, and while they were having this conversation, he actually started converting Lazlo to his line of thinking.
Lazlo recanted, acknowledging how Travis was right, how it had been since 1983 that the Chiefs have drafted a first-round quarterback! The Chiefs hadn't won a playoff game since Joe Montana was the Chiefs QB. Maybe the Chiefs were bad because they weren't spending enough on salaries? Why do the Chiefs not let the former players and alumni come to Arrowhead? Why are they hoarding salary cap dollars?”
Nobody changes Lazlo's opinion, yet on that day, Travis did with his own well-informed and impassioned one.
After Reddit and Lazlo, Travis was contacted by local TV stations to do interviews about the scenario. It made Yahoo!'s front page. USA Today talked about it. Mashable wrote about it. There was even a segment on it on ESPN.com.5
When you have digital sense, you realize that page views are an economic driver that has forever bastardized traditional and nontraditional journalism and media, in potentially irreparable ways. The 2016 election debacle in the United States proved this more than any other single event in recent history.
Travis never expected the Chiefs to respond to him and tell him to get a clue. If you look at the comments of any YouTube video on the Web, you see people saying way more rude, and sometimes disrespectful or disgusting, things about artists or brands than TW was saying to the Chiefs. And most of these comments are never replied to by the brand.
As a fan, Travis had been to more than 100 games at Arrowhead Stadium. He was a loyal paying customer (100 games ain't cheap). A passionate advocate for Kansas City sports teams, he had been to every crushing home playoff loss the Chiefs had had since 1986. Them telling him that “it's his choice to be a fan and get a clue” just wasn't good digital sense. Of course it was his choice. It was also his choice and his right to vent his displeasure, as any customer can, when the product they support fails to deliver.
Shortly after the 2012 NFL season, Travis spoke at the SMX Social Media Conference in Las Vegas. After he shared the story about the Chiefs, a half dozen other social media directors and managers of other sports teams approached him. They all stated that the day after the Chiefs told him to get a clue, every one of those six sports teams had a meeting. The all told their social media managers to not be rude to their fans and they began to institute formal governance around their branded accounts on social media channels.
The “Save Our Chiefs” Movement
The situation with the Chiefs continued to gain momentum. The wave of public disgruntlement grew toward the Chiefs almost daily, and the compounding losses in future weeks did nothing to quell the rage. A couple of more losses into the season and people from all over began to reach out to TW about doing something bigger.
ChiefsPlanet.com had been around since 2000, before Internet 2.0, and was one of the few remaining independent message boards about the Chiefs. It was founded in August 2000 after a group of core users were fed up with the Kansas City Star message board moderators. After a negative experience with moderators at the KC Star happened in 2000, they started their own private community to commiserate with fellow Chiefs fans. Travis has been a card carrying member since 2003.
Message forums are a form of social media organized around communities of common interests. As a participant, you can really get to know people, over time, through the medium. There had been several ChiefsPlanet in-person bashes and tailgating events at Arrowhead with members of this forum over many seasons. It remains a great community, that commiserates over the 16 years of Chiefs futility. ChiefsPlanet is still going strong today.
A couple of weeks after the initial tweet shit-storm, Travis was perusing ChiefsPlanet and one of its users, Eric Granell, created a thread that said “Hey we're thinking about flying banners over Arrowhead Stadium before each Chiefs game. What do you think of this idea?” In another thread, Marty McDonald was setting up a Facebook page and a Twitter page for something he coined Save Our Chiefs.6 As they were all talking virtually on the thread, it was decided to merge efforts. Save Our Chiefs was born after the fourth game of the 2012