Since being drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the second round of the 2017 NFL draft, Juju Smith-Schuster has taken the NFL by storm. Smith-Schuster became an excellent duo with Antonio Brown, and the Steelers continued their long trend of finding receivers in the draft that turn out to be excellent receivers in the league.
However, Smith-Schuster has taken a different path to stardom than most NFL players. It was not his amazing stats, although he did put together a very respectable rookie season with nearly had 1000 receiving yards, that brought him to become such a polarizing figure off the field.
It was his ability to tap into social media and YouTube that escalated him from talented rookie to a household name.
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ receiver has spent the offseason in the most productive way to build his brand, and continue with his new-found fame. He started uploading to his YouTube channel a little over four months ago and has not looked back since, amassing over 350 thousand subscribers as of March 13, 2018.
Smith-Schuster also joined legendary esports team FaZe Clan and did a partnership with them to launch a merchandise line. Currently, he lives in the FaZe House in Hollywood with other content creators and continues to make videos with them as well as other personal videos.
FaZe has been around the YouTube and esports scene since 2010, where they started out making trickshot videos on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Since then, they have expanded into other games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where they are one of the best teams in the world, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Rainbow Six Siege, FIFA, and most recently the ever so popular Fortnite Battle Royale.
After joining the organization, Smith-Schuster’s popularity has only risen, and his videos and followers bumped up massively as he was able to hit two large demographics of people around his age group: gamers and sports fans.
The 21-year old receiver started by posting vlog-style videos around Pittsburgh including going to a rave and even making a sandwich at Primanti Bros, but then expanded his channel towards video games, especially Call of Duty. Now he posts a mixture of both, and continues to be active on Twitter and Facebook on top of the video-sharing platform.
His most recent social media campaign was one that came out of nowhere and took the sports world by storm: recruit NBA-superstar LeBron James to play football for the Pittsburgh Steelers. The latest videos on his channel explained why James should come to Pittsburgh to play football.
“LeBron has done everything he can possibly do in the NBA. He’s won championships, he’s won MVP, he’s done everything possible and probably one of the GOAT (greatest of all time) in basketball,” Smith-Schuster said in his video: Juju Gives 5 Reasons LeBron Should Play For the Steelers.
He continued to add to his campaign after being brought on to Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, where he went on to talk to sports personalities Skip Bayless, Shannon Sharpe and host Joy Taylor.
“I mean he's a GOAT, you know, obviously, as a basketball player,” Smith-Schuster said on the program. “But to be the greatest athlete in sports history, come to Pittsburgh Steelers and win the Super Bowl, I mean, you can say the guy did it all.”
Smith-Schuster eventually got to meetup with him after sitting courtside for a Los Angeles Clippers and Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game, and while the campaign to get LeBron to the Steelers recently came to an end via Smith-Schuster’s twitter, it shows how far social media and knowing what your audience likes will get you.
This campaign got him appearances on multiple different sports networks, and a combination of all his posts and videos over his first year in the NFL helped him get the 18th best-selling jersey of the 2017 NFL season.
Only adding to this though was Juju hopping on to play Fortnite with top-twitch streamer Ninja, who already had rappers Drake and Travis Scott in his squad. The legendary team proceeded to only break the internet and basically took over all of Twitter in the process, only escalating his social media game.
This is a new era of sports, where athletes are becoming personalities off the field and with the recent success of the Pittsburgh receiver, more and more young athletes will follow his footsteps.
He has laid the groundwork for how to create a successful brand in sports in today’s world even as a 21-year old rookie in one of the most competitive sports leagues in the world.
