Branded Content
Role: Strategy
Challenge
Cash-strapped consumers, advancements in home theatre systems, and a losing season meant the Minnesota Twins needed new ways to convince fans to attend games at the team’s new ballpark.
To address this, the Twins asked us to create an inspiring game-opening video.
Audience: Season Ticket Holders
Creating a video that would remain interesting to season ticket holders throughout the entire season was particularly challenging since they would be seeing it repeatedly. So we focused on crafting a solution that contained an element of surprise.
Research
- Current marketing landscape of professional sports
- Historical relationship between the Minnesota Twins and fans
- Crowd flow patterns in Target Field
- Minnesota’s economic outlook and changing demographics
Insights
- As a result of the new ballpark’s open design, greater fan engagement with the team – and each other – was occurring throughout the arena.
- Twins fans feel a sense of ownership in the identity of their team as a whole, rather than in the personas of individual players, because they see themselves in the team.
Solution
Create the first fan-integrated game opener in professional sports.
Execution
Through a unique combination of multi-screen motion graphics and green screen effects, fan footage was updated quickly at each game so that fans attending a particular game appeared in that day’s opener. This meant that each of the 80+ home games had a customized opening video.
Results
A one-of-a-kind experience (the first in professional sports) that integrated fans into the game opener.
Fan response was so positive the Twins decided to continue the approach indefinitely (and other teams have attempted to emulate it).
Game Open Video
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