It’s no secret that Major League Baseball has been trying to make its games more exciting with new gameplay rules. One team is trying to get fans, especially younger ones, hyped the old-fashioned way.

The Seattle Mariners are tapping into their back catalog of ads from the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s as inspiration for a kitschy new series of social videos meant to engage older fans who might fondly remember the originals, as well as a next-gen fanbase that’s seeing them—and, at times, the team—for the first time on social media.

“We’re always trying to find creative ways to connect our fans to our players and really showcase who they are, not only on the field, but also off the field,” Tim Walsh, the team’s director of digital marketing, told Marketing Brew. “We tell the story of who this team is and who the guys are on the baseball side, but we also want fans to get to know them on a personal level and really build that one-to-one connection with our guys.”

Silly in Seattle: Back in the day, the Mariners were known for their commercials starring players like Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro Suzuki, and in the past few years, fans on social media started asking for the ads to come back, according to Ben Mertens, the team’s senior director of productions.

The Mariners’ marketing team heard those pleas and eventually decided to revive the ads with a modern twist: They’re now called “digital shorts” instead of commercials, are designed to be a bit longer than 15 or 30 seconds, and are meant for social first and foremost, Mertens said.

Continue reading here.—AM

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It’s been a year since Roku started courting brands for Roku City, and the flirtation is far from over.

At its NewFront presentation in New York on Tuesday, the connected TV platform introduced new brand integrations for Roku City, along with a slew of other ad formats and partnerships. Roku, which reached more than 81 million streaming households monthly as of its most recent earnings report, is focused on simplifying the fragmented TV landscape for advertisers and reeling them in as consumers continue to migrate to streaming, Julian Mintz, Roku’s head of US ad sales, told Marketing Brew.

The TV landscape is “like a puzzle that’s broken into a thousand pieces,” Mintz said. “We put that puzzle back together.”

Vroom, vroom: Earlier this month, Roku announced the addition of TV and movie cars to Roku City, on which brands can advertise, Mintz said. While Roku is still building out how those integrations with the cars will look, DoorDash has already signed on, and its name will be featured on a delivery car in the screensaver.

Since Roku City opened to advertisers at last year’s NewFront, brands from most big ad categories have jumped in, Mintz said.

Roku is also adding video ads on its home screen, VP of marketing and merchandising Sweta Patel announced at the NewFronts. To measure those video ads, Roku has struck up partnerships with both iSpot and The Trade Desk, head of global media revenue and growth Jay Askinasi said at the event. Both partnerships come as Roku has continued to build out its programmatic ad offerings.

Play ball: Coming this summer to Roku will be an “NBC Olympics Zone” featuring content from the Paris Olympics, thanks to a new partnership with NBCU, according to Dan Lovinger, NBCU’s head of Olympics ad sales, who made an appearance at the event. The hub will include pre-Olympics coverage and a Medal Count Module, where viewers can see how many medals athletes from various countries have won.

Keep reading here.—JS

Kendra Schaaf has been in the ad industry for over 15 years, working at agencies including TBWA\Chiat\Day, Droga5, BBH, and Mojo Supermarket for clients like American Express, Hennessy, Google, and Applebee’s. At one point, she even worked with Justin Bieber.

But in August 2023, she decided it was time to strike out on her own.

That month, Schaaf officially opened her own eponymous creative consultancy, which works on creative, strategy, and social, as well as OOH, print, budget management, and data strategy. The new agency, Schaaf said, is inspired by the lessons she learned after working for various agencies, and is “born from the idea that you can do great work transparently and fairly.”

Marketing Brew chatted with Schaaf about the work that goes into setting up an independent shop, especially when there is so much competition.

Read more here.—JS

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• The New Yorker delved into “the battle for attention” and its inextricable ties to the advertising and art worlds.
• The Atlantic profiled Daniel Radcliffe and his professional rebranding from Harry Potter to an eclectic mix of film and stage roles.
• The New York Times wrote about the rollout of Beyoncé’s album Cowboy Carter and its effects on interest in Western-inspired fashion—and Levi’s jeans.