SPORTS

Play Ball

There used to be a time when the most recognizable athletes were baseball players. That was decades ago, when the sport was the main game in town—our national pastime. Baseball today, however, competes with everything from the NFL and NBA to video games and Netflix. 

And the big league hasn’t really helped itself either, whether it’s the fallout from the Houston Astros cheating scandal or the lingering effects of the juice era. Meanwhile, the game’s fans are both too old and too white. 

• In 2018, Gary Vaynerchuk told Sports Illustrated, "If I were commissioner, I would be petrified that 6- to 14-year-olds in America consider Messi, Ronaldo, LeBron, Curry, and Ninja the Fortnite player more famous than any baseball player on earth."

For the last three years, the league has worked to address these criticisms, with mixed results. For example, its 2019 postseason campaign included the lines, “They say baseball isn’t what it used to be. They’re right. It’s faster. It’s younger. Harder,” with narration in English and Spanish. But according to The New York Times in 2019, total attendance during the regular season dropped by about a million fans that season, to roughly 68.5 million.

Catching up

After a pandemic-pocked 2020 season, MLB is stepping up to the plate to try to make its stars, both on and off the field, into household names. “Baseball is a comfort,” Barbara McHugh, the league’s SVP of marketing, told Marketing Brew. “But it's also so young, it's fun, it's awe-inspiring.” 

McHugh pointed to a few of today’s brightest stars, like the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr. and the Padres’ Fernando Tatís, to “hype the return” of baseball. 

• They’re featured prominently in this season’s Opening Day campaign, “Make it Major,” which highlights the players, and also the league’s first female general manager, the Miami Marlins’ Kim Ng. 

One criticism MLB faces is that it missed the social wave, putting stringent rules on what people can and can’t share across the web. MLB now has a staff member at every ballpark whose job is “to just capture content, whether it’s video or photos, to create viral content,” McHugh said. 

• That content gets fed through its in-house content machine, which pumps out edited highlights to the players, who then publish across their own platforms. 

• We’re talking highly produced pieces of content, like these Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani Instagram highlight reels with swelling music behind them.
• The strategy, McHugh said, was to not tap the nostalgia vein, but instead “focus on raw emotion, player reactions, and personality.”

According to McHugh, it’s working, earning 21% more engagement on Twitter than the league’s typical highlight posts, and 16% more on Instagram.

To reach a younger, more diverse demographic, the league recently produced a YouTube series called MLB Originals—five- to 10-minute videos breaking down the game, its history, and player profiles. According to McHugh, they've found an audience predominantly with Gen Z and younger millennials. MLB will also release a player-to-player interview podcast this season.  

Cut it

None of these efforts will mean much if the great cord-cutting migration continues; the league’s streaming platform, MLB.TV, had its best season yet, but it restricts fans from watching the teams in their own backyards. Which makes the league’s social media strategy all the more important.

“Whether people are cutting their cords or not, it's our job and responsibility to keep that level of engagement up and to stay top of mind,” said McHugh. “We just continue to try to reach anyone who has an internet connection or a mobile phone, where they are and where they’re spending their time.” — RB

CAMPAIGNS

It’s Been Waiting for You

Bars are open until midnight. Museums are at half capacity. New York City is slowly reopening—and it’s ready to welcome back tourists with open arms. The city’s tourism branch, NYC & Company, will debut a $30 million campaign in June, which it claims is its largest yet. 

The goal: Convince people that New York City isn’t “dead”—and rebuild the city’s once-booming travel and tourism industry (according to NYC & Company, the sector supported nearly 400,000 jobs in the before times). 

What will the campaign look like? No details yet. We asked two directors at 360i, an ad agency that’s worked on tourism pushes for the likes of Asheville, NC, and New Orleans, to share how they think the city can convince people to take a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line.

• Andrew Hunter, Creative Director: “You don’t need to invent anything when it comes to marketing the city. The artists and chefs and musicians and bartenders who give New York its soul are more compelling than any piece of advertising could hope to be. Empowering their talents and voices reminds the world of the void only New York can fill.”
• Maggie Walsh, Strategy Director: “Travel and tourism are going to look different this summer. There’s a really interesting opportunity where the NYC you visit this summer might not be like any other time in history. NYC with just New Yorkers. NYC without overwhelming crowds of tourists. NYC just for the people. This might never happen again.” — MS

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TV

The Show Must Go On

The Academy Awards, aka the Oscars, are on Sunday. And viewership is expected to hit historic lows. 

Explain. Ratings have been down for all the major awards shows this year. The pandemic is partly to blame, since health protocols have required scaled-down events. Less hoopla = less interest. But eyeballs were already slipping pre-pandemic.

• In March, only 9.2 million people tuned into the Grammy Awards, according to measurement firm Nielsen. For comparison, 18.7 million viewers watched the prior year...and at the time, that marked a 12-year low.

So what’s this mean for advertisers? ABC, which is airing the Oscars, is reportedly asking for $2 million per 30-second spot...not far off from previous years. “Advertiser interest in the broadcast remains high even though award-show viewership does not,” Variety writes. It could be because the ceremony won’t be a clunky Zoom affair; instead, producers are staging the in-person event to “look like a movie.”

But maybe it’s simpler than that: According to Ad Age, “Even with mediocre ratings, these tentpole events are still among the most-watched of any programming on linear TV, outside of sports.”

Bottom line: Glitzy televised events are struggling to wield the clout—or attract the eyeballs—they once did. But advertisers continue to rely on their massive reach. — MS

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Dos Equis is finally leaving the “Most Interesting Man in the World” behind. Its new tagline? “Get a Dos.”
• Athleta, a women’s activewear brand, has pulled Olympic superstar Simone Biles away from Nike’s roster. Biles says Athleta more closely reflects her values. 
• Quibi’s shows have been rebranded as “Roku Originals.” Roku acquired the defunct platform’s programming earlier this year.
• Princess Cruise Lines, a source of early Covid-19 hotspots and the subject of an HBO documentary, has launched an ad campaign to stay “top of mind” even though cruising is on hold. 

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METRICS & MEDIA

Stat: In March, 125+ million people used Snapchat’s Spotlight feature, the platform’s TikTok competitor.

Quote: “Annovera, the unapologetic birth control...would like to unapologetically invite you to celebrate Vagina Appreciation Day, and one of the best ways to show appreciation for your vagina? Have an orgasm,” says comedian Whitney Cummings in the brand’s latest ad.

Read: The estate of Kobe Bryant is no longer with Nike. Here’s a look from The New York Times about what’s next for the Kobe brand, which was beloved by athletes, but never reached its mass market potential. 

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• How to turn shopping carts into ad inventory
• Why networks and Nielsen are getting snippy
• How to land a marketing internship