A DIFFERENT BALL GAME

TitleA DIFFERENT BALL GAME
BrandMELBOURNE ACES
Product / ServiceBASEBALL TEAM
CategoryA04. Use of Digital in a Direct Campaign
EntrantOGILVY MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company OGILVY MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency OGILVY MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Production Company EXIT FILMS Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Steve Back Ogilvy Chief Creative Officer
Tim Pashen Ogilvy And Mather Copywriter
Brett Edwards Ogilvy And Mather Art Director
Sally Hastings Ogilvy Art Director
Michael Punton Ogilvy Copywriter
Toby Gill Ogilvy Senior Account Manager
Luke Coulson One20 Supervising Producer

The Brief

Australians love their ball sports. But baseball has never caught on. We were challenged to rally support for The Melbourne Aces, an Australian League Baseball team. One problem: nobody knew they existed.

Creative Execution

Because Aussie sports fans love trick shot videos, we were able sneak baseball under their radar by pitting it against the sports they love. Fans got a shock when they saw Aces players easily executing the hardest plays in their favourite sports - and with baseball equipment. They responded by sharing their opinions across Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We created 3 fake videos of Aces players dominating popular Australian ball sports with their baseball skills. We then used the competitive nature of Aussie sports fans against them to generate the biggest response to the videos. We did this by targeting the twitter pages, blogs and websites of their favourite sports and athletes.

Results

The arguing amongst fans caused the videos to go viral, reaching 192 countries in total. Suddenly the whole world was talking about Australian baseball. Even the home of baseball gave us ‘Play Of The Day’ on the 1 sports show, ESPN SportsCenter. Not bad for a $30,000 campaign with no paid media. We generated a huge response resulting in: -Opening game attendance increasing 104% -Membership increasing 39% -Season ticket sales increasing 34%