When Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani struck out three-time American League MVP Mike Trout of Team USA for the final out to give his native Japan the 2023 World Baseball Classic title last week, it may have been the best pre-season that commercial Major League Baseball ever had.
With apologies to Team USA fans, that pitch capped a WBC that attracted more fans and excitement than ever before. And it ended with two of MLB’s biggest stars going head to head.
“It was incredible,” says MLB chief marketing officer Karin Timpone. “The momentum of the WBC, the amount of countries around the world that engaged with it, the number of fans who are engaging with players far outside their own ZIP codes—we’re coming off some really strong momentum.”
Now it’s her team that’s stepping up to the plate, with a new campaign that aims to not only celebrate the league’s Opening Day on Thursday, but become a starting point for a much broader swath of brand work in the coming year and beyond.
Created with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, which was named the league’s agency of record in March, “Baseball Is Something Else” winds up with a spot that zooms in on the cultural moments—the sights and sounds, the fans, the snacks, a day at the ballpark—but ends with an Ohtani pitch.
This new work is a result of a long process of internal research, among MLB staffers and its clubs, to talk about what makes baseball unique and what its overall brand positioning should be to balance between tapping into the passion of the established hard core and engaging more casual fans.
Timpone says the spot captures the brand attributes that the league talks a lot about internally. “Things like the charm, the tradition, and the community, the connection that baseball provides between family, friends, neighbors, others,” she says. “We also talk a lot about the expected and unexpected. Nothing is happening and then everything is happening. We hope to hit on that.”
The second of three spots released this week is a look a the curious case of the numbers associated with New York Yankees star Aaron Judge’s 62nd home run last season, breaking Roger Maris’s long-standing American League record, set in 1961.
And the third is a stylish look at the many iterations of the gastronomical phenomenon known as the ballpark hotdog.
Timpone says the tagline of “Baseball is Something Else” highlights the sport’s quirks in the best way possible. “We want to lean into the fact these attributes are unique to us in many ways,” she says. “We want to bring attention to what’s here, whether it’s on the field or off, and who we are.”
The goal is to make this celebration of both the culture and players part of a long-term, consistent message from the league—not just in its advertising, but also its fan experiences. For example, through its app, things like the new Home New Feed allow fans to follow the play and highlights of individual players.
“So, you can now follow Ohtani, whose achievements are already at the level where any sports fan—let alone baseball fan—should be aware of them,” says Timpone. “These things we’re doing, even on our own platforms, that deliver for both fans who’ve been with us for a long time and our newer fans.”
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