Executive Producer - Advertising & Creative
XM's $650M partnership with Major League Baseball was the largest of it's kind when brokered in 2004. Listenership grew tremendously over the next few years, and riding that wave, XM launched an aggressive and highly creative campaign targeted at the 'out of market' listener: The fan whose favorite team resided in another city. The tag line "Every Team. Every Game." gave context to just how powerful the service could be to baseball fans and underscored XM's nationwide reach.
Baseball superstars Derek Jeter and David Ortiz would take center stage, each being depicted as the most important of baseball totems: The bobblehead. Leaning heavily into the tag line and capitalizing on the upcoming presidential election, "Every Team" and "Every Game" would become competing slogans for these bitter rivals who now found themselves campaigning on the virtues of MLB on XM.
This campaign would center around a standalone campaign page (A first for the company), and offer visitors two interactive experiences: An innovative, personalized greeting application featuring Jeter and Ortiz, and an image application allowing the user to create bobblehead versions of themselves. "Call Stars" would be the most ambitious interactive campaign in XM's history.
Creating audio messages from a "Mad Libs" style user generated script, the "Call Stars" application could then send the messages to a recipeint's phone in the form of a personlized call or file for use as a ringtone or voicemail greeting. Users also had the option to send a link via email, which would prove a critical component to the campaign.
"Bobble Yourself" made custom bobbleheads from user pictures and would act as the gateway for the digital and social arm of the campaign. Users could share the images themselves or have generted animations sent out via email.
The novel nature of the content generated through the apps made for perfect social fodder. This campaign would be the first to lean into social media. Short form pieces featuring Jeter & Ortiz were created to support the social reach of the campaign. These pieces would leverage existing content from XM's signature interview show "Artist Confidential" and re-brand them "Baseball Confidential"
Additional content in the form of a "Behind-the-scenes" style video was created for social use. This would go on to become XM's first viral video.
Email marketing campaigns were nothing new to XM, but "Call Stars" proved to be one of the most important to the company. The core of the creative was rooted in sharing the content through different channels, and none was more improtant than email. The fun and engaging creative led to massive click-throughs and beefed up the company's already impressive email list, allowing future success in subsequent campaigns.
A sweeps was created to suppliment the email campaign, allowing users the chance to take pre-game batting practice with David Ortiz. A social promo was created for support.
