Late April saw DirecTV roll out a new campaign starring a team of Major League Baseball (MLB) greats – A-Rod, David Ortiz, Ken Griffey Jr and Randy Johnson – to promote the company’s video streaming platform via a high-energy Ghostbusters-inspired ad.
The campaign spanned linear TV, digital, multimedia and out-of-home (OOH) and the first national game ‘GOATBusters’ commercial aired nationally during the 23 April telecast of the Dodgers-Padres game on MLB Network.
The hero 30-second commercial was titled ‘DIRECTV STREAM: Get Your TV Together – GOATbusters’ and dropped on the brand’s own social platforms on 21 April. It promoted DIRECTV STREAM and its ability to blend the ‘best of Live TV and On Demand’.
“With DirecTV Stream, I can get live TV and on-demand, together,” a woman tells her partner in the hero commercial. “Baseball, Ghostbusters, baseball, Ghostbusters,” she quips as she switches back and forth between the two programs. Suddenly, an alternate reality sees baseball and Ghostbusters coalesce.
The ad sees at-home viewers switching between their favourite programs with such ease that the two programs eventually seem to collide in a crazy, high-stakes mash-up to drive home the core message that DirecTV Stream aims at the fragmented consumer entertainment experience by centralizing various touchpoints and making it easy to navigate various TV and connected TV (CTV) offerings.
The video comes in both 30- and 15-second versions and his supported by a cheeky infomercial-inspired spot starring the same group who urge viewers who have been ‘haunted by their cable service’ to call the GOATBusters.
As well as the pre-launch campaign PR and the athlete ambassador line-up of sports star influencers, the brand sought to drive additional campaign buzz through an Augmented Reality (AR) ‘GOATBusters’ game available via Snapchat and Facebook filters – including a special version for use whilst attending MLB games.
The campaign, developed with agency TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, expands the brand’s ongoing ‘Get Your TV Together’ campaign which first launched in August 2021.
“Last August, the initial version of Get Your TV Together so accurately captured the entertainment magic, as well as cheeky nature of the DirecTV Stream brand, that we are continuing the franchise this spring,” outlined DirecTV Chief Marketing Officer Vince Torres. “As the TV world continues to get complicated, I think viewers will really see our passion to bring sports and entertainment back together, all in one place. And it doesn’t hurt to have the help of Ghostbusters and some of baseball’s greatest icons.”
“When working with celebrity athletes, you never know what you’re going to get. And we didn’t just partner with one athlete … but four of the biggest baseball players of all time – on an overnight shoot too,” commented TBWA\Chiat\Day Creative Director Ryan Buckley. “With that many variables, big personalities and nerves on the table – not to mention we’re asking these athletes to react believably to a tennis ball on a stick that will eventually be replaced with a VFX ghost in post-production – it was easy to see how things could go south quickly. But they never did.”
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The campaign seeks to build on the success of the brand’s recent Serena Williams-fronted marketing burst which included The Matrix inspired ‘The One’, monster mash-up ‘Quiet Please’ and Wonder Woman related ‘Get Your TV Together’ and ‘Serving Up Justice’.
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