Twitter is rolling out a baseball-themed integrated marketing campaign, led by US TV spots running during the World Series, which aim to showcase a new way to get the best of the Fall Classic via the microblog.
The creative itself includes collated tweets from MLB’s Playoff games as seen from within Twitter’s new ‘Moments’ feature.
Royals outlast Mets in epic World Series opener
The 30-second TV ad, titled ‘Post Season’, targets sports fans and features a set of rapidly moving clips highlighting the crucial and biggest Moments from the playoffs: : including Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista’s bat-flip, a goat GIF, and a catch by Kevin Pillar.
The creative also showcases real tweets from users.
Unsurprisingly, the spot was and also hosted on Twitter’s YouTube channel and, of course, it was also running through its own @Twitter feed too (https://twitter.com/twitter).
Never miss a moment of the #WorldSeries. Explore the best of Twitter and follow Game 2: https://t.co/0mZw3ZKwA8
https://t.co/OeHuNg7rpX
— Twitter (@twitter) October 29, 2015
Kicking off on 27 October and during Game 1, as the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals slug it out for baseball’s crown, the campaign uses the copy line ‘Home runs, strikeouts, close calls, and more — catch the new way to get the best of the World Series on Twitter’ and aims to drive fans to its own platform at https://twitter.com/i/moments/659115643384549376
Twitter claims that the objective of the marketing campaign is to recruit new users following the release of the new Moments feature earlier in October.
The idea behind Moments is to enable Twitter users to find, explore and follow the biggest things happening on the platform without the need to constantly check and scan their timeline.
The curated and linked content is displayed ‘side-to-side’ and features the best and most popular photos, clips and conversations about a specific topic – in the case the World Series.
The campaign was developed with TBWA\Chiat\Day- an agency with a great track record for ground breaking tech company ads dating back to its classic Big Brother Macintosh spot in 1984.
Comment
Twitter’s current focus on ‘Moments’ is interesting from an activation platform perspective as well as a sports event campaign in its own right.
It sees the microblog aim to get users into the event/theme ‘Moments’ stream as soon as they open the app.
Part of the thinking behind the development of Twitter Moments seems to be to try and slow down the real-time nature of Twitter and allow the more casual, less hardcore user to keep up and maximise the benefit of the rich content on the site.
Anything that makes a media platform easier to use and more engaging in terms of event-related content might certainly be valuable to event sponsors.
Part of Twitter’s raison d’etre is to be the fastest way to get something/anything out to the wider world – be that news, images, jokes, opinions or event-led content.
Yet, fast isn’t always the best way to engage rich content.
Plus, most analysts and business brains agree that Twitter needs to be more accessible and it simply needs more users.
Is it slightly ironic that Twitter is turning to traditional TV ads and slowing down its stream to achieve this?
Will this campaign drive more users and different users to its platform?
Possibly!
Contrary to some reports, this isn’t the first time the company has aired a commercial.
The first Twitter spot, called ‘Bard’s View’ was also a partnership promotion and came in June 2012 to promote the microblog’s relationship with NASCAR.
Its objective was to showcase how Twitter offered the best insider access to NASCAR drivers, crews, commentators, families, celebrities and fans in the form of pictures and perspectives via thttp://twitter.com/#nascar.
Other previous Twitter spots included a Ryan Lochte led ad in support of the London Olympics and a recent ‘How Data Can Build A Smarter Business‘ ad highlighting its relationship with IBM.
Links
Twitter YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Twitter
Twitter Twitter:
Twitter Website:
https://about.twitter.com/company
TBWA/Chiat/Day:
http://tbwachiatday.com/
