‘Undercover Teacher’ CSR Stunt Expands Bank Of America’s Ongoing #MLBMemoryBank Initiative

Major League Baseball (MLB) sponsor Bank Of America extends its ongoing #MLBMemoryBank activation (and leverages postseason excitement) with a CSR strand based around an initial hidden camera school stunt and a subsequent class VIP trip to see the Orioles in action.

The campaigns is fronted by Orioles All-Star Adam Jones and is led by a spearhead spot in which the centre fielder puts on a disguise and goes undercover into a Baltimore public school classroom as a substitute teacher.

Mid class, the baseball star reveals his true identity and surprises the whole class with tickets to that evening’s Orioles game and thus helps the students ‘create memories that will last a lifetime’.

The stunt spot, which was initially posted on both the bank and the league’s own YouTube pages on 19 October and them amplified digitally and socially, drives viewers to share their own baseball memories using #MLBmemorybank and learn more at www.bankofamerica.com/MLBmemorybank.

Baseball is a game about tradition, part of America’s culture and full of personal memories – that is the insight behind Major League Baseball (MLB) sponsor Bank Of America’s #MLBMemoryBank.

This campaign, developed with agency Hill Holiday, asks baseball lovers to share their favourite memories and celebrate America’s favourite pastime.

The campaign encourages both fans and pro players to share baseball memories through the season using the campaign #MLBmemorybank hashtag.

The ‘Undercover Teacher’ campaign follows hot on the heels of other recent strands of #MLBMemoryBank such as the real fan film featuring ‘The Reckmeyers’ (a married couple who have been making baseball memories since 1952),

and this summer’s ‘Player Memories’ online video series: which included August spots featuring first baseball memories like this mixed team spot starring LA Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager, San Francisco Giants second baseman Joe Panik, Boston Red Sox catcher Blake Swihart and New York Yankees pitcher Dellin Petances (among others),

plus team-specific films such as player memory vox pop videos from the Baltimore Orioles,

the San Francisco Giants,

the LA Dodgers,

and the St Louis Cardinals,

as well as the Atlanta Braves,

the Houston Astros,

the New York Yankees,

and the Boston Red Sox.

Comment

This ongoing campaign, developed in alliance with the MLB and dating back to 2015 (see case study) is based on the idea that baseball creates memories that last a lifetime.

Bank of America’s objective is to demonstrate its shared passion for baseball with the game’s fans, while simultaneously boosting engagement and sentiment on social media and driving overall favourability for the brand.

The campaign’s specific aim is to provide a programme of content pieces and mechanics that honour fan memories, enable them to be shared and help them create new ones.

BoA leveraged its MLB league and individual team rights ‘to create contextually relevant messaging’.

The ultimate goal is to inspire memory sharing at scale throughout our creative assets.

Social media is at the heart of the campaign.

To drive engagement, the campaign saw the brand’s team visit baseball markets right around the USA, surprising lovers of the game fans with MLB merchandise and tickets and creating shareable video content.

Prizes on offer to selected fans who posted their memories using #MLBmemorybank included MLB experiences and prizes: from MLB.tv subscriptions, to jerseys, as well as regular season and postseason tickets (to ensure Bank of America itself also helps fans create new memories).

The initiative also capitalises on a sport partly built on statistics, records (and memories), by using its BoA MLB contractual social media inventory (from MLB.tv and the league’s core website, to Bank Of America’s own Twitter feed, Facebook page and YouTube channel) to promote contextually relevant messaging – thus both MLB and team content accounts and channels all asked fans to share their memories while also highlighting iconic moments throughout baseball history.

In addition to video-led content, other strands from the ongoing campaign include the sponsor developing a new partnership with Snapchat to give away World Series tickets and generate 3,660 Twitter mentions in a day.

For example, thebank and MLB created a Snapchat Story on the official MLB account that asked fans in New York City to create their favourite postseason moments in a series of videos.

A call to action then directed people to screenshot an art frame of World Series tickets and tweet it along with their favourite baseball memory using #MLBmemorybank, for the chance to win the tickets.

In the postseason, BoA brought the #MLBmemorybank Vault to New York City and Los Angeles, where it worked with player ambassadors (including Yankees legend Tino Martinez and and Dodgers great Eric Karros) to surprise dozens of fans with prizes ranging from team jerseys and signed memorabilia to the ultimate prize – World Series tickets.

This strand was also filmed for a social video that was released during the 2015 World Series.

In terms of big picture results, the objective is to forge stronger connection between Bank of America and MLB fans by celebrating the national pastime and the passion it inspires.

Links

Bank Of America YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/bankofamerica

Bank Of America Twitter:

https://twitter.com/BankofAmerica

Bank Of America Web:

https://www.bankofamerica.com/

Bank Of America Pinterest:

https://uk.pinterest.com/bettermoneyhabits/

Bank Of America LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/bank-of-america

Bank Of America Instagram: