Market leading baseball game, Sony Playstation’s MLB 13: The Show, ran an Opening Day campaign for its latest new season edition that modernised a classic baseball collecting tradition by introducing Vine-powered baseball cards.
This Twitter/Vine campaign, positioned as a tribute to some of the game’s most famous ‘influencers’ and successful ‘players’, saw The Show roll out custom baseball cards using Vine for fans of the teams and the video game.
Unlike the old-school, static-image collectors’ cards, these come to life in the form of six-second video clips and these mini movies feature the individual in The Show and are created from the influencer’s Twitter avatar.
The campaign came as a welcome surprise to several seemingly unlikely individuals within baseball’s Twitter community when they were tweeted their own personal custom-created baseball card featuring a game version of themselves sporting their favourite team.
Those baseball influencers to have their own custom cards weren’t necessarily well known personalities, but rather a range of influencers and advocates on the MLB The Show.
They ranged from FoxSports.com baseball writer Jon Morosi, to the Twitter user @the700level who is the lead blogger for a Philadelphia-based baseball blog.
The game itself sees gamers create and develop their own player: starting off in the Minor Leagues and eventually progressing according to their performance and skill to the Major Leagues (which in baseball is referred to as ‘The Show’).
And it is these gamers who’s player avatars have made it to the big leagues who MLB 13 created virtual baseball cards for.
Each card features that player’s name, their game-created character, and their favourite team.
The cards were then sent out to the gamers via Twitter with a personalised tweets along the lines of:
‘Congrats on your first win today with the #Dodgers, @GarnettLee. We’re sure to see more highlights like these: https://vine.co/v/bIHM2WVEUJZ’.
The creation of these intricate cards saw artists design the influencers and players based on the likenesses of their Titter profile picture.
The Vine-led campaign also saw MLB The Show run a live Opening Day prize giveaway that included genuine collectors’ items such as a signed baseball by Matt Kemp and a signed jersey from Andrew McCutchen.
This was available to those following The Show on Twitter @MLBTheShow throughout Opening Day.
Comment
This innovative campaign sees The Show engage directly with the committed baseball community to drive excitement for Opening Day.
Some sponsors are yet to be convinced of Vine’s activation benefits, while others have yet to figure out a successful creative formula for the tool, its impressive video shareability (in tandem with the fact it can synch with in-game audio), yet this initiative certainly combines Vine and Twitter in a personalised and shareable way that works in real-time.
The idea being that these heavy users and influential gamers will spread their personalised cards around the web: thus building excitement around the game and the new 2013 season.
Bringing a classic, simple baseball tradition to life in an active, dynamic and personalised way certainly seems a perfect way to celebrate Opening Day, connect with committed gamers and promote the latest game version.
Links
MLB The Show Nation Website
https://www.theshownation.com/
Sony Playstation MLB 13 Website
http://store.sony.com/p/Sony-PS3-Baseball-Game/en/p/PS398473
Vine
