Wieden+Kennedy’s First Work for MLB Highlights the League’s Biggest Selling Points

Nostalgia is both baseball’s brand and its burden. Major League Baseball’s marketers are trying to make it more of the former and less of the latter.

In 2017, Sports Business Journal put the average age of an MLB viewer at 57. While the league has used streaming, social media and other tools to bring younger audiences to the game, Morning Consult found that just 32% of Gen Z (ages 13 to 23) identify as Major League Baseball fans—compared to 50% of U.S. adults overall. By comparison, a larger portion of that generation follows esports (35%) than professional baseball.

Baseball’s history separates it from other U.S. sports. It also imbues the sport with sepia-toned reflections of a past that young fans weren’t alive to witness and unwritten rules of conduct that turn off modern viewers.

Major League Baseball and new creative agency of record Wieden+Kennedy appraised tradition’s place in the current game and addressed it in a three-spot campaign dubbed “Baseball Is Something Else.” The campaign features a 60-second overture that serves as a love letter to the modern Opening Day, a 30-second tribute to Aaron Judge’s 62 home runs in 2022 that addresses baseball’s statisticians and superstitions, and a 30-second spin around the league’s various hot dog offerings.

To modernize the image of America’s pastime, both MLB and W+K reexamined the pillars of the game and determined which portions remained most vital throughout its history. While the league considers this campaign part of a greater season-long multiplatform effort—which already includes celebrity ads and spots about its rule changes, as well as a print manifesto later this year—this “brand equity” statement reintroduces baseball to the general public by putting its best features forward.

“When we actually looked at brand attributes, it’s not one or two things—it’s actually a handful of things that really made us unique,” Karin Timpone, CMO of Major League Baseball, told Adweek.

What is baseball?

When Timpone and her team looked at the game, there were four elements that stood out as fundamental attributes worth selling to the general public. First, there’s the charm of the game in the small elements like groundskeepers mowing the field, hot dogs on the grill or the late Zonk Lanzillo banging a drum at Texas Rangers games. 

Next, there are traditions handed down through multiple generations of family or groups of friends during the 162-game seasons, which are the longest of any sport. Then there’s the dynamic nature of the game that shifts from leisurely breaks in the action to pivotal points of dramatic tension—like Shohei Ohtani striking out his Los Angeles Angels teammate Mike Trout to secure Japan’s World Baseball Classic win over the United States.

“There’s no experience quite like baseball: It has endless stories, lore and larger-than-life characters,” Josh Bogdan, creative director at Wieden+Kennedy Portland, told Adweek. “You don’t need to create fake narratives to get new fans interested. We just let the game, with all of its quirks, speak for itself.”

Bringing it home

MLB and W+K cover all of that ground in their 60-second “Overture” spot—and include all 30 of the league’s clubs in the process—but don’t address a fourth element of “purposeful” behind-the-scenes planning in earlier spots surrounding the league’s rule changes.

The league has been testing new rules for pitch timing, defensive shift limits and bigger bases in the minor leagues for the better part of a decade, and implemented those changes in spring training this year. Timpone made clear that they’ll be a big part of the league’s messaging this year, especially with spring training games averaging 26 minutes shorter than last year’s contests.

In the meantime, the “Baseball Is Something Else” campaign is going incredibly broad. The spots are featured across broadcast, cable, digital media, in the ballparks and Times Square. There will also be print, out-of-home and experiential elements expanding on some of the themes.

Whether it’s the “62” ad blending Aaron Judge and Roger Maris’ stats, or eerily similar dates or the “Hot Dogs” spot combining Humphrey Bogart’s comparison of ballpark franks to “roast beef at the Ritz” and 2 Chainz’s “I’m Different” over images of cereal-topped dogs, the campaign seeks to close baseball’s age gap by highlighting its most inclusive elements.

“We’re thinking about it in a larger, more welcoming, magnanimous way,” Timpone said. “It fits really well, because our goals and aspirations are to welcome more fans in.”