San Francisco Giants Want People to Know that Baseball Isn’t Boring

By Kyle O'Brien 

Opening Day for Major League Baseball starts tomorrow, and the San Francisco Giants are up to bat in one of the first games of the season. To help drum up support for the Giants and baseball in general, agency nice&frank has created a campaign that leans into the skepticism of baseball and showing that the game isn’t boring at all.

In 2022, MLB reported that attendance was down by 6%. Baseball skepticism is high and young fans think baseball is slow, so much so that the league instituted a pitch clock to speed up the games. Nice&frank, a new creative agency launched seven months ago by ex-Goodby Silverstein & Partners execs Laura Petruccelli and Graham North, decided to get honest about unspoken truths surrounding the Giants and baseball as a whole.

The agency and Giants found, after a deep dive, that the more people know about the game, the more they love it, so the organization should celebrate all the details that make the game fun. To add to that, Oracle Park, where the Giants play, is seen as a top ballpark in the league, but many don’t know about all the things that make it special.

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“It was important for us to develop a strategy that appeals to the next generation of fans without alienating the current one. Nice&frank helped us face this challenge by collecting the honest truth of what fans were thinking. The end result is that there’s nothing like the beauty and nuances of the game of baseball or the unique experience at Oracle Park,” said Mario Alioto, evp, business operations of the San Francisco Giants in a statement.

The integrated campaign and brand platform, running across TV, social, OOH, radio and more, called “Nothing Like It,” is centered around the perspective of fans. The hero spot is voiced by longtime Giants fan and Bay Area rapper, IamSu! It kicks off with a statement we’ve heard many times before: “Baseball is boring?”

Each of the spots begin with a different sleeping fan in the ballpark, then aims to unpack the nuances of the game, inviting fans to look closer, using close-ups and animation to highlight details.

Surrounding the film components, the Giants are launching an activation on Giphy inviting fans to use stickers to put players in wildly unexpected places. Since a baseball field is a natural green screen, nice&frank cut out the Giants’ most epic plays from 2022. New players will be added throughout the season and a collection of the best moments will show up in the spots.

via GIPHY

Nice&frank also developed the “Skeptickets” program, which encourages baseball fans to tag a baseball skeptic to get a free ticket and invite their friends to see the game through their eyes. TikTok creators will lead the Skeptickets program.

“The truth is, anyone who loves baseball has a friend who doesn’t. We wanted to lean into this tension instead of ignoring it. Launching with a spot that starts with ‘Baseball is boring’ and a TikTok ticket activation called Skeptickets, we’re giving fans the tools to bring their skeptical friends inside baseball for the first time,” said Petruccelli, CCO, nice&frank in a statement.

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