Spring Training 2020

Remember fans? That was fun.

Task

This Spring Training was a different one for me personally; it was the first in Arizona and first with the Angels after spending four in Florida with the Astros. It was also my first big external project with a new organization. Internally, in the months leading up to Spring Training, I worked with leadership to create budget and resources for a previously-nonexistent digital video team. Our goal was simple: match the excitement and buzz around Tempe by bring fans closer to the team than ever.

Action

We set out to create two polished videos per week on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule and supplement them with quick-turn, raw videos that were more reactionary to give us the most flexibility while boots-on-ground. I led the project management and was the point of contact to mic up the team, get interviews, or any special ask that required players or staff. Spring Training is about 10 weeks — the content team was there for 15 days.

In the weeks leading up to our arrival in Arizona, we brainstormed, plotted, and storyboarded our Tuesday/Thursday videos to feature our organization and tell the story of the 2020 Angels. As a team, we did not miss a video and created ample content to roll out for the duration of Spring. Upon our return to California the pandemic postponed the season and, as a result, our content calendar. The retooling and reshaping of what we captured took some time, but we were ultimately able to use everything we had planned to release.

Execution

Reception and analysis

By both qualitative and quantitative metrics, fans were extremely pleased with the switch of our content plan and the videos what we were able to produce.

For numbers, the year-over-year jump in interaction rate was most notable:

• +300% on Facebook

• +116% on Instagram

We also received a large amount of comments of praise:

Learnings

While we were extremely excited and happy with our product, we learned a ton as a team and our strengths and weaknesses.

The biggest learning we came away with was to prepare even more than we think we need to. We had every week and video planned, but felt we needed more back up plans in case things fell through — player schedule changes, team schedule changes, technical issues, etc. Very proud of the team and how they were able to stay nimble and keep composure even when days got long or things out of our control went sideways.