With 1 football team, 10 away games and 514,000 passionate Instagram fans, the Minnesota Vikings needed a new way to showcase the beauty and best-kept secrets of the cities that we traveled to throughout the season. The team is incredibly fortunate to have a dedicated group of fans that like to travel to road games to cheer on their team. Knowing this, we developed Vikings Instagram Group which is simply a cohort of the best and most talented photographers from each the cities that the team traveled to throughout the season. The only creative parameter that was given was to incorporate our iconic Vikings helmet into each of the photos.
Every city is different. Every photographer has their own style. These folks know every street and building in their respective towns, and every person was hand-selected and chosen for their creative vision and unique point of view. Instead of focusing on the number of followers that each photographer had, we chose to find people who had a different aesthetic than what we usually posted to our Instagram account. In turn, we asked these influencers to share the photos on their accounts as well to help increase the exposure of our campaign. The main goal was to showcase the cities to our fans back home and on the road while also letting the local communities know that the team was in town for a visit.
"I love football and showing friends from out of town around Seattle, so this was a fun project. I get to show all of the Vikings fans out there parts of Seattle they may never get a chance to see. It was also pretty funny to have people yelling "Go Hawks" at nearly every location I went with the helmet. I did explain to them I am still a Seahawks fan first and foremost, but after this opportunity the Vikings are now my second favorite team." -Matt McDonald, Seattle V.I.G. Representative
For our Vikings Instagram Group representative in Chicago, we opted to go with a four-legged Instagram influencer named Rufio. To shake up our weekly content and give fans something different, we asked the photographer to take photos of Rufio the Golden Retriever with our helmet and other Vikings gear. We knew that this type of content would perform well based on previous content that we had published.
"Unfortunately, the Vikings helmet didn't fit on Rufio's head! He would have made a very cute Minnesota Vikings player! Vikings Instagram Group has some amazing photography on their Instagram. I feel honored to have this opportunity to photograph Rufio for the Vikings." -Rebecca Mo (Rufio's owner), Chicago V.I.G. Representative
From a reporting standpoint, we tallied 754 posts which generated more than 2.56 million impressions via the #VikingsIG campaign hashtag on social media alone. We also calculated 14,697 total visits to Vikings Instagram Group articles on Vikings.com. In addition to the numbers, we were able to expand our reach globally. We had fans sharing our photos from the United States, Kenya, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Germany and Austria.
