In April 2018, two Major League Baseball, the Minnesota Twins and the Cleveland Indians, played a regular season game series in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Baseball is Puerto Rico's top sport, so anytime Major League teams come play in the island, it is a huge deal. Sellout crowds are expected for all games and local TV ratings soar. But most importantly, the games put Puerto Rico on a global platform.
With the eyes of the world on the island, Rums of Puerto Rico had a unique opportunity to promote our world-class rum to millions of baseball fans internationally. Up there with baseball, rum is one of the island's biggest cultural exports. Rums of Puerto Rico wanted to take advantage of the series to enhance the game's entertainment value, highlight Puerto Rico's rum legacy, and showcase our baseball excellence.
In recent years, the baseball game TV-watching experience has been enhanced by second screen applications such as iScore Baseball and MLB First Pitch. As baseball is a slow-paced game, fans enjoy the opportunity to catch up on stats and scores in between pitches. But we thought a baseball game second screen experience didn't need to be limited to just baseball content.
Watching a baseball game is great, but watching one with a cold drink or cocktail is even better. With this insight, Rums of Puerto Rico devised a unique second screen experience based on a chatbot programmed to talk and interact like a bartender: the Bottender.
It's a fully custom Facebook Bot Messenger that provided unique experiences on two fronts. With its very own personality, the fully interactive Bot-tender shared team-inspired rum cocktail recommendations and immersed users in a conversational environment, as any good bartender should.
The Bottender also gave viewers around the world an enhanced game-viewing experience, with access to supplementary content including real-time scores, stats, player info, and more.
You weren't just watching the game; you were living it, and in the company of a friendly bartender.
Through a creative insight linking rum and baseball, the Bottender turned into the brand's most successful digital effort this year so far. It achieved great results for the Rums of Puerto Rico Facebook platform:
18.3% total follower increase
38.7% direct message volume increase
1000% increase in new messaging connections
