DeMarini, an aluminum bat manufacturing powerhouse, was looking for an exciting way to release its new bat line but also a way to make kids care more about the College World Series when the new bats would be on full display.
The DeMarini community's preferred platform is Instagram, limiting us with our media capabilities to support the campaign. We released both bat contests as a three-post series spanning three days each that slowly revealed the new bats. We supplemented that series with photos of DeMarini-sponsored teams using the bats at the College World Series and contests to give away two bats to two lucky fans.
We became quickly overwhelmed by the community's positive response to both the new bats and the CWS. Engagement soared during the campaign and all the newly added followers helped sustain great engagement post-campaign as well.
DeMarini's #CWSWeaponsDrop campaign in June 2014 was an example of social content truly resonating with a community, and a well-thought out contest and posting strategy led to remarkable results.
The Idea
Every spring, DeMarini's parent company Wilson Sporting Goods – also a Carrot client – visits all 30 Major League Baseball teams' spring training complexes to deliver new gloves to Wilson-sponsored athletes. While capturing these golden moments for its digital community, the brand offers a sneak peek at the new glove line's colorways. Wilson calls this "Glove Day" and its fans obsess over it, but DeMarini needed a comparable "Bat Day". We developed a campaign to connect the College World Series to its new bat line in an exciting and interactive way.
Keys to Success
DeMarini shared with us its two new bats that were being used in the College World Series before releasing them to the general public in the fall. The brand released the first 50 ever made from its factory in Oregon by way of these special weapon-like cases packed with matching batting gloves and other accessories – the ultimate contest prize for a hitter.
We used a military-grade parachute as a prop in our photoshoot with these cases to make #CWSWeaponsDrop a reality for our community with an Instagram contest that spanned from June 10-19. Two lucky fans who entered via regram were selected to take home a case featuring a unique bat, valued at $500 each.
The Results
With a very simple mechanism to enter these contests – reposting one of DeMarini's photos to his or her own profile and using the hashtag specific for each bat, #LockNLoadCF7 and #LockNLoadVoodooFT, we had high hopes for the contest.
Despite beginning the campaign with 20,000 Instagram followers, the two bat contests received a combined 11,000 organic entries and gained more than 30,000 new followers. Month-over-month community engagement also skyrocketed 150% from May (1,978/post) to June (4,665).
