In late April, we were called to a meeting in the athletic department at Memorial Stadium. A 20 minute discussion later we walked out of the room with a challenge…create a video campaign to help sell 1500 season tickets for Husker football.
This isn't a new challenge for us. We've done season ticket campaigns for college teams from coast to coast, and helped with campaigns for Husker men's and women's basketball and Husker baseball. But this was definitely unique. Memorial Stadium has been sold out for every single game since 1962- and this is the first time in decades there would be a campaign for football tickets.
These 1500 tickets existed because of new Big Ten rules that opened up an additional 1000 seats previously allotted to visiting teams, this was in no means because of lack of interest. But we definitely felt pressure walking out of that room in coming up with a plan to help preserve a sellout streak that is one of the biggest points of pride in the state of Nebraska.
These types of projects are by far our favorite. A 20-30 minute explanation of a problem and an audience, then leaving it up to us to find a solution, direction and concept; and execute it from start to finish.
Both Tiff and I grew up in Nebraska and have loved Husker football since birth. Which made this project all that more daunting. Most of the time, we can return two or three concepts to a client within 3-4 days. This one took about three weeks….and we only had one solid idea! Fortunately our friends in NU Athletics liked it.
In the 10 days after the concept was approved it was a rush of sequential steps…
1) Acquiring voice over from a talent I found online in Vancouver, Canada. We wanted someone who sounded like an old farmer, or your grandfather reminding you of the importance of this streak.
2) Hunting for historical pictures with the uber-talented NU photog Scott Bruhn and UNL Archives czar Josh Caster.
3) Tiff cutting out pictures old and new to provide some depth and motion on the still photographs. This included changing 186 placards being held by fans in a game from the late 60's. This shot alone took about two full days.
4) Compiling all of the elements into a long-form web video, then into multiple 30-second spots for broadcast.
In the end, we love how it turned out. And the best news of all…the season tickets sold out less than 24 hours after the campaign started.
There is nothing better than getting immediate, measurable results for our clients, and this project was as gratifying as it gets.