This baseball season, the Seattle Mariners are embracing an ad strategy from decades past

It’s no secret that Major League Baseball has been trying to make its games more exciting with new gameplay rules. One team is trying to get fans, especially younger ones, hyped the old-fashioned way.

The Seattle Mariners are tapping into their back catalog of ads from the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s as inspiration for a kitschy new series of social videos meant to engage older fans who might fondly remember the originals, as well as a next-gen fanbase that’s seeing them—and, at times, the team—for the first time on social media.

“We’re always trying to find creative ways to connect our fans to our players and really showcase who they are, not only on the field, but also off the field,” Tim Walsh, the team’s director of digital marketing, told Marketing Brew. “We tell the story of who this team is and who the guys are on the baseball side, but we also want fans to get to know them on a personal level and really build that one-to-one connection with our guys.”

Silly in Seattle

Back in the day, the Mariners were known for their commercials starring players like Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro Suzuki, and in the past few years, fans on social media started asking for the ads to come back, according to Ben Mertens, the team’s senior director of productions. The Mariners’ marketing team heard those pleas and eventually decided to revive the ads with a modern twist: They’re now called “digital shorts” instead of commercials, are designed to be a bit longer than 15 or 30 seconds, and are meant for social first and foremost, Mertens said.

One of the new shorts features catcher Cal Raleigh (whose nickname is “Big Dumper”) and several of the Mariners’ pitchers carpooling together in a dump truck. Another features pitcher Luis Castillo dressed as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, since his nickname is “La Piedra” (Spanish for “the rock”). A third puts the spotlight on center fielder Julio Rodriguez and his “No Fly Zone” mantra, with a guest appearance by Ichiro.

The marketing team opted to first test the fan reaction to see if the videos were well-received instead of setting specific KPIs, Walsh said, and some signs indicate the reception has been positive. In aggregate across Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and the team website, the three shorts and other associated content, like behind-the-scenes videos, garnered 8.7 million impressions in about two weeks, according to the Mariners.

“I haven’t even seen one negative comment, which is very rare on the social side,” Walsh, who was previously a social media manager for the New York Mets, said.

In comments, many mention the old commercials: “It’s giving OG Mariners marketing,” one Instagram user commented on the Raleigh video. Others applauded the players and marketers: “Showing the league how FIRE our M’s social media team is,” reads a comment on Castillo’s short. And the replies on Rodriguez’s short are chock-full of nostalgia for Ichiro and the old ads: “I always loved the Mariners commercials growing up,” one user wrote.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction to the digital shorts has inspired the team to turn them into traditional 30-second ads, Mertens said. The plan, Walsh added, is to run them on Root Sports, a regional sports network covering teams in the Pacific Northwest.

Behind the plate

The marketing team wrote scripts in advance of the shoots, Walsh said, but the players ended up putting their own twists on the concepts. Pitcher Bryce Miller adjusted his lines “to fit into his own vocabulary,” and it was first baseman Ty France and shortstop J.P. Crawford who came up with the idea for Castillo to do his “signature move,” making a rock sign with his fist, Walsh said. Ichiro made a couple of creative decisions of his own, too, according to Walsh.

“Having those guys involved in it helped elevate the spots and brought another level to the creative that maybe we missed in the initial planning process,” Mertens said.

The laid-back approach led to some outtakes and behind-the-scenes content, which Walsh said was just as important as the main videos for showcasing the personalities of the players, a focal point for the Mariners organization overall. Ahead of opening day, Catie Griggs, the team’s president of business operations, told us she hopes to engage younger fans in part by showing that the players “are very relatable.”

“One of the major things we’re looking to do is reach the next-gen fan, build that younger demographic of fans, and create Mariners fans,” Walsh said. “That was part of the thinking in the strategic way we rolled [the shorts] out in the few days before the season, and then you have the follow-up of the photos, and imagery, and the behind-the-scenes. You’re cranking out that content for fans that are always looking for more.”