BRAND STRATEGY

Morning Brew Inc, Photos: MLB

When the Boston Red Sox first opened up preregistration for the team’s Aug. 31 Heated Rivalry theme game, based on the hit romance novel-turned-HBO Max show, more than 16,000 people got on the list. Even so, Travis Pollio, senior director of ticket strategy and promotions, wasn’t sure if initial interest would actually translate into ticket sales.

But when tickets went live to the general public on April 30, “we were selling literally hundreds to thousands in minutes,” he told Marketing Brew. VIP tickets that came with themed jerseys and hats, of which the team offered a few thousand, were gone in seven minutes, he said, and the team sold over 12,000 tickets in two days. By mid-May, the game was sold out entirely.

Across the country that same month, the Seattle Mariners launched a VIP package including special jackets and book sleeves for the team’s Fourth Wing theme night, based off of the best-selling fantasy series, and the 500 available tickets sold out in under two hours, according to Alexandra Layman, senior manager of group events. By July 9, the team had sold 9,400 tickets.

“Theme nights have definitely been a success for us in terms of how our clubs are able to…leverage them from a fan-engagement standpoint, as well as a ticket-sales standpoint,” MLB CMO Uzma Rawn Dowler said. “We have some fun with it, too.”

Theme games are nothing new for the league, but for many teams, the nature and scope of them have changed. The Red Sox, which hosted their first-ever theme night in 2013, will put on about 60 to 65 theme games this season, which have become an increasingly important contributor to ticket sales, Pollio said.

They’re largely designed for people who are not already baseball die-hards, meant to “bring new fans into the ecosystem, and into our ballparks, that might not traditionally think to go to a baseball game,” Rawn Dowler said.

Some of the themes, like Toy Story 5 and Hello Kitty games, reflect MLB’s recent focus on younger generations, while others, like nights for Fourth Wing and Heated Rivalry, indicate baseball’s efforts to cement more women fans. But with each team playing 162 regular-season games per season, there’s something for just about everyone, from fans of the papacy to the uninitiated.

Continue reading here.—AM

      

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SPORTS MARKETING

AT&T

As a WNBA sponsor since 2019 and an NBA partner for decades, AT&T knows a thing or two about All-Star Weekends.

For one, not all of them are the same, especially in the WNBA, where the star power has been getting bigger.

In the W, which is hosting its All-Star Game at Chicago’s United Center on July 25, brand activations used to be few and far between, even as recently as four years ago, when the event last took place in Chicago, according to Sabina Ahmed, assistant VP of sponsorships and experiential at AT&T.

“It’s kind of a fun thing to look back and think about what that experience looked like—a much smaller footprint overall,” Ahmed told Marketing Brew. Since then, there’s been “tremendous growth, not only for the number of brands that are participating, but each brand has really grown [to the] next level in terms of the activations they’re doing.”

To “continue that momentum,” AT&T, the title partner of WNBA All-Star, is activating with tech integrations, athlete partnerships, social content, fan experiences inside and out of the United Center, community engagement programs, and more for the W’s 30th anniversary, Ahmed said. We spoke to her about AT&T’s strategy around the tournament.

Read more here.—AM

      

BRAND STRATEGY

Morning Brew

If you’re targeting Gen Z, it’s best not to sugarcoat a brand message.

The group is “really receptive to how brands communicate to them,” Tamika Young, Hinge’s chief marketing and communications officer, told us. “They can spot a mile away if something feels inauthentic.”

That insight helped shape Hinge’s “It’s Funny We Met on Hinge” brand platform, which chronicles the stories of real-life couples who met on the platform. The third iteration, “Can’t Believe we Met on Hinge,” rolled out this May and features couples reflecting on how they felt about online dating before meeting their partner.

Authenticity is also central to the brand’s IRL efforts, One More Hour, in which Hinge funds Gen Z-founded social and community groups to support more in-person connection, romantic or not.

Young, who stepped into the CMCO role at the end of last year, recently sat down with Marketing Brew to tell us about the brand’s honesty-first approach and its efforts to support more ways for Gen Z to connect.

See more from our conversation here.—KS

      

Sponsored By Iterable

From AI copilot to coworker. We sat down with Iterable’s CTO, Samya DasSarma, to outline the shift to agentic workflows, and why marketers who understand the logic behind their tools will get more out of AI than the ones chasing every new feature. Read the full conversation here.

EVENTS

Morning Brew Inc.

Turns out your content has a new audience, and it doesn’t blink. Join Marketing Brew and Webflow on July 29 to learn how AI agents, LLMs, and answer engines evaluate your content—and what Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) actually looks like when the robots show up first.

french press

Morning Brew

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Timing is everything: An analysis of the best times to post on LinkedIn.

SEO support: A list of AI-powered SEO tools that small businesses can utilize.

Up to date: Guidance from Pinterest on the importance of catalog updates.

Jobs

Real jobs shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

• VP, Marketing at Nuuvia
• Head of Digital Marketing at Neuberger
• Director, Integrated & Content Marketing at Unity
• Product Commercialization Director at Deluxe
• Manager, Brand Marketing, Sports at Versant Media

WISH WE WROTE THIS

Morning Brew

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The New York Times reported on the slew of AI-generated doctors and influencers peddling “wellness” products on social media.
• The Wall Street Journal wrote about AI-generated videos proliferating on TikTok Shop, which are running up against some brands’ rules prohibiting AI-generated affiliate marketing and threatening creators promoting products the old-fashioned way.
• Business Insider spoke to Hershey’s chief growth and marketing officer about how the brand is preparing for Halloween candy season now.