On a cool day in early November the Great Falls White Sox sat down with Banik to discuss a new “secret project.” In hushed tones we were sworn to secrecy beyond the grave. When we’d finished they divulged the news: the team was changing its name—to the Voyagers. “Voyagers,” we replied, rolling the word around on our tongues, picturing silhouettes of Lewis and Clark pointing westward. “Yeah, we can see that….”
Then they showed us the logo.
To use the first of a million bad baseball puns, the Voyagers’ mark came totally out of left field. But it was brilliant—the name referred to a specific, unique bit of history which took place right here at the ball park, was unlike anything else in professional baseball and was fun, fun, fun. After the shock of the new began to wear off, we went to work.
The direction was clear: conspiracy theories, word of mouth and fragmentary bits of information would be the vehicles for our message. We created wemakecontact.com, a fictitious web site breaking the blockbuster news that UFOs had been spotted over Great Falls. Footage and audio recordings of the sightings appeared on TV and radio. Mysterious green billboards bearing a date and web address sprouted up across town. The footage began to appear on YouTube, and the word was soon out.
The blogosphere quickly picked up the news and it began to spiral virally out of our hands—just as we’d hoped. The local blog greaterfalls.com began wondering aloud what it all meant, and soon became a clearinghouse for every conceivable theory. Was it a cellular company, a major motion picture, a restaurant, a traveling Christian revival show? New information began to appear on wemakecontact.com—strange audio signals bearing coded messages which in turn revealed images, times and coordinates for…something. People began decoding these messages and posting them to their blogs as quickly as we could create them.
One local blogger, Ron Grimshaw, not only managed to crack all the messages, but actually visited the sites of the mysterious GPS coordinates they pointed to. Ron was so dialed in that he even correctly guessed that wemakecontact.com's author, known only as "Roy," was actually named for Roy Neary, Richard Dreyfuss' character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We're not sure, but by the time the Voyagers' name was revealed, Ron may have been creating mashed potato sculptures on his kitchen table.
P.S. For his efforts, Ron Grimshaw got a free Voyagers hat.
One more piece of the puzzle was planned. In the days leading up to the reveal, high school kids were spotted wearing “We Make Contact” t-shirts at school. We didn't tell them what the shirts meant, only that something good was coming. The buzz soon spread through the schools like wildfire. Now everywhere in the community, all signs pointed to something happening on Tuesday, January 15th.
That “something” was a massive press conference announcing the new team name, to be held at an “undisclosed location” in an aircraft hangar on the hill. In the hands of the baseball club and a dedicated legion of volunteers and civic leaders, the hangar was transformed into Area 51—and under a cloak of secrecy members of the press were ushered in to witness the unveiling. We distributed press kits made from cryptically labeled film canisters, and the press was led into the darkened hangar past a group of chanting “protesters” demanding to know the truth about the UFOs. An ominous newsreel began to play in the darkness, describing the strange sightings and their possible meaning, after which Club president Vinney Purpura took the stage to announce the new name. A sleek black Escalade then rolled into the hangar and uniformed ball players emerged to applause from the crowd.
Was it a success? The event landed on the front page of the next morning’s Great Falls Tribune, with a favorable article on Page 1 of the sports section—and a positive piece on the editorial page the following day. All three TV network newscasts covered the event, using the UFO footage we’d shot. The story appeared on news sites of other cities in the Pioneer League. The blog site greaterfalls.com reported that its web traffic went through the roof during the campaign. Wemakecontact.com, the conspiracy site we’d created to look poorly designed, filled with bad spelling and weird information, received more than 30,000 unique page views by the day of the press conference—half the population of Great Falls.
How’d we pull it off? By doing as much as we could ourselves. In addition to billboard and newspaper ads, we produced four 30-second TV spots entirely in-house. The spots were intended to look like real footage shot by real people, so the concept and execution matched perfectly. We produced the press kits in-house as well, including a custom DVD containing the entire multimedia presentation shown at the press conference, a printed piece telling the story behind the name and a USB jump drive containing press releases, team logos, and photographs. These efforts all helped us to meet tight deadlines and maintain the “secrecy” of the campaign.
A lot of people donated tons of free time to make this project succeed, and we weren’t most of them. The members of the Great Falls Baseball Club, team personnel, past and current board members, business leaders, students and assorted family and friends all contributed their time and expertise. The Voyagers adopted their new name so that Great Falls could take pride in something of its own, and the community responded in a big, big way. Everyone who took part was truly part of the team, and we’re just glad we got to help swing the bat.
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To see the teaser portion of the campaign, click here. To see the reveal portion of the campaign, click here. To read the Banik press release, click here. To read the official Great Falls Voyagers news release, click here. To see a slideshow of part of the press conference, click here. To see the original YouTube video clips, click here. |
