Launch a fully immersive marketing campaign to introduce and establish Daily Number (DN), a new daily fantasy sports product through mobile and web-based apps.
Richard Sherman
Solution
In order to establish Daily Number in a very competitive Daily Fantasy Sports Arena, Zaki Rose turned to our frequent collaborator, Richard Sherman to partner with Daily Number and created a multi-phase, full service marketing campaign designed to drive consumer awareness around the brand. ZR conceptualized and produced multi-part video campaigns, designed a brand new marketing website, designed print advertising material, created digital marketing assets and in-app content, and worked in-line with Daily Number’s PR agency through the 2018-19 NFL Season.
When visualizing the creative potential around this campaign, our challenge was to create something that would span the NFL season and draw engagement to the brand through a completely out of the box delivery. We delivered on those goals by creating a unique campaign featuring Richard Sherman as the “King of Talking Smack” and his 9 alternative personalities. It began with traveling to Richard’s new place of residence in San Francisco with his new team the San Francisco 49ers. With only 2 hours of availability our production team kicked into high gear as we captured Richard on 3 different sets with 12 wardrobe changes. Our team of production designers, wardrobe, makeup artist, lighting, cameras, producers, directors and more worked non-stop the moment they landed on set.
“Zaki Rose is bad ass. No other way to describe it. This might read like any other testimonial ever written, but in this case it’s 100% fact. If I was running onto the field for a game winning drive, there’s no team I’d rather be in the huddle with.”
– Tom McAuley, CEO of Daily Number
The end product surpassed Richard’s and Daily Number’s expectations. ZR produced the videos and delivered a variety of social cut downs featuring the 9 different personalities for the campaign launch. After the videos were prepared for launch, we introduced our design and development team and re-imagined what the brand looks like leveraging new marketing assets based around Richard Sherman and his multiple personalities. Our team designed and developed a new marketing splash page for the client with a primary focus on driving consumers to download the app.
Daily Number went live with the campaign when Richard posted the first video to his social profiles. The reaction was clear, we had something special. Working with our PR team, the Daily Number campaign launch was featured on Forbes, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports and more. We oversaw and executed a Reddit AMA ft. Richard Sherman and leveraged his social following of more than 4M+ that exceeded the clients goals.
Floyd Mayweather
Opportunity
Re-imagine the Daily Number brand launching a new marketing website and app. Bringing together the King of boxing, Floyd Mayweather and Daily number to create a viral marketing campaign that will drive app downloads and cement a lasting relationship between the two brands.
Solution
As Daily Number’s agency of record, Zaki Rose was tasked with redefining and reimagining the brand and to focus on the brand’s strategy on new consumers. Zaki Rose approached this opportunity with a 360 degree lens influencing strategy, video production, web design and development, app design and development, social, PR and merchandise.
Strategy
When looking at Daily Number’s position in the Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) marketplace and what an impactful campaign would look like, we had to consider the DFS landscape, the federal regulations around online gambling and the appetite for athlete endorsements. After months of testing and conceptualizing, we agreed our strategy would be led by a major celebrity athlete endorsement. Once that decision was made, we began searching for someone who is as brash and unapologetic as the brand itself. Through our relationships in the sports and entertainment industries, we had our crosshairs set on Floyd Mayweather and within one month we secured his endorsement, a shoot date in Los Angeles and began conceptualizing the strategy around this campaign.
Concept
When looking at Floyd Mayweather’s career and social reach, we were convinced that this campaign must be out of the box and create “water cooler conversation”. Working with Daily Number’s CEO, we conceptualized 2 separate marketing campaigns that would be distributed over the span of 9 months. Each campaign would influence major benchmarks for the company including a brand identity, new gameplay features, experience in-app and the end goal of a brand new Daily Number app.
Campaign – 1st Phase
The strategic approach of the first campaign would be to announce Floyd Mayweather’s partnership all while launching a new brand identity on the marketing side and new in-app features on the product side. What better way to make such announcement then make it look like a fight announcement. After getting approvals from Floyd’s management team, we wrote what would be a suggested fight announcement and broke it out in two releases. The first being a tease and the second being the reveal. The question then arose, “But how do we really sell it!?”, enter Manny Pacquiao. Daily Number’s strategic partnerships team secured what would eventually be a social response from Manny to our tease video on Floyd’s Instagram Page. While the partnerships were being negotiated, we were hard at work the moment we returned from LA after shooting with Floyd. We scaled our design & development team and began brand study exercises and fast followed into building a brand new website with profile recognition and desktop gameplay. In a 2 month window we built a brand new website, designed new in-app features that enhances the consumers gameplay, revamped DN’s social profiles, collaborated and prepared a new PR team for launch and oversaw the creation and implementation of new merchandise.
Video Production
When planning for a shoot at this scale and a celebrity the size of Floyd Mayweather, you need to consider more than what’s happening in front of the camera. There must be a first class and streamlined experience the moment his team walks onto the set. They must feel comfortable with the space and trust your vision before Floyd is prepared to walk into the building, let alone saying action.
Building our teams in LA and flying our team from Seattle was par for the course. Nothing challenging about traveling when you’ve done it as much as we have. The true challenge was in executing on the logistics of the creative vision. 7 different sets in a space holding up to 50 people that would include crew, celebrity and his team, the client and their respective teams. We like to say, “It’s all in the pre-production” and it really was for this shoot. Our director, producers and production coordinator tackled the shoot with precision and great efficiency. On shoot day everyone from our lighting department, production designers, coordinators, audio, camera department, wardrobe, actors, crafty services and more masterfully executed their roles and made a long day go by with relative ease.
The gift and the curse of video production is how you value the importance of time and how a team of individuals can move succinctly to deliver on so many goals. The content captured will change the trajectory of a company, impact an industry and the lives of those connected to those involved. We take this impact seriously but always reiterate, if you aren’t having fun, you aren’t doing it the right way.
Merchandise
What’s a great way to wrap a marketing campaign with someone like Floyd Mayweather? Merchandise! We were tasked to collaborate with “Fresh Brewed Tees”, a merchandise manufacturer and distributor. We oversaw design, go to market strategies and contesting featuring the newly designed merchandise.
