Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. There’s nothing like the dopamine we get from reliving our fondest childhood memories, especially ones we had completely forgotten about. This experiment was designed to tap into that feeling for an entire generation of South Florida sports fans.
THE HYPOTHESIS
We wanted to pressure test private group chats as a distribution method for interactive ideas. If the concept is targeted enough, can it reach a mass audience without ever being posted online?
THE CONCEPT
The SoFla Ball Knowledge Test. A game designed to test how many obscure South Florida athletes you could name by photo alone. 150 total players. 5 lives or skips.
This idea was rooted in the “ball knowledge epidemic”, a trend that turned how well a person can remember the name of random athletes from the past into cultural currency online.
Outside of social media, group chats are the primary venue where ball knowledge is put on display. So we set out to use group chats and DMs as an ecosystem for spreading the game around South Florida.
DEVELOPMENT
The first step was to define the parameters for the players we’d be pulling. Between 1997 and 2013, South Florida sports teams brought home 5 major championships. These are some of the most cherished memories for kids growing up in SoFla during that time.
So we used those years as our anchor points, and sourced 150 athletes who played for the Marlins, Dolphins, Panthers and Heat in that span of time.
From there, we scrape images from Getty and built a database of former pros who would tickle that sweet spot in the brains of our players. Then we manually went through the entire set and selected the top 150.
THE PRIZE
All great games need a great prize. And since this one was designed to hit on that local energy, we offered a gift card from South Florida’s most iconic restaurant, Flanigans, to the first person to correctly guess all 150 players. We didn’t think anyone would actually get it. So we set the gift card amount to $1500. Unfortunately, we were wrong.
DEPLOYMENT
Once the game was ready to go, the RunThis team simply shared the link in our various group chats and let our friends do the rest. Within hours, hundreds of people from across South Florida were playing the game.
We also DM’d it to key South Florida figures on Instagram, knowing that they would share it in their group chats as well. Through Executive Producer Mike Ryan, we were able to get the link shared in the group chat for The Dan LeBatard Show, an iconic radio show that started in South Florida and went on to become a national powerhouse.
THE WINNER
We thought there was no way that anyone would be able to name all 150 athletes’ names correctly. We were wrong. A friend of a friend was so eager to unlock the $1500 Flanigans gift card that he spent 8 hours straight continuously guessing athletes and remembering the ones he got wrong. 24 sessions later, he got a perfect 150 out of 150. When we didn’t respond to him right away, he started a RunThis smear campaign in the group chat.
In the end, we agreed to terms. The player would receive a $150 Flanigans gift card once a month for the next 10 months. As you can see in the content below, he has definitely been putting that money to good use.
THE RESULTS
In the end, what started in a couple of group chats made its way to over 1,200 unique players.
Results
THE TAKEAWAY
- Fandom is a media channel. The game was designed to resonate with a very specific person. Once it did, they didn’t just engage with it, they pushed it out to those they knew would also enjoy it.
- Group chats turned distribution into competition. The link came from a friend, which meant every share came with a built-in challenge: “I know more random athletes than you do.”
- Never underestimate the audience. We didn’t think anyone had enough time or energy to get all 150 correct and win the $1500 Flanigan’s gift card. Big mistake lol.
