Google Cloud was in need to lift awareness as the tech partner to help solve businesses' biggest innovation challenges.

The partnership with MLB was a great opportunity to showcase this, as Google Cloud's tech applications and data played a huge role in baseball’s resurgence last year, helping inform MLB to make rule changes that made the game faster, more exciting, and more engaging for fans.

The objective was to showcase Google Cloud and MLB's partnership, and how Google Cloud technology has impacted the game for the better.

Baseball has always been called ""the game of numbers,"" but for baseball fans game stats are a lot more than just numbers. They represent the actions, passions, rivalries, and stories behind the plays. As data-driven rule changes were adopted to modernize and revitalize the sport, with “It’s A Whole New Ballgame” we put data at the forefront and showed the role it plays in elevating all aspects of the game.

Borrowing from another tradition in baseball culture — the use of music, From “Take me out to the ballgame” to epic walk-up and entrance songs — we then married segments of Statcast game data with the perfect track, helping people reconnect with baseball itself.

The primary target audience of the campaign is Enterprise CxOs/BDMs. Of our audience 74% are baseball fans (48% identify as a casual MLB fan; 26% identify as an avid fan).

Through the marketing partnership, we have access to a number of assets and media that enable us to drive key metrics for Google Cloud.

We are focused on an always-on approach throughout the season (April-September) and postseason (October-November) with spike moments where we over-index on impressions during the All Star Game (July), Playoffs (October), and World Series (late Oct/early Nov) across broadcast, digital, in-stadium, experiential, social, and more.

The Google Cloud team had 5 weeks to conceptualize, develop, and produce a national campaign across a 360 creative campaign to launch on All-Star weekend (broadcast, digital, social, etc.) as well as an experiential activation at Google Cloud Next 2023.

The introduction of the Pitch Clock led to reduced game times, averaging 2 hours and 39 minutes per game (down by 24 minutes compared to the 2022 season)

Viewability increased by 29% YoY overall

Game attendance ballooned to over 70M total for the first time since the 2017 season (~72M attendance)

The :10s video assets had a high viewability rate at 66%, highest overall VCR at 87% & across devices it was a top VCR performer this year

3% lift in perception of Google Cloud as an innovative brand

4% lift in association of Google Cloud and Statcast

4.7% lift in perception of Google Cloud as a partner in digital transformation