Charlotte Hornets Celebrate 30th Anniversary with an Incredible Mobile Campaign Featuring Their Top 10 Players

In celebration of their 30th anniversary, the Charlotte Hornets wanted to do something special.

And special they did.

Before their season started, the team asked their fans to vote on who they thought were their top 10 players in franchise history. They then turned to their digital platforms to reveal the results. Each player reveal was carefully crafted and delivered across the team’s digital platforms but nowhere was that more evident that on mobile.

Using the Rover platform, the Hornets announced the 10 Buzz City players one-at-a-time through an incredibly well-executed piece of mobile campaign. The team delivered two players per day, for a 5-day period, starting at #10, and ending with #1.

As the video above shows, the Hornets enhanced the level of suspense by first launching a screen that required fans to tap in order to reveal the player.

The resulting screen not only presented fans with the name of the player, but also with detailed player info, a customized video, and a photo gallery of the player. All of which immediately sent each fan down memory lane.

The 10 campaigns collectively resulted in an increase in app open rates and session time.

In speaking about the campaign with Nicole Blackman, the Hornets’ Manager of Mobile Strategy, she explained that:

“Rover’s platform allowed us to creatively reveal our 30th Anniversary team and drive app engagement on days that we may not have typically seen high engagement. We saw a 15% boost from our average in daily active users over the course of the campaign.”

While it’s clear that fan engagement was their number one priority for the campaign, another advantage to the templated experiences was the clear call-to-action at its conclusion.

The Hornets included a deep link to a Ticketmaster page where fans could buy tickets for their Classic Night, where the members of the 30th anniversary team will be in attendance. A win-win!