Los Angeles Chargers 2023 Anime Schedule Release
The 6th Annual Awards
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
The Chargers anime schedule release video leverages pop culture by blending NFL lore with anime. This fully in-house project enabled the engagement of a broader audience, ultimately enhancing the team’s visibility and acclaim for our use of culture and comedy.
How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?
On what is a massive day in the NFL with teams competing for eyeballs, we created a spectacle by design. We combined two popular cultural movements, football and anime in a way that would be incredibly engaging. We knew fans would need and want to watch multiple times to uncover the dozens of innuendos and easter eggs. We doubled down on engagement by integrating both NFL and anime references for fans to speculate, debate and call out. Using popular anime characters as inspiration, we layered in popular personalities like Mina Kimes, Pat McAfee and Bill Belichick to boost reach and engagement even further. Treating it like a game, fans raced to identify and share all the hidden cultural references it originated from. This allowed the conversation to carry over beyond social platforms to network television, reddit threads, YouTube breakdown videos and friendly debates. There’s no such thing as “creating a viral video” but we were so intentional with our process that we did just that.
Objective
Schedule release is an important moment in the NFL, where every team tries to find a unique way to share their opponents for the season. Our 2023 Anime Schedule Release was an opportunity for the Chargers to distinguish ourselves from the other 31 teams sharing content with the same message. Due to popular demand, we aimed to recreate the style and virality of our 2022 schedule release while infusing a new, unique approach. We saw it as an opportunity to maximize viewership by layering in jokes with NFL and anime references specific for each team. Increasing engagement and ticket sales is always our first priority when it comes to schedule release. However, we created this video with the intention of capturing interest from not only our fans but every fan base across the NFL and avid anime fans. Through deep cut references we intentionally took digs at other teams to spark conversations and shares amongst our opponents.
Strategy & Execution
The 2023 Chargers Schedule Release represents an ever growing overlap between sports and other cultures, in this case anime. We knew we wanted to pull cultural references from the NFL, famous anime, and recent U.S. pop culture moments and celebrities. We assembled a “writer’s room” including members of our social and video teams to meet and develop ideas for easter eggs. The anime itself was drawn completely in-house by one of our video producers and we worked together to weave together a one-of-a-kind story. Our callouts ranged from niche NFL/anime connections to more well-known references that most viewers could understand. We could not simply rely on our recollection of notable moments in the past NFL season or our favorite anime episodes. Rather, we underwent extensive research in order to make the video as detailed, accurate, and engaging as possible. This video was engagement focused— intentionally made to pause, analyze and share due to its breath and depth.
Organizations
- Los Angeles Chargers
Links
Credits
David Bretto
Director, Creative Video
Los Angeles Chargers
Tyler Pino
Senior Director, Production
Los Angeles Chargers
Andrew Cordova
Lead Producer, Post Production and Animation
Los Angeles Chargers
Megan Julian
Director, Social Media and Content Performance
Los Angeles Chargers
Allie Raymond
Senior Manager, Social Media and Content Performance
Los Angeles Chargers
Lorren Walker
Programming Manager, Organic Social Media
Los Angeles Chargers
Brian Raab
Producer/Editor, Features and Branded Content
Los Angeles Chargers
Luke Kohli
Producer/Editor, Creative Branding
Los Angeles Chargers
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Join us for the 6th Annual Hashtag Sports Awards™ on the evening of June 6, 2024 as we celebrate finalists and reveal the winners of this year's awards live during the show.
