While Open­ing Day 2015 did­n’t turn out the way Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers fans want­ed, it did mark the cul­mi­na­tion of months of work to keep those fans engaged despite plen­ty of win­ter dis­trac­tions, includ­ing – but cer­tain­ly not lim­it­ed to – the Green Bay Pack­ers and even the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin men’s bas­ket­ball team.

Each MLB team must keep fans engaged when base­ball and every­thing that comes with it – peanuts, crack­er­jacks and “Take Me Out to the Ball­game,” includ­ed – are not front of mind.

Here’s a look at how Milwaukee’s MLB fran­chise in par­tic­u­lar keeps fans engaged through­out the off­sea­son and builds excite­ment for Open­ing Day.

The Brew Crew

Open­ing Day is “treat­ed like a hol­i­day” in Mil­wau­kee, accord­ing to the Brew­ers, when 45,000+ fans return to Miller Park. The team itself has near­ly 1 mil­lion Face­book fans, 263,000 Twit­ter fol­low­ers and 118,000 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram and the hash­tag #Brew­er­sOpen­er was trend­ing on April 6 lead­ing up to the team’s 10–0 loss to the Col­orado Rock­ies. (But the sea­son is young, right?)

#Brew­er­sOpen­er is still trend­ing! Way to go, Brew­ers fans! — Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers (@Brewers) April 6, 2015

The Offseason

The Brew­ers “try to be year-round rel­e­vant and [keep] the Brew­ers top of mind, whether we’re in spring train­ing or the height of sea­son, in the pen­nant race or the dol­drums of win­ter,” accord­ing to Caitlin Moy­er, direc­tor of new media.

In fact, she said the off­sea­son is some­times busier for her team than the reg­u­lar sea­son.

“In the sea­son, there’s the cadence of the line­up, ‘here’s what hap­pened with the game’…and any oth­er ini­tia­tives going on…but in the off­sea­son, we’re kind of being cre­ative, tak­ing advan­tage of things that pop up,” she said.

Holiday Digital Content

The Brew­ers’ con­stant cre­ativ­i­ty often includes con­tent ties to hol­i­days, like a Hal­loween con­test on Insta­gram in which the team asked fans to share their Brew­ers pump­kin designs, as well as league-wide Christ­mas-relat­ed effort in which one play­er – last year, it was pitch­er Kyle Lohse – was select­ed as the “Secret Brew­er,” which was sort of like a Secret San­ta, and fans were able to enter to win a prize from him.

In addi­tion, like many teams, Mil­wau­kee had Brew­ers-spe­cif­ic Valentine’s Day e‑cards in Feb­ru­ary.

But the dig­i­tal con­tent cer­tain­ly doesn’t end there.

#BrewersSnowballFight

#Brew­ersS­now­ball­Fight In the mid­dle of win­ter, the team decid­ed to have a good old-fash­ioned snow­ball fight with a few of its pitch­ers. In fact, Lohse was the first to fire, launch­ing an attack on team­mate and fel­low pitch­er Will Smith and kick­ing off the #Brew­ersS­now­ball­Fight on Twit­ter. From there, the team asked fans to share and tag their friends.

“We had [the pitch­ers] throw [snow­balls] at Plex­i­glas and used a GoPro, so it was like the snow­ball explod­ing on the screen and we launched a vir­tu­al snow­ball fight with that footage to send to friends,” Moy­er said. “That was a way to tie into win­ter and there were three pitch­ers that par­tic­i­pat­ed in that, so you could get hit by a pitch­er, so that was a fun one.”

The effort gen­er­at­ed con­tent on both Vine and Insta­gram. A video with the three pitch­ers on the lat­ter plat­form gen­er­at­ed about 2,400 likes.

Hank the Ballpark Pup

There are also some moments that can’t be planned per se, like when Hank the Ball­park Pup, one of the team’s unof­fi­cial mas­cots, received the Dog of the Year award in Feb­ru­ary at the CW Network’s World Dog Awards from none oth­er than Paris Hilton. Per the Brew­ers, the award was pre­sent­ed to the canine “who made the biggest impact on pop cul­ture in 2014.”

Hank, who was a stray dog the team found dur­ing Spring Train­ing in Ari­zona in 2014, has since been adopt­ed by the Brew­ers’ gen­er­al coun­sel and con­tin­ues to make appear­ances at the ball­park and at adop­tion events. The team even dressed him up as Han­ken­stein for Hal­loween and asked fans to share cos­tume and pump­kin images on Twit­ter and Insta­gram with the hash­tag #Bewitched. They also dressed him as San­ta Hank for a vis­it to the Wis­con­sin Humane Soci­ety, which inspired con­tent on Twitter/Vine, Insta­gram and the blog, as well as even some GIFs.

“He’s a con­stant pres­ence. We have a lot of fans, includ­ing casu­al fans who like us because of the work we’ve been doing and just like dogs, and then there are the diehard base­ball fans, who say, ‘Enough of the dog, let’s talk about base­ball,’” Moy­er said. “It’s a del­i­cate bal­ance, but it’s a huge con­tent dri­ver for us.”

Bernie Brewer

The con­cept of the Brew­ers’ offi­cial mas­cot, Bernie Brew­er, emerged in 1970 when a 69-year-old fan sat on the score­board and vowed not to come down until at least 40,000 fans attend­ed a sin­gle game. By 1973, the char­ac­ter of Bernie Brew­er he inspired had his own beer bar­rel chalet in the sta­di­um and he slid down into a beer stein after each Brew­ers home run and vic­to­ry.

With 46,000 fol­low­ers today, Moy­ers said @Bernie_Brewer is the “#1 most fol­lowed mas­cot in the MLB.” He offers oth­er ben­e­fits, too.

“Bernie is a good way for us to have a dif­fer­ent voice to our fans…so if we lose 9 to 2 or some­thing, if the Brew­ers account said, ‘Brew­ers lose 9 to 2, we’ll get it tomor­row,’ fans [would think it was obnoxious]…but if Bernie Brew­er says it, that’s what you expect. He’s the #1 fan. He’s always opti­mistic.”

Spring Training

Once Spring Train­ing kicks off, how­ev­er, the team has far more options to feed the insa­tiable con­tent machine.

“We go to spring train­ing in Feb­ru­ary and the con­tent flows from there. There’s tons and tons of con­tent, like the green grass and the sound of the bat is huge for video,” Moy­er said. “Any­thing that con­veys that base­ball is com­ing, it’s close.”

Pho­to Day This year, that visu­al con­tent includ­ed Pho­to Day at Spring Train­ing, which result­ed in a gallery of images with play­er auto­graphs. Per a blog post, the team used Twit­ter Mir­ror, an app that “trans­forms an ordi­nary tablet into a spe­cial self­ie sta­tion.” #WillMeetsWill And, in March, the team decid­ed to have a lit­tle fun with its pitch­er Smith by launch­ing the #WillMeetsWill cam­paign.

“Join in on Twit­ter and Insta­gram and we’ll see if we can orga­nize our efforts and get Will Smith out to Miller Park this sum­mer to meet his name­sake,” a blog post says.

The Brew­ers have since cre­at­ed a video in which the Brew­ers’ Smith wrote a let­ter to the actor and invit­ed him to Mil­wau­kee. The Brew­ers have also asked his team­mates why the Smiths should meet and even tweet­ed to the actor’s wife, Jada.

.@jadapsmith Do you think you could help make this hap­pen? http://t.co/qxs4yQ0KQZ #WillMeetsWill pic.twitter.com/RDGZRexQBQ — Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers (@Brewers) March 28, 2015

“We got [pitch­er] Smith last year and at first, he said, ‘I don’t like the asso­ci­a­tion with Will Smith,’ but, get­ting to know him more, he has a fun per­son­al­i­ty, so we did a music video of Will Smith songs last year…and then a minor league team had Fresh Prince Jer­sey Night,” Moy­er said. “This year, we said our goal is to get you guys to meet each other…it kind of went viral, we had a lot of nation­al media pick up on it, but we haven’t heard any­thing from [the actor] Smith…it’s more of a fun thing in spring train­ing. Once it switch­es over to real games, we try to be more seri­ous, but we’re hop­ing through the pow­er of social, it will hap­pen.”

Instagraphs

And then there’s Insta­graphs, an effort on Twit­ter and Insta­gram in which the Brew­ers asked a num­ber of play­ers at Spring Train­ing to fill out and sign cards with ques­tions and they gave fans an oppor­tu­ni­ty to win the cards by retweet­ing the post, like this card from pitch­er Michael Blazek.

Countdown to Opening Day

Start­ing in Jan­u­ary, the team relaunched its Count­down to Open­ing Day effort, in which it asks fans to sub­mit “a cre­ative pic­ture dis­play­ing the num­ber of days until April 6” with the hash­tag #SeeUApril6 each day for 90 days. Every day, the team post­ed its favorite sub­mis­sion from the day pri­or and the fans who sub­mit­ted each select­ed entry received prizes.

The first year, the team took the pic­tures itself of “things in the ballpark…maybe a seat num­ber or we spelled it out in peanut shells or it was relat­ed to hol­i­days like Valentine’s Day with rose petals…The next year, we decid­ed to crowd­source the entire thing,” Moy­er said. “This year, again, we had so much traction…we did it again.”

In fact, accord­ing to a press release, for the 2014 sea­son, there were over 8,000 tweets and 1,400 Instra­gram posts using the hash­tag #SeeUMarch31 and the team’s Face­book posts drew over 6 mil­lion impres­sions and over 200,000 post-clicks.

“The cam­paign took on a life of its own to the point where when the 2014 sea­son end­ed, fans began using a #SeeUApril6 hash­tag [for Open­ing Day 2015] and send­ing in pho­to sub­mis­sions with­out any prompt­ing from us,” the release says.

Opening Day

#OpeningDay Excuses

To get ready for Open­ing Day itself, the team had play­ers write hand­writ­ten excuse notes for par­ents, boss­es, coach­es, teach­ers and sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, which fans can then share on Twit­ter or Face­book.

The notes include excus­es like, “it is impor­tant to [her/his] men­tal health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” and, “I specif­i­cal­ly asked [her/him] to come to my game on Mon­day and, peo­ple-pleas­er that [she/he] is, [she/he] did not want to let me down,” from play­ers Lohse and Smith, as well as pitch­ers Mike Fiers and Matt Garza and sec­ond base­man Scoot­er Gen­nett.

League-Wide Content

Lead­ing up to Open­ing Day, the team has used Brew­ers-spe­cif­ic hash­tags like #SeeUApril6, #One­Day­Clos­er and #Cac­tusCrew. Moy­er said the MLB’s #Base­ball­Be­gins hash­tag is also pop­u­lar, but, for the most part, the team uses its own hash­tags.

But there is a bit of inter­play among MLB teams when it comes to con­tent ideas.

“On the field, we’re com­pet­ing, but, off the field, we’re not,” Moy­er said. “We’re not going to con­vert a Cubs fan into Brew­ers fans, but what works in one mar­ket can be tweaked. If there’s a cool pro­mo­tion, we can say, ‘Hey, what would you do again?’ That sort of thing. It’s very open and very shar­ing, so we’re very for­tu­nate.”

In fact, Moy­er said many teams are repli­cat­ing the Brew­ers’ count­down idea, while the Brew­ers’ Stitch N’ Pitch Night is a con­cept that start­ed in Seat­tle.

New Platforms

The team will also expand to new plat­forms this sea­son.

In Feb­ru­ary, the team joined Snapchat. Per a blog post, the team will use Snapchat for “exclu­sive con­tent, con­tests and games,” as well as sur­pris­es.

“We joined Snapchat just before spring train­ing start­ed. Some clubs joined last year, but I was a lit­tle leery. I want­ed to sit back and see what oth­er clubs do,” Moy­er said. “But it became apparent…[Snapchat] is a fun plat­form and can real­ly be cre­ative and flex­i­ble.”

This includes giv­ing fans an inside look into what it’s like to be at a game, like the sights and sounds or try­ing to make their mouths water by show­cas­ing a hot dog or spe­cial­ty food, as well as shar­ing behind the scenes glimpses of the team, Moy­er said.

“We’re get­ting to use a lot of emo­jis and draw on screen,” she adds.

And, in terms of oth­er pop­u­lar apps, Moy­er said, “I can see us on Periscope soon.”

Brewers on Tap Podcast

The team also launched a pod­cast with broad­cast­er Jeff Lev­er­ing in March. Moy­er said the pod­cast will broad­cast through­out the sea­son, although less fre­quent­ly in the off­sea­son.

Social Media Night

Last Sep­tem­ber – before the 2014 sea­son was even over – the Brew­ers host­ed Social Media Night, in which they asked fans to vote for their favorite play­er to fol­low on Twit­ter using des­ig­nat­ed hash­tags. The Brew­er select­ed as the Most Valu­able Tweet­er appeared at a pre-game tweet-up with fans and helped design a T‑shirt with the #Brew­er­sTeam­Selfie, which cen­ter field­er Car­los Gomez – the MVT – took with his team­mates on Team Pho­to Day, and which was giv­en to fans who attend­ed.

Per a blog post, more than 250 fans were on hand for Social Media Night.