Humorous Parody Celebrates Team History While Creatively Spotlighting The Cardinals Museum & Team Archive
ST. LOUIS, MO (September 15, 2014) –The St. Louis Cardinals will today debut #BirdToTheFuture, an Instagram video series that promises to be a wild and entertaining ride through Cardinals history.
“We hope fans enjoy the daily episodes that we will post every afternoon on Instagram,” said Bill DeWitt III, Cardinals Team President. “#BirdToTheFuture is an entertaining way to celebrate team history, spotlight our great museum collection and rich team archives while also poking fun at ourselves.”
Starring Fredbird, John Rooney, Bill DeWitt, Red Schoendienst, Ozzie Smith, Matt Adams, Lance Lynn, Jason Motte, Sir Adam Wainwright, our broadcast team and an all-star cast from the front office, #BirdToTheFuture promises to share the amazing secret behind the team’s incredible museum collection. The bird-brained story includes a high degree of mascot mischief, good old fashioned Cardinals innovation, and a significant amount of saber-metric science silliness.
Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and free social networking mobile phone application that is rapidly gaining active users (@Cardinals grew by 1,278% in 2013). Originally a purely photo-sharing service, Instagram incorporated video sharing last summer, allowing users to share videos lasting up to 15 seconds.
The Cardinals plan to post several episodes daily prior to 5:00 P.M. CST until the series finale on Thursday September 25th. Fans can learn more about #BirdToTheFuture, see a short movie trailer, view a photo gallery and download a free poster at www.cardinals.com/birdtothefuture.
“Our goal with #BirdToTheFuture is to have some fun while creatively promoting our wonderful new museum in Ballpark Village,” said Ron Watermon, Vice-President of Communications. “#NestFlix is our experimental brand entertainment initiative to try to engage with our fans in innovative ways that take full advantage of the digital technology and social mediums that are transforming how we all connect with each other.”
The Cardinals were one of the first organizations to tell a story episodically using Instagram video when the team began posting episodes of #TheFrontOffice last September. Seeking to generate some buzz with fans by utilizing Instagram in an innovative and pioneering way, the team posted 53 episodes of #TheFrontOffice over a three week period. The Cardinals experienced an 11% increase in followers during the show’s run, as well as receiving positive feedback from fans (50,000+ Likes), and significant media coverage. #WhatTheCardsHave, the team’s second #NestFlix production, was a beak-sync music video that rallied Cardinals Nation during the post season.
The Cardinals have experienced dramatic growth in the team’s social media platforms in recent years. In May of 2010, when the team used Twitter to launch Stand for Stan to celebrate Stan Musial, the team had just over 5,000 followers. Today, the Cardinals have more than 499,000 followers on Twitter, making @Cardinals one of the largest accounts in MLB [7th]. The Cardinals have more than 2-million fans on Facebook [7th in MLB], as well as a growing presence on other social media platforms such as Instagram [197,059 – 7th in MLB], Vine, Tumblr, Pinterest and Google Plus.
Fans can learn more about #BirdToTheFuture at cardinals.com/birdtothefuture and connect with the team via social media at cardinals.com/connect.
The St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame & Museum at Cardinals Nation
Our Home. Our History. Our Heroes.
The new Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum within Cardinals Nation at Ballpark Village features the largest team-held collection in baseball. The collection is second only to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in terms of size with over 16,000 memorabilia items and hundreds of thousands of archival photographs (#CardsArchive). With over 8,000 square feet on the second floor of Cardinals Nation, the Museum (#CardsMuseum) celebrates the rich history of baseball in St. Louis and the legacy of one of baseball’s most storied franchises. Just outside the museum, the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame presented by Edward Jones displays the official plaques of the Cardinals players honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The exhibit offers a number of touch-screen interactive displays that allow fans to dig deeper into the honorees, learning more about their lives, careers, statistics, and videos from their biggest moments. The Hall of Fame is free and open to the public.
