Project: Oden or Durant Microsite
Length of project: 3 weeks
Budget: $15,000
Agency: Substance
140 character brief: Scored #1 pick in 2007 NBA Draft! Can’t believe it. Need a microsite ASAP to engage flood of traffic & convert into @pdxtrailblazers fans.
Awards won: Adobe Flash Site of the Day, Webvisions Award, Rosey’s “Merit Award”
In 2007, we didn’t have the worst record in the NBA, but didn’t make the playoffs, so this meant we would be drafting in the NBA Lottery. On May 23rd, the ping-pong balls landed in the right spots and we ended up winning the #1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft. After the first 30 seconds of people running around the office screaming, I settled down and started drafting a plan on what we were going to do digitally.
I knew that we would be getting a ton of traffic in a short amount of time, so I wanted to maximize that momentum. There would be a lot of new people checking out the small market Portland Trail Blazers and I wanted to greet them properly.
What I did first was to contact the digital strategy agency, Substance. I had worked previously with David Lowe-Rogstad and Stephen Landau at opus:creative and respected their creative process. I called them the next morning and said, look, we hit the lottery, we will be getting a ton of traffic. i need to get something up quickly, and it has to “kick ass” and I have a limited budget. Agency folk should be used to this. All three of us worked tirelessly on crafting the vision for this. We launched this project from phone call to being live in 3 weeks. This includes wireframes, design rounds and development.
One of the long lasting strategies that we still use today was the registering of the first Twitter account by an NBA Team. We used it throughout the draft process to keep people updated about Greg Oden and Kevin Durant workouts. To this day, this is one of our major outlets to foster the relationship between fans and the organization.
