Atlanta Braves and SunTrust Park:
Welcome Home

In 2017, The Atlanta Braves played their inaugural season at the new SunTrust Park. At the time, the city of Atlanta was torn between the excitement of a new park and the controversy of moving the park out of the heart of the city and into the suburbs. As a brand and as a team, The Atlanta Braves faced a challenge they posed to our team — change people’s mind about the new park by spreading information and excitement about all its best amenities. This isn’t just a new park; this is the new home of the Braves.

My team and I created a paid ad unit for the emerging Facebook Canvas technology that gave an interactive tour of SunTrust Park’s five newest and most exciting amenities. I decided to teach the park from top to bottom through this ad unit, literally starting at the topmost portion of the park with a drone flyover video and welcome message, and ending with a warm, rustic, and game-worn image of the new park’s home plate. See the full ad unit walkthrough below.

The educational experience begins first with a photo gallery walkthrough of five amenities of the park — The Xfinity Rooftop, Hope and Will’s Sandlot, The Home Depot Clubhouse, The Monument Garden, and Coor’s Light Below the Chop.

Just below this photo gallery, the same amenities are highlighted, but this time via video for those who want to watch rather than read, and also to limit the accidental scrolling some less familiar with the left-to-right swipe requirements of the Canvas platform. (I wanted to include functionality that would appeal to different types of users and overcome usability issues that are inherent with new technologies.)

Below that, a tilt-to-pan view of the entire park, with these five sections literally pin-pointed in a view from home plate, giving context to the exact locations just described in the content blocks above. And in the final portal, marrying the overarching SunTrust Park brand message of “Welcome Home,” an official invitation for each user to join the team at the new home of the Braves this season.

This ad unit received great engagement, holding users’ attention for an average of nearly two minutes. The unit was also mentioned in the MLB-wide newsletter about the effective use of emerging technology to spread educational and brand awareness for individual teams.

Creative Direction and Design: Amanda Cochran
Copywriting: Amy Anderson
Animation: Mitchell Hardage