Outdoor Advertising
The city became part of the rink
2024
Designing a cohesive campaign across moving, digital, and architectural surfaces
Project: NHL Winter Classic OOH Sponsorship Campaign
Client: Discover Financial
Role: Lead Designer (Led team of 4 Designers, 1 Writer)
The Challenge
Discover Financial, a major sponsor of the NHL, needed to maximize its visibility during the high-profile NHL Winter Classic, which was being held outdoors at Chicago’s iconic Wrigley Field. The campaign had two primary objectives:
Drive Brand Awareness: Loudly announce Discover’s status as the lead sponsor of this flagship NHL event to a massive audience of local Chicagoans and visiting hockey fans.
Customer Acquisition: Attract potential new customers by leveraging the excitement around the game and showcasing Discover’s product benefits.
The Strategy: Merging Heritage and Hockey
To capture the unique spirit of this event, the creative execution needed to feel authentic to both the sport of hockey and the historic venue. As the Lead Designer, I spearheaded the visual development of a cohesive design language that blended several key elements:
NHL Winter Theme: Incorporating frosted textures, ice patterns, and winter sports imagery.
Wrigley Field Heritage: To honor the location, we integrated design nods to Wrigley’s signature outfield ivy and the iconic, manually operated centerfield scoreboard.
Retro Aesthetics: We specifically utilized the vintage "flip number" style from the scoreboard for countdowns and typography, creating a nostalgic connection for sports fans.
Multi-Channel OOH Execution
We executed a comprehensive OOH takeover strategy, saturating key transit routes and the entire Wrigleyville neighborhood with high-impact placements.
1. City-Wide Impact: CTA Train Wraps
To ensure massive visibility across Chicago, we constructed full wraps for trains on three major CTA routes leading toward the stadium. These rolling billboards provided high-frequency brand exposure to commuters and travelers city-wide.
The design for these wraps focused on bold, clean branding using Discover's signature blue and white, dominating the urban landscape and establishing massive brand presence.
2. Immersive Neighborhood Takeover: Wrigleyville
We concentrated our efforts in the immediate vicinity of Wrigley Field, creating an immersive branded experience that fans couldn't miss.
Dynamic Digital Displays: We utilized digital OOH (DOOH) screens at key transit hubs and entrances. For the digital display at a CTA station entrance, we used this format to feature dynamic event countdowns. This placement perfectly showcases our core visual strategy, utilizing the vintage "flip number" style for the timer and the event-specific headline, "Rink in the New Year."
Targeted Street Furniture (Bus Shelters): For closer, pedestrian-level engagement, we utilized bus shelter posters. These placements were crucial for our acquisition goals. The creative explicitly targets potential new customers. It showcases the specific NHL-branded Discover card and uses copy focused on acceptance ("Discover is accepted 99% of places nationwide") with a witty tie-in to the Winter Classic event itself.
The Result
The "Discover & NHL Winter Classic OOH Takeover" successfully created an unmissable brand presence in Chicago. By seamlessly blending the heritage of Wrigley Field with the excitement of outdoor hockey, the campaign resonated deeply with fans and local residents.
The massive visibility of the full CTA train wraps, combined with the contextually relevant neighborhood takeover using dynamic digital countdowns and targeted product messaging, achieved high recall for Discover’s sponsorship while successfully introducing the brand to a new audience of potential customers.
