Chicago Cubs
Agency: BBDO Chicago
The Ask:
Build awareness for Cubs U, a $12 ticket raffle for college students, without undercutting the premium Cubs experience.
The Insight:
College students crave belonging, but when summer breaks the structure of campus life, that connection often slips away.
The Challenge:
Drive awareness without undermining a premium brand. College students don't just lose their campus every summer. They lose their community. We rebuilt it at Wrigley.
We transformed Cubs U from a passive raffle experience into a ticket drop release system by introducing an app-based experience that builds anticipation and urgency around access.
We treated $12 tickets as a limited release, not a discount, and built the drop into an app that mirrored the way students already compete for tickets to the events they care about. Countdown timers took over Wrigleyville before each drop.
Every student's Cubs U ID tracked their season, games, food, wins and losses, then rolled it all into a Spotify Wrapped style recap built for social sharing.
Students received a digital Cubs U ID stored in their Apple Wallet.
And finally, we created the Cubs U All Star Game, where college players from Chicago area schools compete in a spring game at Wrigley. It mirrors the energy of campus scrimmages but roots it in the heart of the Cubs brand, giving Cubs U a lasting tradition of its own.
Creds: Jada Poindexter, Julia Shea, Aaliyah Brown, Sophia Fuselier, Leslie Watkins, Anna Ren