“The Charlie McAvoy Story”
NHL Winter Classic, 2023
MassMutual saw an opportunity to create this video: “Charlie McAvoy Story” to highlight their partnership with the NHL at the nationally televised NHL Winter Classic in January of 2023. The goal of the campaign was to share the brand campaign messaging of “Protecting those who matter most, on and off the ice”. Charlie McAvoy is a star player for the Boston Bruins, and this year’s Winter Classic was not only a regular season matchup between the Pittsburg Penguins and the Boston Bruins, but it was also taking place in the home-city of MassMutual: Boston, MA at Fenway Park. I worked directly with vendors, including the production resources of NHL Studios and editing power of Editbar, to lead the art direction on this piece. My involvement ranged from pre-production planning, site visits, day-of production art direction, wardrobe direction, and post production management of edits, color, and sound. I also designed all the in-video animations and supers. As a Bruins fan myself, this was a really exciting project to be involved with!
This was award winning work, quite literally. The video for this project won both the Video Long From Single Entry and Video Short Form Single Entry Merit Awards at the 62nd Annual Hatch Awards held in Boston in October of 2023.
This video was a huge success for MassMutual. It aired in arena and on television. The 2023 NHL Winter Classic averaged 1.78 million viewers on TNT, the largest regular season NHL audience ever on cable and up 31% from the previous high set by the 2022 Winter Classic. This asset ran 3 times during the game gaining the brand awareness from close to 2 million people.
MassMutual hoped to extend this brand affinity asset beyond broadcast. I once again was asked to repackage and extend this video to social, YouTube, print, and email. The following is a sample of how my design was able to give this campaign some extra shelf life off the screen. I led the direction and production of the following assets as well.
Put it in their hands
This print ad was featured in the Winter Classic commemorative game program which was available for purchase at the game.
Reach them where they are
This was the design of an email the NHL sent to their mailing list advertising the long form video and promoting MassMutual and the partnership.
Project Credits:
Created for MassMutual
Broadcast on TNT, 3 impressions during the game, 1.78M viewers
Additional assets published on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and NHL email
Art Direction, Video Editing (social), and Graphic Design (super animation): Mark Coletti;
Video Production: NHL Studios; Video/Sound Editing: Editbar
ECD: Spencer Deadrick, Creative Directors: Larry Fahey (copy) & Will Uronis (art), Copywriter: Lauren Shiraka