The Chicago Cubs, an organization that has spent more than a century perfecting the art of making people care deeply about outcomes they cannot control, have now entered the business of scripted romance.
The team has launched what it calls a microdrama series on TikTok, joining a growing cohort of brands that have discovered short-form video platforms are hungry for serialized content — provided that content involves attractive people in emotionally charged situations. The Cubs, whose previous forays into storytelling have largely involved the unscripted drama of pennant races and the occasional managerial dismissal, appear to have made the transition without losing their core audience of people who actually want to watch baseball.
Jen Martindale, the team's head of marketing and communications, explained the thinking behind the venture in a recent podcast appearance. The challenge, as Ms. Martindale framed it, was finding a way to reach younger audiences who consume video in two-minute increments without alienating the substantial population of Cubs fans who have been watching baseball since before TikTok's founders were born.
The microdrama format — essentially soap operas distributed in segments short enough to watch between innings, or between anything — has become an unexpected growth area for brands seeking to embed themselves in entertainment rather than interrupt it. The Cubs are not the first sports franchise to notice this trend, though they may be the first to attempt it with the particular challenge of a fan base that includes both teenagers who discovered the team through social media and octogenarians who remember Ernie Banks.
Whether the series will produce the kind of engagement that justifies the creative investment remains, like most things involving the Cubs, a matter of waiting to see how it plays out over a long season.
Original story published in adage.com: "How the Chicago Cubs got into the TikTok romance series game without alienating core baseball fans - Ad Age"