Upend audience expectations

Make content that no one has seen in the context of your industry.

I talk a lot about the role tension plays in a good social media strategy. How the best brands understand the perception audiences have about them and their industry, and use social media to upend that.

The result of that tension—a brand going against expected industry norms—leads to moments of delight. Oftentimes, it’s that feeling people are reacting to when they say they love a brand’s social media.

Loewe’s tension is a high-end luxury brand partnering with extremely online content creators. Ramp’s tension is a serious B2B fintech company consistently pulling off wacky stunts. Ben & Jerry’s tension is a playful ice cream company speaking out against injustice. The Los Angeles Public Library’s tension is a 150-year-old institution making thorough Charli XCX explainers. It’s not that these tactics are entirely new, it’s that these brands are showing up in a way that no one has seen in the context of their industries.

A few months ago, I stumbled upon a video from the Milwaukee Brewers celebrating opening weekend. Instead of the hype up edit I expected, it felt closer to an old Hollywood movie. It immediately caught my attention. On Twitter, the team’s video editor pointed out that the title card of the video was inspired by the 1953 movie Roman Holiday starring Audrey Hepburn. While I have certainly noticed more brands sharing cinematic videos on social media, it’s an approach that feels novel in the world of baseball.

The opening weekend video sent me down a deep dive, which eventually led me to Ezra Siegel. He’s in charge of the social media strategy for the Milwaukee Brewers—including live coverage of up to 162 games every year. I sent him an email and next thing I knew we were talking about “arthouse baseball” and why he wants to make content sports fans have never seen before.

How the Milwaukee Brewers approach social media

To understand why a baseball team is inspired by arthouse cinema, it’s important to understand the grounding strategy. When I ask Ezra for his social media philosophy, he tells me, “When people consume our content, I want them to feel like they’re seeing something fresh, not just a take on something they’ve seen from the other accounts and teams they follow. We want to be the model that other teams look at for inspiration, rather than the other way around.”

There’s a clear competitiveness in the way Ezra talks about the team’s social media strategy. How can the team also win on the digital field? “I want people to wonder how the small-market Milwaukee Brewers put out content that nobody has seen before in a sports context. I want us to be pacing with the teams from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago etc—the teams with more resources, more star power, larger audiences—in terms of social performance. Which we can and do measure!”

For the 2025 baseball season, social measurement tool Zoomph created a report that adjusted data based on a team’s following on social media, normalizing data across audience sizes (which can be impacted by market, history, age, etc.) to evaluate and compare how effectively team content performed. The Brewers had the best social performance relative to the size of their audience. Ezra told me, “The Brewers have been very successful on the field while operating differently than the rest, and I think it’s fun to try to mirror that from a marketing point of view.”

“Arthouse baseball”

In a recent interview with Sports Business Journal, Ezra described the Brewers strategy as “arthouse baseball”. When I asked him to expand on that idea further, he said, “The way I’ve defined ‘Arthouse Baseball’ is showcasing our sport and athletes in experimental, innovative, and unconventional ways for enhanced entertainment value—particularly in our video content.” He credits Carter Green, the team’s Senior Videographer and Creative Lead, as being instrumental in pioneering this style.

Most MLB and sports teams execute content in ways that meets fan expectations, Ezra wants to upend fan expectations. He says their “arthouse” approach “tries to break the mold with unique and innovative video content that baseball fans have not seen before.” It’s clear through the editing, music, angles, and color-grading that the team is pulling references that few sports teams have before. The only other team that has tried a similar style (that comes to mind for me) is the Celtics, with videos like this.

Alongside Carter, the Brewers have a robust video production team who Ezra describes as “well-read” in terms of film knowledge and appreciation. When I ask for some references that have inspired the team, he had a long list at the ready. “Carter created a great series of atmospheric content using the classical song ‘The Blue Danube’, which was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. We’ve also had several nods to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, using the song ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ for competitive edits on the road. Some other notable references include Hundreds of Beavers, The Brutalist (Carter recreated the upside down Statue of Liberty shot at Dodgers Stadium), Pulp Fiction’s title cards, and A24’s trailer style.”

Importantly, taking cues from cinema in content allows more fans into the world of baseball. It opens up the game in a new way. “We are constantly looking for and thinking about ways to reach new fans and audiences, and our approach is meant to showcase baseball in a way that anyone—not just Brewers fans—can look at and say ‘damn that is cool,’” he says.

Behind the post

Below I asked Ezra to give me some insight into how some of my favorite Brewers videos came together.

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Video: Ode to bunts
Views: 1.3M
Likes: 50K
Ezra’s POV: Baseball is such a unique sport. It has so much tradition and history. It can at times be unbelievably intense and stressful when the stakes are high. But most of the year it is often more of a social activity for the casual fan or someone looking to spend a nice summer day outside. The bunt video is a great example of how wacky games can play out and how, despite a 162-game season, you will see new things all the time on the field. I think people sometimes mislabel baseball as “boring” or “repetitive”, but I don’t think that’s the case at all if you know what to watch for.

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Video: Grand Theft Auto riff
Views: 1.7M
Likes: 59.9K
Ezra’s POV: This was the brainchild of my peer and friend Carter Green. Our team met regularly throughout the offseason leading up to spring training to brainstorm content ideas for that time of year, which is when we get the most time with and access to our athletes. When Carter brought this idea to me, it was a no brainer to invest in it as our top priority for spring training content. As Carter says, it’s essentially a “day in the life” video, which has been done countless times by sports brands, but putting a new twist on it that people wouldn’t expect. The Grand Theft Auto/video game theme is a great example of our approach to reach fans beyond our audience. We figured it would be a fun, novel video for anyone who is a fan of baseball OR video games, and we looked at it as a perfect blend of baseball and widely accessible culture. As far as actual production, Carter followed around Sal Frelick with a 360 camera for a day of practice before spending dozens of hours editing and adding motion graphics to it. Just an example of how lucky I am to work with people like him…I love empowering their creativity and helping bring their ideas and talent to life!

The lineup

What does the team look like that brings this strategy to life? Ezra shared that their content operation consists of a three-person social team, a seven-person video production team, and a three-person graphic design team. As far as his own role, Ezra says it varies. “Many times my role is to direct or execute creative myself, other times I feel more like a studio head green-lighting different ideas or projects that people bring to me.”

Throughout our conversation I noticed how much Ezra really wants to make sure his team gets the credit they deserve. “In particular, I want to shout out the following people for being absolutely instrumental in the creative we put out: Carter Green, Cody Oasen, Caitlin Walter, Matt Gompper, Matt Small, and Jake McHugh. Some of the most talented people I’ve ever met and worked with.”

Ezra also credits his leadership team for trusting him. “My bosses—Sharon McNally (our VP of Marketing), Emily Bremer (Sr. Director of Marketing), Matt Small (Director of Digital Marketing)—have entrusted me and my team to experiment and grow like few other marketing departments would.” He went on to say, “Even our ownership has helped clear barriers and shown tremendous support of what we do.”

Sell the experience

Speaking of movies, some of the most successful ones in the past few years have marketed the theater experience in parallel with the movie itself. Sinners worked with Kodak to explain the different aspect ratios of the film and provide context for which tickets to buy. One Battle After Another created punch cards where you could “collect” every format. Project Hail Mary had viral projectionist photos and BTS imagery. Sometimes marketing the experience is just as important as marketing the product.

I think there are parallels to seeing sports in-person as well. When I asked Ezra how he thinks about using social media to get people to attend games, he shared, “One thing I think we tapped into that has since started a trend in our sport is showcasing stadium atmosphere within the context of special moments on the field. Our videographers have found tremendous success shooting baseball action from different angles, sometimes through the crowd, to highlight the feeling of being there in person.”

It’s true that these posts are the exact ones that make me want to buy a ticket to an afternoon game on a nice day. Ezra said the simple angle change can shift the tone of a video. ”I think a lot of sports photographers and videographers have traditionally stuck to shooting from the sidelines or designated camera well spots. There is so much more to offer than just the competitive, dramatic shots that are close to the action. We want to showcase the atmosphere of watching a game within that collective of the crowd, as well as all the other things that make up the in-game experience—food, beautiful sunsets, in-game entertainment, etc.”

It’s an important reminder for any brand on social media. How do you show (not tell!) how your restaurant or product or service makes people feel?

Twist your audience’s expectations

What the Brewers are doing is not necessarily original, but it’s novel in the context of baseball. Audiences are often taking only a few seconds to decide if they want to watch a piece of content as they scroll. Creating that tension early—”Woah, a baseball highlight that looks and sounds like a movie!”—helps grab attention.

For Ezra, creating cinematic content has given him a new perspective on baseball as a whole. He shared, “Now on my ninth season, I can sometimes take certain things about being in this environment for granted. But because of the different experimentation and the new opportunities that have come from our creative work, I find myself seeing the sport in a different light.”

Final exercise

Write down a list of ways your audience might expect a brand within your industry to show up on social media. What tone do they assume your brand will have? What marketing tactics are they used to seeing?

Write down a list of ways that your competitors show up on social media. What are the themes? The trends? The formats?

Write down a list of ways that would be unexpected for your brand to show up on social media. What references would you pull in? What’s working in other industries? Some of my favorite advice on this comes from Rion Harmon, the co-founder of the agency Day Job. He says, “Pitch wild ideas to shift your client’s [or boss’s] Overton window.” While the wild idea might not get selected or approved, it still helps open people up to other ideas that they never would have thought they wanted to see or hear.

Try making a pilot or post in a new style that feels unexpected for your industry or product. Don’t post it. Or do. See how it performs. Do it again. Start learning.

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