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Case Study: 2023 Chicago Fire FC Jersey Launch

Of the 2023 projects I’ve worked on so far, the launch video for Chicago Fire FC’s 2023 secondary jersey - dubbed the “Kit For All” - is the one of which I’m most proud.

With a limited budget and an insanely tight timeline, we delivered one of the single-best announcement videos ever produced by the club.

Below, I’ll detail how we pulled it off, while also highlighting three of my core beliefs as a manager of creatives:

  • Do the dirty work that sets your team up for success

  • Trust your people

  • Don’t be too big for any job

The Background

For starters, it’s worth saying that since I’ve been at the director level, I’m much, much less hands-on with the actual production elements of our creative and content team.

Where I used to spend my time writing articles, taking photos, posting to social, doing interviews, etc., these days I’m more focused on things like project managing, communication between departments and stakeholders, group organization, and coordination of our content productions.

It’s a lot - a lot - less sexy, but projects like this one make it extremely fulfilling.

Anyway, each year, just about every Major League Soccer team debuts a new home or away jersey (a “kit”) prior to the new season beginning. It’s up to the content and creative teams to make a splash with the jerseys’ announcements to drive excitement and sales across club digital channels and beyond. I’ve done this eight times now in my eight years in MLS, but the Fire’s 2023 “Kit For All” was a different beast.

The Challenges

The 2023 Kit For All is among the most unique-looking jerseys in the Fire’s history. Draped in Chicago flag-colored chevron shapes laid over a white foundation, we knew this jersey would be a popular item given both its original design as well as its ties to popular Chicago iconography.

We knew we needed to knock its announcement out of the park.

However, as we ideated around launch video ideas, we had several challenges to consider:

  • Usually, we lean on our players to stand in as models during shoots like this one. However, the team was away for 2023 preseason camp during the window when this was all to be captured, and we wouldn’t be able to travel to them to capture anything remotely for this launch. So, instead of leaning on our famous faces to help sell the product, we’d have to find other subjects to use in our primary launch assets. Thankfully our photographer JP Calubaquib - check out his work - had connections with local models, and over the course of a week, we were able to book the five that appear in the video.

  • To say the least. Beyond the annual kit launch, here’s what our team of four videographers, four designers, and three social/digital pros was charged with this past January and February:

    • Day-to-day content capture of the team’s six(ish)-week preseason camp that began in mid-January and ended in late February. This year, the Fire were in Chicago, Mexico, and Arizona, during which we had 2-3 members of our team embedded the entire time. They were responsible for the capture and editing of photo and video assets for social promotion every single day while on-site.

    • Organizing and executing a “Media Day” to capture all the photo and video assets needed for our 2023 marketing materials, in-stadium video, social media, and more. They’d then have to flip everything that was captured (two entire days’ worth of video and photos) into polished, usable assets within the 2-3 weeks prior to opening day.

    • Launching MLS’ all-new Apple TV partnership. In order to help populate Apple TV’s new “MLS Season Pass” platform at the time of its launch over late January and early February, each team’s content group was ordered to deliver a lengthy list of videos to ensure there would be things for fans to watch upon signing up. For launch, we produced 17 videos covering the club’s culture, history, famous players, and memorable moments.

  • I won’t go into specifics, but we’d spent a decent chunk of change to pull off our media day in the week prior to having to capture our jersey launch assets. For this and all the other reasons above, we needed an idea for this campaign that was both relatively simple to pull off as well as cost-efficient. As you’ll see, we were able to turn a cheap and simple concept into a slick final product.

  • The new jersey had a league-mandated launch date of Feb. 16, and with all of previously mentioned demands on our team’s plate in early February, we weren’t even able to start putting serious thought into this launch until the week of Feb. 6 after our aforementioned Media Day was completed the week prior. That gave us an 11-day window to finalize the concept, get the necessary approvals, contract models and freelancers, find a space to film, hold the shoot, and edit all of our deliverables for launch day.

The Idea

With all of the above in mind, we decided the best way forward was to lean into the motif that the kit provided us. We could create a set that mirrored its elements and, in doing so, really showcase its singular design relative to the other kits in club history. 

Within our office building in downtown Chicago, there was an entire unused floor that was completely whited out, and could provide the perfect contrast for an explosion of blue and red confetti. We could bring the kit’s design to life in the physical world by mimicking its shower of Chicago’s famous blue and red over an all-white background. From there, we’d just have to try to make it all look cool as hell.

The Wrinkle

Here’s where the first of my aforementioned core beliefs - do the dirty work that sets your team up for success - came into play. 

That unused all-white floor in our building that was literally perfect for this idea? Yeah, we couldn’t secure it. After a week of back-and-forth between myself, the Fire’s internal legal team, and the building’s representation, we just couldn’t come to terms for use of the space within our short timeframe. I’m certain we could have figured it out given more time, but it was now a Friday at 4 pm, and we had to shoot this thing on the following Tuesday if we were going to deliver it on time. I had to solve this problem.

I found a few comparable spaces online that could give us a similar effect. Over the course of that Friday evening and the rest of that weekend, I narrowed it down to a museum space on Chicago’s near west side, I negotiated terms, I secured some extra budget for the rental, and I helped re-orient our team of producers, freelancers, and models towards the new plan. It was a scramble, but this is the type of thing a good leader should shoulder for his or her team.

Do the dirty work that sets your team up for success.

The Shoot

With the creative brief written, the space secured, and everyone on set on time, the majority of my job was finished.

This is where my second core belief comes in - trust your people.

We have a genuinely brilliant team of creatives at the Fire who love the work and are more than capable of running a shoot like this. Plus, ultimately, they were going to be the ones to put all of the video and photo assets together for launch. With those things in mind, I thought it best to let them pursue their vision on shoot day. I’d set them up as best I could, so I didn’t feel a need to micromanage from there. Boy, did that pay off. More on that shortly.

This is also where my third core belief - don’t be too big for any job - is relevant.

While I didn’t feel the need to run the show while on set, I sure as hell was still going to contribute. I helped move furniture, I put up lights, I swept up (so freaking much) confetti, I ran around having people sign NDAs and likeness agreements, and I simply provided guidance when it was needed. 

(Set BTS photos courtesy of Erika Mariscal)

The Final Product

This is another trust your people moment. Within two days, the Fire’s Sr. Manager of Video and Creative Services Alex Mueller single-handedly took the raw footage our team captured of a basic red backdrop, five models, and three confetti cannon fires and turned it into this:

As a manager of creatives, there’s nothing else that quite tops that slack-jawed reaction when one of your team members comes through with something that thrills you and leaves you with zero notes to deliver in the group slack channel. I was so proud.

Alongside the primary launch video, our team used the imagery we captured to create marketing assets to push both sales of the jersey and the team’s upcoming home opener in March. I also designed a landing page for the team’s web site that contained all of our content and all the requisite CTAs to purchase. 

Plus, to make up for the lack of player inclusion in the launch video, we also shared imagery across our social media channels of players wearing the new jersey while at our aforementioned media day held the week prior, and from a separate content capture at the famous Skydeck atop Chicago’s Willis Tower. Additional supplementary content included photo carousels of club supporters donning the new kit, as well as a video of reactions to the kit design that we’d shot with popular club alumni the previous October and held for launch week.

The Results

All in all, we were able to generate 1.1 million organic views of our launch video across our social and digital platforms within the first two days of launch, on top of hundreds of positive engagements. As for sales of the jersey, they’re generally released by the league in September, so we’ll have to stay tuned for that.

The social reception was of course fantastic to see, but this also felt like a huge victory for me in strengthening my philosophies on team leadership, organization, decision-making, and problem solving.

Given the tight timeline and the unique challenges that the team had to navigate, I couldn’t have been prouder of the effort it took to get this video and this jersey out into the world.

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