New Orleans is a football town. The NBA franchise was the less-beloved kid brother. Thin crowds in the stands led to fewer advertisers, less TV coverage – and a paradise for ticket scalpers. We were brought in to make the team as valuable to the community as its NFL counterpart. Game on.
We turned to the city’s culture for answers, and found the key strain: defiance. If you disrespect New Orleans, even our biggest naysayers will come after you. Civic pride was the key to making the Pelicans feel like the New Orleans Pelicans. We needed to get fans to buy into the feeling that they weren’t just supporting a basketball team. They were proving the doubters wrong.
We may not always win, but we will give you the fight of your life. “Won’t Bow Down” is not only that attitude, it’s a lyric from an old Mardi Gras Indian song. New Orleanians instantly connected with this lore and cast it onto the team that needed them.
We launched with the mysterious letters “WBD” everywhere from player hats to Bat-Signal projections, getting the city guessing about its meaning. Then, we revealed its meaning right before the season. We dressed the locker room with Won’t Bow Down inspiration. And we created anthemic murals throughout the city to embed the attitudes street level.
78MM
ORGANIC REACH
12,000
SEASON TICKETS SOLD
424,000
INTERACTIONS
Call it a bounce back. WON’T BOW DOWN touched everything from billboards to ballers, merch and more. Regional media and the rest of the NBA, took notice—scoring 78M organic impressions and 360K likes in weeks.
We didn’t just prove that adversity reveals character: we sold 12,000 season tickets, filling 2/3 of the seats in Smoothie King Arena after a 33–49 season.
