The McDonald’s All American Games are still an important checkpoint for top-tier talent on their way to the pros, but to maintain relevance into the future as more all-star games emerge, we need to continuously reestablish ours as the definitive, premier showcase of legends-in-the-making. That’s why everything we do is geared toward hero’ing the players, co-creating with them and publishing hype-building original content that makes them the stars, all with a look + feel that reflects the youthful energy of online sports culture and incorporates themes of the host city of Houston, TX. 

 

The campaign started with the 700+ nominees from around the country getting their moment to shine on a massive stage – we introduced them to the world by running each of their names individually on a massive Times Square billboard above the flagship McDonald's. Once the nominees were filtered down to just the Top 48 players in the country, we created a robust content plan designed to share their experience with the world in a way the youth basketball community would love. 

 

With the attention of top scouts and universities as well as exuberant basketball fans eager to discover the next legend of the game, they’re already influencers in their own right, often boasting hundreds of thousands – sometimes millions – of followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. So we focused on championing players like Dylan Harper, Joyce Edwards, Cooper Flagg, Liam McNeely, and the rest of the squad to inspire them to share our content with their followers, going deeper this year on playful moments in between the hard-nosed basketball. From same-day highlight reels to BTS of their photoshoots, the energy of the Players’ Celebration, a few games of P.I.G., booming dunk highlights, playful interview sessions, Skills Winner Spotlights, and daily Vibe Dumps of the player experience, we captured the Class of 2024 from every angle all week long, and designed every piece of content to be shared by them.

 

Always putting the players front and center to elicit sharing resulted in nearly 5,000,000 organic impressions for this year’s Games, and ensured that audiences, including future All Americans, saw the Games as not only the premiere basketball talent pipeline, but also a week that’s truly a joy to be a part of.