Behind the scenes of the quick-moving campaign to get Jesús Aguilar into the All-Star Game

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Brewers slugger Jesus Aguilar belts a two-run homer against the Cincinnati Reds during the third inning Thursday night.

Bringing people to Jesús required fast work.

Milwaukee Brewers personnel knew there was a chance one of their players would be represented on the Major League Baseball Final Vote, the ballot to determine the final member of the National League all-star team. But they didn’t know which one – it turned out to be Jesús Aguilar – until early Sunday.

All the effort paid off, in a big way. Aguilar was named the winner of the fan vote Wednesday, giving the Brewers a fourth representative at the 2018 All-Star Game in Washington DC on July 17.

And his vote total - 20,229,498 - was the second highest ever recorded in the 16-year history of the Final Vote. By comparison, the AL winner, former Brewer Jean Segura, received 13,646,439 votes.

"We met about a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks ago, just to talk about potential candidates,” said Brewers director of new media Caitlin Moyer, who’s been part of a massive local campaign encouraging fans to vote.

She said most in the organization expected that Josh Hader would make the All-Star team on the player ballot, but from there, the staff began brainstorming ideas for other possible Final Vote contestants, such as Lorenzo Cain, Christian Yelich, Jeremy Jeffress and Aguilar.

“We came up with taglines and some graphics and some general ideas for promotions and stunts and giveaways we would do if we had a guy,” said Tyler Barnes, Brewers vice president of communications. “We were notified a few hours beforehand (of the finalists), but not long, so we had a lot of vendors and certainly staff on standby to ramp things up very quickly on Sunday.

"We needed things immediately and found companies that could thread the needle right away and get us what we were looking for. That’s the key: being able to ramp up the basics quickly and continue the creative process throughout. Some of the best ideas are spur-of-the-moment, people talking in the hallway, and then just to have the ability and the flexibility is important.”

Big heads, T-shirts and a campaign advertisement

The team was able to produce giant likenesses of Aguilar’s head for use in promotion (you know, the one that cut pitcher Chase Anderson), as well as T-shirts. Not only that, the Brewers had a handshake agreement with the Twins to stump for each other, with Minnesota's Eddie Rosario one of the American League finalists.

Barnes said the team had had conversations with Anodyne Coffee in Milwaukee and Holey Moley Doughnuts in Wauwatosa to tentatively set up morning voter events. Anodyne gave away free coffee on Monday to the first 500 voters, and Holey Moley gave away “Sweet Jesus” donuts on Tuesday.

“I think they were very excited because it draws a lot of attention to their locations, and they were terrific," Barnes said.

Capping it off, the Brewers gave away tickets (with Aguilar footing the bill) to an upcoming game and ice cream on Wednesday morning at Miller Park, and a large turnout followed.

“(Wednesday’s event) really started to come into focus more Monday night and then we approached Jesús; he was really approached about most of the things we were doing, and he was thrilled to buy the tickets,” Barnes said. “He is truly grateful for all the support he’s received, and with a big personality like that, it makes you want to work even harder to get him there.”

During the recent homestand, players were brought in to film a campaign video for a number of potential player candidates. With the announcement of Aguilar as a finalist, a final version of the faux political ad was produced and distributed.

“If he had been named an all-star (outright), we could have re-purposed that video, maybe for another fun social-media campaign with ‘I believe in Jesús,’” Barnes said.

Players bought into social-media push

Moyer was with the team in 2003, when the Brewers successfully launched a campaign to get Geoff Jenkins selected in just the second year of the Final Vote format. In 2008, the club again got Corey Hart voted into the game.

“Social media has evolved and become such a large part of this, but some of the basics don’t change,” Moyer said. “You have more access to players when you’re at home, but at the same time, you have a captive audience watching the game (on the road), and people can more easily vote from their home than in a stadium. The TV is pumping it up every few minutes.”

Jenkins has done his part for this new campaign 15 years later.

Moyer said in preparation, she created a Dropbox folder full of Aguilar gifs, photos and videos – something she could share with staff for dissemination wherever needed. She sent some images to other players on the team with the hope that they would circulate them on their own social media feeds. They obliged.

“Pretty much every single guy has been posting on their accounts,” Moyer said. “We sent a link to our sponsorship team and asked them to share it with our sponsors, so places like American Family, Gruber (Law Offices), Aurora Health; all these sponsors have chimed in. We’re trying to activate (support) across our whole network.”

The club’s tireless social-media approach included contests that encouraged fans to re-tweet with the chance to win a prize and even included overnight posts scheduled for the night-owl crowd.

“Twitter is obviously the platform where you can mobilize people the most and spread the word the fastest,” Moyer said, adding that she was aiming for one post every 45 minutes to an hour encouraging fans to post.

The whole campaign ended with a chance to pause and take a breath, a staff pizza party (in which staff could cast votes, of course). Like the rest of the voting public, members of the Brewers staff aren’t privy to the live voting totals; they only know that Aguilar was in first place at each of the two checkpoints before the home stretch.

“It’s no coincidence that a couple of our events have been centered around sugar and coffee,” Moyer said. “I think we’re all just running on fumes, but it’s worth it if he makes it.”