Brandiose Unveils New Fan-Experience App

If you follow the business side of the minor leagues, you’re well aware of Brandiose. Headed by Jason Klein and Casey White, it’s the group behind a slew of rebranding efforts over the past few seasons. This offseason alone the group has helmed changes in Binghamton, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Kissimmee, Fla.; Kinston, N.C.; and Fond Du Lac, Wis.

Behind the scenes, however, they’d quietly begun branching into software and technology, formed a software company called Boomaphone and began designing apps for minor league teams.

The Boomaphone-designed apps were successful enough that Minor League Baseball jumped on board and asked Brandiose to put together an app that every team could use to enhance its fans’ trip to the ballpark.

“They said, ‘Hey, we’ve heard great things and we want to make this platform the official fan-experience app of Minor League Baseball,” Klein said. “They re-branded the app and they called it Inside The Park. So we were the developers of the Inside The Park app. It was white-labeled as a Minor League Baseball app and we brought it to every club. We did that for three years.”

Not every club got on board with Inside The Park, however, and the app was shuttered this offseason.

“Over time, I don’t think (Inside The Park) worked out for Minor League Baseball and I don’t think it worked out for us,” Klein said. “We weren’t innovating. We weren’t trying new things and they (MiLB) were the client as opposed to the teams being the clients.”

In early January, Brandiose announced another rebranding. Boomaphone became Brandiose Ops and hired former Reading Fightin Phils assistant general manager Ashley Peterson as its leader.

Now, the clubs that were using Inside The Park have a replacement in Fairy Fan Father.

Fairy Fan Father expands on the success of the Beer Me feature of the Inside The Park app that was used in Reading, Tulsa and New Orleans last year, which allowed fans to order beer directly from their seat. With Fairy Fan Father, fans can order beer, food and candy from their seat, and also enter themselves into on-field contests.

“It had success. We were very excited about it and things went pretty well,” Reading media relations manager and broadcaster Michael Ventola said. “Overall, the response was very good. We’ve done pretty well with it.”

Reading will continue to utilize the in-seat delivery option—which is available for beer and a variety of food from the team’s menu—in the 2017 season

Brandiose tested aspects of the app in Durham for a few days toward the end of the 2015 season and were pleased by the results.

“Fans there said ‘This seems like it’s too good to be true” but it wasn’t,” Klein said. “It was like magic. You press a button and beer comes to your seat.”

Teams wishing to utilize Fairy Fan Father in their ballpark will pay a $3,400 licensing fee for the app, and fans will pay a $1 delivery fee for all food and drink ordered through the app. Brandiose Ops and the team will split the delivery fee evenly. Entry into on-field contests will not come with a fee.

But the crowning achievement of the app is, well, a crowning achievement. The team will announce that the Fairy Fan Father, an actual human, will run through the stadium looking for the king or queen of the game. To win, fans will need to download the app and then show the Fairy Fan Father the “Crown Me” screen within the app.

Once the king or queen of the game is crowned, the app can be used to grant the winner a discount on food, award a prize pack or some other prize.

Fairy Fan Father is just the first step, though. The endgame for Brandiose Ops is a host of technology to help teams better their knowledge of their customers.

“We’re basically coming up with a suite of software to do different functions and help clubs better understand their fans,” Klein said. “From behavior to seat ordering, just a completely digital approach to running minor league baseball in an era where clubs are using spreadsheets still.”