Louisville Slugger
One of the world’s and certainly one of Kentucky’s most famous brands, Hillerich & Bradsby (H&B) has produced the iconic Louisville Slugger for more than 140 years. The family-run institution also operates the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, which serves as one of Louisville’s most prominent tourist destinations, welcoming 300,000 visitors annually.
Media Relations
Video Production
Messaging
Relevance
PR opportunities can pop up quickly and unexpectedly. While FDLC traditionally helped Hillerich & Bradsby’s marketing team generate positive media coverage for scheduled events at the Museum & Factory, we also helped facilitate coverage when an opportunity arose to tell H&B’s story to a larger audience, this time at a global scale.
opportunity
For the first few weeks of the 2025 Major League Baseball season, the most talked-about story in all of sports was the innovation and subsequent integration of the ‘torpedo bat,’ a new take on a more than century-old instrument used by all 20,000+ players to ever step foot on a Major League field. Louisville Slugger may not have been the only bat maker producing the Torpedo, but they are the most known. FDLC got to work reminding the world why you can’t tell the story of America’s pastime without Louisville Slugger.
solution
When buzz around the Torpedo took off, FDLC quickly began to assess the best ways to keep Louisville Slugger in the front of the story. In order to allow H&B and Louisville Slugger to keep up with demand in product and media coverage, we invited hand-picked local and regional journalists to come see production for themselves. We facilitated inbound requests from networks, cable news, and local affiliates, ensuring they had everything needed to include Louisville Slugger in the nationwide narrative surrounding the Torpedo. That included shooting our own video of bat production that aired across the country (and the world). The end result was coverage in 65+ radio/TV markets including LA, NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas/Fort Worth, Boston, Atlanta, and Washington DC, reaching nearly 10 million viewers/listeners. We even coordinated a visit from Japan’s national public broadcaster, NHK, who visited the museum and factory as part of their storytelling.