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Where MLB Makes the Postseason Feel Like a Proving Ground
Major League Baseball's 'Where Major is Made' is a 2023 postseason brand film, created by Wieden+Kennedy and published in the United States in September 2023, that positions the MLB postseason as the defining arena where elite baseball talent is tested, proven, and immortalised under the campaign rallying cry 'This is the next level. Welcome to the postseason!' and hashtag #MakeItMajor.
The campaign arrives at the threshold of the 2023 MLB postseason, which ran from October 3 through November 1, 2023, according to the official MLB schedule. Rather than spotlighting a single athlete or product, the film takes an institutional stance — MLB itself is the protagonist, cast as the proving ground where careers are made and legacies are written. This structural decision gives the work a durability beyond any individual player's moment, anchoring the brand's identity to the concept of achievement itself.
In the United States, where professional baseball carries a layered cultural weight stretching back more than a century, the postseason represents the sport's most concentrated period of public attention and emotional investment. The campaign is designed to meet fans at precisely that moment of heightened engagement, translating the competitive intensity of October baseball into a coherent brand proposition. Wieden+Kennedy, which became MLB's first creative agency of record in eight years as of March 2023, per reporting cited by Wk, brings to the work a craft tradition rooted in athlete mythology and performance storytelling. The film medium — a single primary asset — concentrates creative energy rather than dispersing it across formats, and the result carries the tonal weight of a sports manifesto rather than a conventional broadcast advertisement.
Wieden+Kennedy was appointed MLB's agency of record in October 2020, according to mlb.com, marking the beginning of a sustained creative partnership built on repositioning baseball's cultural identity in the United States. The agency's first major work under that remit, 'Baseball is Something Else,' launched on October 13, 2020, per mlb.com, and featured a roster of MLB players alongside entertainers Bryan Cranston and Sebastian Maniscalco, executing across television, digital, print, out-of-home, and experiential channels. 'Where Major is Made' represents a strategic evolution from that campaign's celebrity-inclusive approach toward a purer, more elemental brand statement — one that centres the institution rather than its famous faces.
The strategic rationale is grounded in a clear audience insight: avid baseball fans in the United States do not merely follow the sport, they invest emotionally in its stakes, its narratives, and its capacity to generate defining moments. The postseason concentrates that investment. By deploying a performance-driven, visceral film at the precise moment when fan attention peaks, MLB and Wieden+Kennedy are not advertising into a distracted marketplace — they are amplifying a cultural event that the audience is already emotionally primed to receive. The hashtag #MakeItMajor extends this logic into participatory territory, inviting fans to attach their own postseason reactions to the campaign's frame.
The competitive context in the United States is significant. Major League Baseball operates alongside the NFL and the NBA as one of the dominant professional sports leagues competing for fan time, media rights revenue, and sponsorship dollars. The global sports sponsorship market reached $63.74 billion in 2023, up from $60.09 billion in 2022, according to GlobeNewswire, signalling a market in which brands are allocating growing resources to sports association. Within that environment, MLB's decision to invest in a brand-level film — rather than a transactional promotional message — reflects a longer-term strategy of cultural positioning rather than short-cycle audience conversion.
'Where Major is Made' operates as a single-asset film campaign, a deliberate creative constraint that places the entire communicative burden on the quality and conviction of one piece of work. Production credits for 'Where Major is Made' are not publicly documented in available sources. What the film communicates, however, is discernible from its structure and tone: it is built around the grammar of sports mythology — the compressed moment, the athlete under pressure, the threshold between aspiration and arrival.
The campaign's creative core is the phrase 'This is the next level,' which functions less as a slogan and more as a threshold declaration. It positions the MLB postseason not as a continuation of the regular season but as a qualitatively different experience — a place where different rules of performance and consequence apply. This is a sophisticated creative insight. Many sports campaigns sell participation; 'Where Major is Made' sells transformation. The distinction gives the work an emotional register closer to cinematic storytelling than to conventional sports advertising, and it aligns with Wieden+Kennedy's long-established craft tradition of treating athletes as mythological figures navigating tests of character rather than simply competitors pursuing trophies.
The hashtag #MakeItMajor operates as a creative extension of this theme, translating the film's declarative tone into an invitation. It asks fans in the United States to locate themselves within the campaign's framework — to see the postseason not as something that happens to players but as something the broader baseball community participates in and defines. The film medium, chosen as the primary asset, is the right formal vehicle for this ambition: it allows for the pacing, music, and visual grammar that build emotional pressure in a way that static or display formats cannot replicate.
'Where Major is Made' generated approximately 3.3 million views, 4,261 likes, and 327 comments, according to archive data recorded by Clapboard. These figures represent meaningful organic engagement for a brand-level sports film without verified paid amplification data attached, and they indicate that the campaign reached a substantial segment of MLB's digital audience in the United States during the 2023 postseason window.
No campaign-specific sales lift, market-share change, or brand-tracking data for 'Where Major is Made' is publicly available. In the absence of such metrics, the film's structural effectiveness can be assessed on the basis of its strategic alignment and executional clarity. The campaign targets the highest-attention moment in the MLB calendar, uses a format with proven emotional range, and deploys a brand proposition — MLB as the place where greatness is made — that is both differentiated from transactional messaging and durable across multiple postseason cycles. These are hallmarks of work designed for long-term brand equity rather than short-term conversion, and they represent a responsible use of the postseason platform.
'Where Major is Made' holds a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100. No verified wins at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards are publicly documented for this campaign. The score reflects a campaign that executes its strategic brief with clarity and craft, even in the absence of independently verified performance benchmarks, and it positions the work as a competent and purposeful contribution to MLB's ongoing brand-building effort under Wieden+Kennedy's creative stewardship.
'Where Major is Made' is a 2023 postseason brand film created for Major League Baseball by Wieden+Kennedy. Published in the United States in September 2023, it positions the MLB postseason as the definitive arena where elite baseball achievement is forged, carrying the message 'This is the next level. Welcome to the postseason!' and the hashtag #MakeItMajor.
Wieden+Kennedy created 'Where Major is Made' for MLB. The agency was appointed MLB's agency of record in October 2020, according to mlb.com, and was described as the league's first dedicated creative agency of record in eight years as of March 2023, per wk.com, marking a sustained creative partnership centred on repositioning baseball's cultural identity.
MLB published 'Where Major is Made' in September 2023 in the United States. The campaign was timed to align with the 2023 MLB postseason, which ran from October 3 through November 1, 2023, according to the official MLB schedule, placing the film at the peak moment of fan attention and competitive drama.
'Where Major is Made' recorded approximately 3.3 million views, 4,261 likes, and 327 comments, according to archive data reported by Clapboard. No verified sales lift or brand-tracking data is publicly available. The campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting clear strategic execution and purposeful creative craft within the postseason context.
The #MakeItMajor hashtag extends the film's central theme — that the MLB postseason is a transformative proving ground — into participatory social territory. It invites fans across the United States to attach their own postseason responses to the campaign's framework, translating a declarative brand statement into a communal fan experience built around shared emotional investment in October baseball.
'Where Major is Made' follows 'Baseball is Something Else,' which launched October 13, 2020, per mlb.com, and featured players alongside Bryan Cranston and Sebastian Maniscalco. The 2023 film marks a strategic evolution — shifting from celebrity inclusion toward a purer institutional brand statement that centres MLB itself as the protagonist rather than individual athletes or entertainers.
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