In September of 2024, Chicago legend Derrick Rose stepped away from the game of basketball. Rose, a native of the city’s Englewood neighborhood, was drafted #1 overall by his hometown Chicago Bulls and played 8 seasons in the Windy City. As a Bull, Rose became the youngest MVP in NBA history before suffering a devastating knee injury altered the team’s title dreams and his own career trajectory.
Despite having never accomplished their goal of winning an NBA championship, Rose’s Bulls teams are among the most beloved in team history.
Shortly following the retirement announcement, the Bulls decided to hold a ‘Derrick Rose Night’ celebration to honor and celebrate Derrick’s memorable career and contributions to the Bulls and the city. Ultimately, the Bulls also announced the decision to retire his #1 jersey forever, making him the fifth player to receive the franchise honor.
The city’s love for Rose and the teams he played on go beyond results on the court. So, the Bulls, in partnership with Derrick, wanted to create something that was for them and not just about scores or highlights.
Our concept was to give Derrick and his teammate, Joakim Noah, a chance to relive some of their on- and off-the-court memories. We wanted to let Derrick and Joakim drive the conversation and give the famously soft-spoken Rose the chance to reflect with the fans alongside one of his most treasured teammates.
Derrick often led by example rather than words during his career, so fans really never got to hear his detailed perspective on his time with the Bulls. With his retirement, we wanted to take the opportunity to let Derrick reflect on some of his most iconic Bulls moments. However, to avoid it feeling scripted, we paired Derrick with an interviewer, none other than his beloved teammate – Joakim Noah.
While Rose was known as the Bulls best player, Noah was the emotional heartbeat of the team on the court. The team was famously hard-nosed and tough, going toe-to-toe as the main challenger to the, in Noah’s words, “Hollywood as hell,” Miami Heat, which featured a superstar combination of LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. Together, Derrick and Joakim not only balanced each other’s personalities but represented an era that is uniquely Chicago.
Once they were comfortable, our team played memorable clips and moments to elicit long-form, never-before-heard conversations and reflections that would be meaningful to Bulls fans. Each clip was segmented into topics with vague titles, leaving Joakim and Derrick surprised when selecting which one to discuss. Seeing their younger selves for the first time in years resulted in genuine reactions – from subtly wiping away a tear to whipping out a phone to record the screen they were seeing. This allowed fans to see their personalities in a way they perhaps never have before and continue to build their connection with these Bulls legends in a way that eclipses simple nostalgia.
As soon as we saw the footage, we knew we had something real that was going to evoke emotional reactions from Bulls fans worldwide. The 26-minute long-form conversation would ultimately live on YouTube, but the Bulls and Derrick decided that teasing the conversation via short clips and a brief trailer would generate excitement, all directing people towards a scheduled YouTube premiere on December 30. These teaser clips were posted on X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Reddit, and the fan reaction was extremely emotional. Dozens of fans disclosed that even these truncated clips brought tears to their eyes and caused them to set calendar reminders to watch the premiere.
Following the release of the video, we cut off shorter, newsworthy segments from the conversation that would keep the conversation going online and extend the life of the content.
The numbers on this video are, frankly, astonishing. The full, 26-minute video on YouTube alone has 460,000 views with an average watch time of nearly 8 minutes. In a world in which most social media content garners a watch time in the seconds, having nearly half a million people watch an average of 8 minutes is stunning. In total, the video was watched for more than 55,000 hours by our fans, making it one of the most watched videos ever published to the Bulls YouTube page.
The teasers and clips on other platforms also were widely shared and engaged with. In total, the Bulls posted 14 teasers or short form clips across other platforms. These 14 clips resulted in over 6 million impressions, 2.5 million video views and 420,000 engagements.
But just like the connection Bulls fans feel to Rose’s story, our goals for this video weren’t necessarily just in the numbers. We wanted to elicit a visceral reaction from the fanbase, which we achieved based on the comments, reactions and overall conversation around this piece. The comments – about tearing up, about reflecting on their own lives during this time, about what could have been – show that the fans themselves were also going down their own memory lane. With nearly 1,300 comments on the full piece and tens of thousands more on the clips we shared, we reached fans around the world in a truly authentic and meaningful way.
