In order for sports franchises to survive in 2017, they have to be creative on social media. OK, that's total hyperbole, but fans really appreciate when their favorite teams get creative. And few sports teams are as creative as the Carolina Panthers.
On Friday, they revealed one of the best moves we've ever seen from a franchise, taking the last three days to covertly and creatively lace their tweets with the lyrics from the theme song for "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."
Carolina's team didn't tell anyone it was doing it until Friday afternoon when the plan was complete.
So people started going back and reading and -- BAM -- mind blown.
First, the actual lyrics so you can put it in proper perspective:
Now this is a story all about how
My life got flipped-turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute
Just sit right there
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air
Second, in case you're some millennial reading this, the song in question:
And now the tweets (the "Now" that begins the lyric is in their tweet above revealing their ploy):
Whew. That took work to embed the tweets, much less come up with all of the stories. The really creative part is the bell emoji -- I pointed out what the Panthers did to my wife and she was curious how they came up with the "Bel" part of "Bel-Aire." There aren't a whole lot of things that begin that way without actually referencing the neighborhood or the show.
And, now that I think about it, I actually noticed that the Panthers had some odd tweets. The phrasing of "called upon" was weird when I saw it come across my timeline, but I just dismissed it as something that the team did in an odd fashion.
Turns out it was part of a story all about how the Panthers flipped turned Twitter upside down.