Not competing for batting averages or home runs, but likes on Instagram.

In a country where baseball is huge, no team is bigger than Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants. The Giants are so well-known and respected they often draw parallels with the New York Yankees, acquiring top players with ease and needing very little promotion.

That’s not to say they’re not active when it comes to publicity stunts, though, as their latest marketing drive sees seven of their players crossdressing on Instagram, as part of a fan event project called “Giants Fan Festa 2019 supported by DAZN“, which is due to be held at Tokyo Dome, their home stadium, on 23 November.

Dubbed “Giants Beauty One“, the beauty contest has the players competing for likes on Instagram, to see who will be crowned the most popular, and to really get everyone’s attention, the team won’t be officially revealing the player behind each female visage until the Tokyo Dome event.

Fans will be able to spot their favourite players, though, who have been transformed with the help of professional makeup, hair and fashion stylists to become a variety of characters, including a sexy Playboy Bunny…

▼ A career woman…

▼ An actress with a sharp, cool style…

▼ A young woman bundled up for an Omotesando Christmas date…

▼ A “cute and pretty woman” with particularly stunning eyes…

▼ A beauty with a fan and a Cheongsam dress…

▼ And a woman in a yukata at a summer festival “who only has eyes for you”.

As an added treat for fans, there’s also a short video showing what went on behind the scenes of the photo shoot.

A quick look at the current tallies shows the “cute and pretty woman with particularly stunning eyes” — whom many believe is Shingo Ishikawa, aka “Dynamite Shingo” — is currently in the lead, with 35,200 likes at time of writing. In second place is the Playboy Bunny, with 18,900 likes, followed by the career woman (17,900 likes), the woman in yukata (15,900 likes), the woman in the Cheongsam (15,000 likes), the actress (14,200 likes) and the woman on a Christmas date in Omotesando (13,500 likes).

With each entrant receiving over 13,000 likes, the campaign has been incredibly successful in catching everyone’s attention and increasing fan engagement. And with everyone now gushing over the beauty of the team’s players, it’s a very different scene from four years ago, when everyone was obsessed with the wife of Miles Mikolas, the U.S. baseball player who played for the Giants in 2015.

Source: Net Lab
Featured image: Instagram/yomiuri.giants
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