New York Giants’ Interactive Site Pays Tribute to 1990 Super Bowl Champs

The anniversary is being celebrated in linear, digital, in-venue, radio, and print

Before the New York Giants’ improbable victory over the 18-0 New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, before David Tyree’s memorable one-handed catch in Super Bowl XLII, there was Super Bowl XXV. The Giants, led by coach Bill Parcells and quarterback Jeff Hostetler — who had taken over for injured starting QB Phil Simms late in the regular season — defeated the Buffalo Bills 20-19. To this day, it is the only Super Bowl decided by one point.

This season marks the 25th anniversary of the 1990 New York Giants’ Super Bowl victory, and, to commemorate the milestone, the team launched an interactive Website chock-full of feature stories, photos, and videos from that season. The launch of the site — www.giants.com/1990 — coincides with the Giants’ first home game of this season, and the 1990 team will take the field at MetLife Stadium this Sunday.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH THE GIANTS’ 25 STORIES, MOMENTS, AND ARTIFACTS

Giants Entertainment — the media, marketing, programming, production, and events arm of the New York Football Giants — began the process of compiling content for the 25th-anniversary season earlier this year to populate its linear, digital, in-venue, and radio offerings and print publications.

After discussions with former players and team personnel, the content flowed in. Running back Otis Anderson discussed his lucky pants. Mike Malarkey, the team’s photographer, recalled sneaking New Jersey native — and Giants fan — Jon Bon Jovi into a game as a fellow photographer. And Hostetler described how he would have missed the post-NFC Championship flight to Tampa if not for an intervention by Hall of Famer John Madden.

Quarterback Jeff Hostetler hoists the game-winning ball in Super Bowl XXV.

“You have to include [the big plays], because that really tells the story of the team, but we also wanted to get those behind-the-scenes stories,” says Nilay Shah, director of digital and social media strategy, New York Giants. “We sat down with different people that were involved with that team to try to find these stories. … It was a lot of research and a group effort of everyone knowing that we wanted to go above and beyond just the typical plays.”

The Giants decided on 25 unique stories — five feature stories and 20 smaller ones — laid out with a unique parallax scrolling design (as the user scrolls down, the stories come up). Adopting a similar interface to its More Than Just ‘The Catch’ site — an interactive look at Odell Beckham Jr.’s rookie season — the Giants opted to lay out the five feature stories interspersed with five rows of four stories apiece.

“[The Beckham site] was an extremely long-form thing that we chopped up, but it was all on one page,” says Shah. “For this, we knew we wanted 25 unique stories, but we wanted an easy way for fans to be able to see all 25. If you make it just a list of 25, your page goes extremely long. … This showcases all the stories in an easy way for everyone to [navigate].”

Drawing on similarly designed Websites, the Giants Entertainment team created the Website in-house over the offseason. The most important step, says Shah, was building a site with the mobile experience in mind. Whereas the desktop version favors articles and images, the mobile-friendly version prioritizes video content (all videos are hosted on YouTube and embedded into the articles).

Throughout the season, Giants Entertainment plans to focus on one story per week across its various platforms, including videoboard features during the game, social-media blasts, magazine articles, and radio spots.

“We’re definitely going to make this a season-long celebration,” says Shah. “We’re a fully integrated department, so it makes life a lot easier when your publications, your TV shows, and digital are all working together. That way, you can have one message on all those platforms in unison throughout the 16 weeks of the regular season.”