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Washington Capitals Celebrate Alex Ovechkin’s 1,000th Point With Unique Snapchat Geofilter

Washington Capitals star forward Alex Ovechkin grabbed his 1,000th point last month during a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. This week, the team — at least in part — will be celebrating the accomplishment on Snapchat with a unique #Ovech1Kin geofilter.

The geofilter received more than 200,000 views in 24 hours on the first day it was released Sunday, according to James Heuser, Director of Digital Media with the Capitals. Views are based on the total number of people who saw the geofilter within Snapchat, either through using it, receiving the filter or viewing it on someone else’s Story.

For the current season, the NHL and Snapchat worked in tandem to provide all 30 teams the ability to create on-demand geofilters for the arenas, something that the Capitals have integrated into 10 of its theme nights throughout the year. After seeing the Chicago Blackhawks use a Snapchat Snapcode to unveil its Winter Classic jerseys this season, Heuser and his digital colleagues thought the platform would be a great way to celebrate Ovechkin’s point milestone, too.

“What we loved about the Snapcode was that it allowed us to finally take these geofilters that our fans have loved all season outside of the Verizon Center as well, allowing fans to build their “Ovech1Kin-Faces” from anywhere in the world and also for longer than just one night,” Heuser said.

(Courtesy of Washington Capitals)

A local cartoonist first created the “Ovi-grill” and the Ovech1Kin logo seen on the filter. Then, the in-house graphic design team developed the filter to mesh with the team’s season-long design campaign. Snapchat provided the Capitals with the tools to build the Snapchat Snapcode, which would allow fans to unlock the geofilter from any location.

As Heuser further explained, Snapchat has been one of the Capitals’ “top-four channels” the digital staff focuses on each year, along with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It joined the platform in 2014 as the first NHL team to publicly announce it had a Snapchat account.

“We see our Snapchat followers as some of our most engaged fans on social media — as well as most likely some of our youngest,” said Heuser, who also added that the Capitals are among the top five NHL teams when it comes to followers on the social channel. “We use Snapchat every game night to set up a story of the evening using our custom geofilters and allow multiple operators to work on the channel from multiple angles around the building.

“We see lots of potential in every new feature that Snapchat rolls out to have possible integration into how we cover our hockey team.”

Team owner and Chief Executive Officer of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, Ted Leonsis, and some Capitals fans had some fun recently posting their #Ovech1Kin Snaps to Twitter. The geofilter will be available until Feb. 12.

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