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Encore Brand Releases New Videos

A few months ago, Connor Wilson told us how lacrosse advertising is changing. Well today, Encore Brand, founded by Johnny Christmas, released some videos that follow suit in a major way.

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Encore is a socially conscious apparel brand that raises money for lacrosse charities like LEAPS, Denver CityLax, and others. These new videos highlight some of the t-shirt projects Encore is undertaking to raise money for these very different, and very worthy, causes.

We Ball USA

The We Ball USA campaign directly supports the creation of the first ever lacrosse mural in the world.

Artist Tommy Johnson, founder of LaxArtist, is collaborating with Encore Brand and The Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia to design and paint a four-story mural depicting the sport of lacrosse, past and present. Proceeds from the “We Ball USA” t-shirts will finance this project.

As John travels across the country (and abroad) doing camps, tournaments, and LXM Pro events, he will add locations to the dozen lacrosse hotbeds already printed and Encore will immortalize them on We Ball USA t-shirts. Every location is for sale on the website.

Encore will make a video whenever John’s lacrosse travels bring him to one of the t-shirt locations. The first video is from Berlin, Germany, where the “I Ball Berlin” t-shirts he brought to the 2012 Berlin Open raised funds for the U19 German National team.

The second video was filmed on the Golden Gate Bridge in the area this campaign first started, Northern California.

AIC Movement (Action is Character)

Teams from across the country have been participating in the AIC Movement project for almost a year now. By creating custom AIC t-shirts, lacrosse clubs from youth age to post-collegiate have been pitching in one t-shirt at a time to help grow this sport in underserved communities.

When a team like the NorCal Braves participates, they receive a team order of shirts and a 3 hour lacrosse clinic from Encore Ambassador coaches in their area, guys like Jeremy Thompson and Johnny Christmas.

This summer, Encore sponsored the Denver CityLax team in Vail allowing team players like Maxx and Marrio Davis, Kyle Harrison, Sam Bradman, and Andrew Casimer to go to Denver before the tournament and provide a day of instruction for the kids in the program. The Lacrosse Network provided coverage:

And if after all this, you don’t think funding lacrosse in areas without it is changing lives, watch this:

Lacrosse may still be a small sport when compared to basketball or football, but that doesn’t mean out athletes aren’t doing great things for the sport, and the world.

Editor’s Note: In the interest of full disclosure, we should note that the author of the post, Josh Rottman, created many of the Encore videos above.