Friday, February 6, 2009

How to Market a Hockey Team in the South

Here's an example of a good advertisement for an NHL team:



Why can't whoever does the marketing for the Atlanta Thrashers come up with something like that? It's not like Atlanta suffers from a dearth of ultra-famous pop stars. Throw noted Thrashers fan Lil Jon in a commercial. Or Missy Eliot, who lives here now. Or best of all, Outkast! Who WOULDN'T buy tickets to a Thrashers game after seeing Big Boi and Andre 3000 in a halfway-decent commercial, one that didn't look like it'd been filmed on 80s videotape rubbed in toilet rust?

Is it because the marketing folk have convinced themselves that their "target demographic" is tragic white people from the suburbs, and said white suburbanites are frightened by Teh Blaques?

The Atlanta Spirit are sitting on a goldmine of potential hockey fans in the Atlanta area. You know what might bring in more consumers? Being a quality team and winning games, first and foremost, yes of course. But a way to interest more people in the NHL might be an overhaul of its image (increasingly contrary to the reality) as hopelessly monochromatic. This isn't the fault of the Atlanta Spirit, of course. Expanding the NHL's fanbase beyond crackers would be the work of the entire league, and the work of several long years.

UNLESS THE THRASHERS PUT OUTKAST IN THEIR COMMERCIALS!

6 comments:

jamestobrien said...

Great post. Really, the only flaw of the commercial is Taylor Swift's weak Predatorial hand signal/growl. At least show some teeth!

Anonymous said...

We sould bring back those pseudo-appocalyptic/terminator/action movies type radio commercials that made my ears bleed last year(not that this years are much better). But really who the fuck does our publicity. Publicly castrate them immediatly along with DW, and well have a start.

FrenchCatalogues said...

You get this song to be played by Atlanta's unsung heroes. "Bad Kids" by The Black Lips. Hell, Showtime and HBO use this song all the time for commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZI4Kqb634w

Anonymous said...

Now, if more people actually knew (or cared) who Taylor Swift was...

Mortimer Peacock said...

James-

Thanks. I PROMISE I'll send you that Thrashers write-up within the next few days. I realize I've been unforgivably lazy about that.

Mortimer Peacock said...

Jointhead-

I find myself wondering just who our marketing people are as well. I mean...did you see that Blueland Zombie Attack commercial? It looks like it was filmed by some kid in a high school video production class.