Finding ways to grab the attention of the casual fan in today's marketplace is critical, especially for those teams and brands with big pieces of inventory to move. Therefore last Sunday's local buy of Super Bowl time by the Minnesota Twins seemed like a really smart one for a brand that still has to push to find seats, is always looking to build its core of young stars AND will be moving into a new ballpark in the not too distant future. The Twins took advantage of an efficient local buy to make the unveiling of their new campaign, featuring the players they are building around, an event, and by hyping the ad and the buy beforehand, built more awareness towards those watching the game in the local market. They also made the smart digital play by posting the campaign online for fans out of market, and will be able to refer back to the campaign going forward as the season starts and people start thinking about baseball. It is not as common for other sports to crossover as one may think. Many times marketing leads us to the conclusion that the core fan of sport x might not be watching sport y, so the money is not worth it. However for an event like the Super Bowl, when money for a local avail may not only be welcomed but can be part of a bigger play going forward, the crossover would make great sense. After all, don’t most advertisers use crossover athletes in their national Super Bowl spots anyway (The Nike “faces” commercial this year being the best example. So for the Twins, using the Super Bowl as a brand transition spot, creating buzz and getting people to start thinking baseball was a Home Run move, and one that teams in many markets should think about more.
Some other good reads…also on the Super Bowl side, the LA Times had a good look at the people behind the Cash 4 Gold spot featuring Ed McMahon…one more Michael Phelps note…Darren Rovell noted in his blog Friday that Subway, a brand deeply invested in Michael Phelps going forward, will indeed keep him on their endorsement list…Time had a great piece by Walter Isaacson on how newspapers can survive…and Media Post had a good piece on New Balance's latest effort to support the breast cancer issue, a pink suede running shoe…good crossover cause marketing play.
