Good Ideas: Mets, Nets and Butts

Yet another good ideas roundup as summer comes to a close…

Brooklyn Goes For A Marketing Encore: The glare of the bright lights for a first successful season at the Barclays Center had not dimmed before the Brooklyn Nets started making noise for their second season…naming a new coach/old star and revamping their lineup to steal the summer away from their crosstown rivals. Along the way the organization even embraced hockey even more, accelerating their work with the Islanders and even taking management control of the re-development of their old building, the Nassau Coliseum. The tent poles in Brooklyn and Long Island give both teams a marketing leg up that extends across the valuable territory of Long Island, and with some success can even tweak into Manhattan.

They added a Russian star in Andrei Kirilenko, made the choice to broadcast in a mosaic of languages that reflect their borough, Spanish, Russian and English, and will market aggressive to all communities. They even chose to retire their new coaches number…Jason Kidd…on a PRESEASON night albeit against the Miami Heat…to bring even a little more early season buzz to the brand.  While the Islanders tried to take a page from the Nets buzz by adding things like a tattoo sponsor in their final seasons at Nassau, the Nets will attempt to market the two brands, and hockey fans and hoops fans usually don’t cross over well…as one lifestyle brand with the same partners.

While there may be some risk, for brands on the come like the Isles and Nets, there can also be great reward for economies of scale with teams that have distressed space to grow. It’s not something that can work well with mature brands…say the Knicks and Rangers who have their own categories to fill without support of the other team…but Nets and Isles makes sense as long as they are pulling from the same direction. Sometimes the encore can be even better than the opening act, and that’s what is hoped for in Brooklyn.

Wipe and Win: The guys at Dollar Shave Club have done it again…a fun way to engage a key audience with an effective spend, a charity component and a good message. They announced this week they have employed several of the most under marketed and larger than life athletes on the planet…NFL centers…in a campaign for a line of well…butt wipes.

One Wipe Charlies are flushable wet toilet-paper products launched in the spring and they have enlisted four NFL centers — Travis Frederick of the Dallas Cowboys; John Sullivan of the Minnesota Vikings; Eric Wood of the Buffalo Bills; and Nick Hardwick of the San Diego Chargers –– to appear in the male-targeted brand’s “Clean Snap” campaign.  The centers are largely from small markets not likely to draw big dollars or even large media attention on a weekly basis, except of course for Frederick of the Cowboys, in front of Tony Romo every Sunday. None have a big social media following either, and for the most part they are pretty name and faceless, but they are marketable as a group to a male audience, and a program like this will help probably raise the profile and put some dollars in their pockets.

Now all the details have yet to be laid out,  but the charity tie…every time the company sees a tweet reading #cleansnap, it will donate $1 to the charity of the four centers’ choice…is not a bad one. Can the centers enlist their high trafficked teammates to chip in with a mention or two…can some celebrity fans join the process and can some viral videos also help poke fun at the campaign for a brand that is not an NFL licensee…all to be seen.

Dollar Shave has built a strong brand out of the viral and the fringe, and this move is a little more bold but certainly lean and mean. Will it lead to some higher profile endorsers down the line? For mow it’s more brand building than product selling, but it certainly was a creative way to engage pro athletes who are under marketed and create a niche that draws the eyes.

Mets Grab Jerry For A Last bit Of Attention: Summer doesn’t end til Saturday night, but the Mets summer ended long ago. So for the team to find a way to bring positive and fun attention to themselves as the season winds down is a great salve for all wounds from the long season.

Tuesday night the team brought longtime fan Jerry Seinfeld into the booth to call the game alongside SNY regulars and Seinfeld fans Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. Seinfeld filled a similar role in 2010, and can certainly help carry a broadcast. To bring him back for a late September Mets-Giants telecast while the casual fan in New York has turned his eyes to football will get the team national exposure and probably provide lots of content for a long winter in the digital space. The series may be gone, but Seinfeld’s popularity and his talent live on, and that combo gives New York at least a triple for effort on a night when most people would be tuning elsewhere. It’s not overuse or overkill of a relationship, but a good strategic placement to go into the winter. Nice job by all around.