Let the Fans Market Baseball
Major League Baseball (they’ve got a good site, by the way) is using its fans, rather than its players, to promote this year’s season in a new ad campaign. I, personally, am a big fan of this concept, which I read about in Stuart Elliott’s, March 14th piece in the New York Times (registration required)
Apparently, the existing “I live for this” theme will be maintained – but the fans will be the focus (with a few player-focused ads scheduled later in the season, as well). From the article:
The theme of the campaign, "I live for this," remains the same, only now it is uttered by people wearing not uniforms but team-themed costumes, with logos painted on their faces and tickets around their necks, who were selected in open casting calls from Jan. 22 to Feb. 2 in Houston, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and Anaheim, Calif.”
This makes tons of sense for sports teams, and, such a campaign should be very effective for reaching female fans, in particular. And, even for ANY “product” – there is nothing like a “fellow” fan, lawnmower buyer, car buyer, baby products buyer, or healthcare customer, for example, to give consumers, male or female, someone to identify with during their purchasing process. For many a product or service, the more authentic people images, faces and stories are used in relation to a brand’s “presence” (marketing-related or otherwise), the more consumers (and especially women – big surprise) may identify with or trust the brand. Of course, the fans that "stepped up to the plate" (as it were) to audition for the campaign were bound to be the most vocal and enthusiastic fans around. Again, from the NYT article (info in brackets was added to clarify quotes):
“The fans chosen to appear in the six spots were those who told "the most compelling stories," Mr. Brosnan said, but candidates were screened to filter out actors trying to get on television. "No posers allowed," Mr. Brosnan [executive vice president for business of Major League Baseball} said. Mr. Warren[executive vice president and executive creative director of McCann Erickson Worldwide] said the agency and production team did "due diligence on the people we’d select, to make sure we’d have no ax murderers."
Still, many of the fans perform with drop-dead aplomb and flair.”
The enthusiasm and words of real people can rarely be perfectly caught by an ad copywriter (in most cases, that is), so get them straight from the source!
Next post, I’ll tell you about a Vermont-based national brand’s fun new, real people, radio campaign.
