Minor League Baseball

Within a 24 hour period this week, the brand value sport of professional soccer in the United States took a huge jump.

While the pressure to find new ways to get bigger ROI and link athletes closer to fans spending their discretionary dollar grows, the legitimacy or original reasons for using social networking as a valuable tool becomes more clouded in many ways. Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter success, with the help of Charlotte-based Sports Media Challenge, broke the ice and showed athletes and brands how that medium could work as a successful connection tool.

Steve Ross is a billionaire or has made the Related Companies into one of the most successful commercial real estate companies in the world. He has purchased the Miami Dolphins, has shown savvy to find a way to keep Bill Parcells around, has let the team continue to grow after a surprising playoff season a year ago, and has a host of minority partners who he will tap into, including the legendary Jimmy Buffett. So this week the team announced a short-term deal to rename Dolphins Stadium after A-B’s Land Shark Beer, a Buffet brand.

Happy Mother’s Day weekend to all…my brother Chris, one of the only red head Italian baseball catchers ever…gets married today…so here are two good reads on 150 years of college baseball…once again college baseball on its 150th anniversary coulda been a good marketing oppt for someone…here’s the first on the Father of Hispanic Baseball…from Fordham…and Baseball Digest.com…and the second from NPR’s Only A Game on Saturday on the 150th anniversary of the first college baseball game between Williams and Amherst.

The value or effectiveness of twitter for teams, athletes and fans continues endlessly, even spurring a Maureen Dowd column about general use in the New York Times. However there is always room for innovation and proof that the simple technology, even without an ad compenent, can have some unique spin. Take the AAA Pacific Coast League Fresno Grizzlies, who last week set up a Twitter Challenge with the front office of the newest PCL member, the Reno Aces.

One of the most effective ways to grow brand remains at the grassroots level. The direct daily contact with the consumer still cannot be beaten by all the Facebook-ing, blogging and YouTubing that brands attempt, and even the high impact effect of mass media, both print and broadcast, still resonates only partly with what we use as consumers every day. All are parts of the picture, but going to direct to consumer for what they need remains king. Even better, when you can make a strategic tie to a local community, the positive impact for the long range goes up another notch.

One of the biggest reasons to have a strong communications leader in a company that has a public face is in times of crisis. Keeping everyone on track, following the flow of information, working with public authorities and media who may not be familiar with your situation or practices, and having the organization speak with one voice are critical when problems arise. For better or worse, one of the best groups at dealing with crisis, more because of habit than anything else, are the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Angels, led by their long-time head of Communications Tim Mead, were dealt such a difficult situation this week with the sudden, tragic loss of pitcher Nick Adenhardt, but they handled the public positioning very well.

As March Madness continues on the the necessity of these added Division I tournaments continues to be in question, we noticed two great examples of brand activation on lower level events pointed out by some quality bloggers. First Brian Gainor’s Partnership Activation blog had a good piece on how a local BMW dealer used the Division II Peach Belt Conference Tournament to activate, drive traffic and create buzz in the area.

Any sports fan in North America looks excitedly to the NCAA Tournament in March, as there are few, if any, annual events which gives us more of a true sense of endless possibilities that can occur than March Madness. Partners, even in a slow economy, looking to capture that key demo will line up for collegiate activation programs and work through CBS to get their brands exposed to the mass audience, even if they “underdog” lasts only the 48 hours from first to second round. But we all love our brackets. In light of that, Major League Baseball, and now baseball on a more global scale, has sought to create its own version of March Madness with the World Baseball Classic.

As the economy continues to fluctuate downward and more brands scramble to find ways to justify spends, we saw a few unique opportunities that deserved to be singled out, copied and probably advanced a bit as well. First we looked to Florida, where the University of Florida Gators were trying to find ways to assist those loyal fans who wanted to follow the Gators into the great beyond, by finding places to create a memorial area or a way to have the deceased have their ashes spread amongst the sidelines of the swamp or the baseline of the O’Connell Center. Now there have been teams in the minors that have given away funerals and one always hears about the ashe scatterings of the die hard fan

Some of the biggest and best activations in sports, locally, regionally and nationally, come from fast food chains. Whether it is McDonald’s Olympic Partnerships, Free Chili for when the Dallas Mavs hit 100 points or Burger King activating in the high school market, the reach to consumer through sports by the burger and taco joints has always been successful and effective. Now chain Carl’s Jr. has taken the relationship a step further, partnering with skateboarder and TV personality Rob Dyrdek for a series of viral video’s an in-store commemorative cup and even extending into a sponsored safe skateboarding campaign in Southern California.

I will start this off by saying this was not my idea today, but it is a good one I had wondered about for a while. It is Vince Wladika, former head of PR for Fox and now a consultant with a number of solid clients, and a college baseball nut. Friday, according to the site http://www.d1baseball.com/ is the official “unofficial” start of the college baseball season in America. No less than 75 games are played across the South and the West, with many involving teams from the Northeast and the Midwest on Neutral sites or in tournaments. No less than 15 of the top 20 will be in action, and it is a great day to watch live baseball, after the Caribbean Series ends and before spring training games begin.

Even as pitchers and catchers report in the States for Major League Baseball, our master marketers in the minors continue to be innovative and find ways to keep their local brands active, alive and relevant to the consumer, their partners and the media.

Like the circus, or really any “touring” sports brand from tennis to golf to the PBR…or even an annual “show” like the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, the Harlem Globetrotters must find new and innovative ways to engage fans, find new audiences and keep their brand top of mind when one of their teams makes their annual city by city stops.  Part of that is smart advertising, part smart marketing, but a big part is innovation and doing the “little” things that set them apart and get them noticed in advance of city stops or off the sports page and into the mainstream where the casual sports fan or the family member will see and remember them.  There were two good instances this week of the Globetrotters doing a little extra to

It is one of the most famous “non-cities” (it is a borough of New York) in the world…everyone knows Brooklyn.  One out of every seven people in the United States can trace their roots to Brooklyn.  there are fewer places on earth whose residents have more civic pride, and that pride has always been tied to baseball.  Until they went west, that pride was reflected in the Dodgers, and in the last ten years it has been in the Mets Single A New York Penn League team, the Cyclones.  Anyone challenging the tradition of Brooklyn, let alone its baseball team, could find himself with some issues.  That is, unless the tradition is challenged by the team itself, and this week the Cyclones scored some big points in the Barack Obama race by announcing