There are two seasons in Canada: hockey season and waiting-for-hockey season. Maybe you heard, but hockey season in Vancouver didn’t end particularly well last year.
For most hockey markets, the end of last season was a little more muted. Especially in Phoenix, where the NHL-owned Coyotes were swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the experienced Detroit Red Wings, shortly before losing their franchise goalie Ilya Bryzgalov to Philadelphia in free agency. Needless to say, hockey tickets in Phoenix aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes.
That’s where the Fallon Marketing Agency comes in. Opening a new sports marketing division they call “the Room,” they have unveiled their new ad campaign for the ‘Yotes: “Hockey the Hard Way.” Here’s a quick peek:
While it’s a bold endeavor, positioning the team as a plucky group of underdogs rather than the tried-and-true method of selling the stars of the game, it’s about the only thing the Coyotes can honestly do. As Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo! Sports Puck Daddy hockey blog writes, “being honest with the Coyotes’ challenges is the hook; it’s how this team deals with that adversity that’s the selling point.” And seeing how this team with the NHL’s 29th highest payroll has somehow managed to make the playoffs and be very competitive for the last two seasons, it’s probably their only selling point.
The biggest problem that the Coyotes are going to face won’t be on the ice, but off of it. After a deal to sell the team to Chicago-based business man Matthew Hulsizer fell through, it left ownership of the team in the hands of the NHL, who are actively seeking to sell the team, possibly to a group that will relocate the team outside of Phoenix. How then can you reasonably ask a paying fan to care about a team that could move at any time? It doesn’t matter how good or bad any ad campaign is, Phoenix needs long term stability and certainty before it can start building a dedicated and sizable fan base.
“Hockey the Hard Way” intro on Coyotes website: http://coyotes.nhl.com/