Special Event Advertising
Baseball Shows How to Promote a Happening Like its All Star Game
Jul 23, 2008 Carroll Trosclair
Advertising and promoting a special event can be monetarily and creatively challenging in today’s fragmented media markets, even when the event is the fabled Major League Baseball (MLB) all-star game.
Promoters will take on that challenge when St. Louis hosts the 2009 all star game next July. Major League Baseball hopes the promoters will pick up some tricks from the successful advertising and promotion of the 2008 game in New York’s Yankee Stadium.
They are expected to focus on former Cardinal stars like Stan Musial to help make up for the smaller St. Louis market. The 2008 game had all the ingredients of a slam dunk success: a New York location, the huge Northeast television market and the retirement of historic Yankee Stadium. In addition, the game was being hosted by the most successful club in baseball history and all-time media star Yogi Berra was available to draw attention.
But there was some harsh reality to face: San Francisco’s 2007 game drew only 12.5 million viewers to Fox Television, the second lowest audience ever for the all star game. That was a scary contrast to the 1977 audience of 31 million.
Not Much Baseball Joy in New York
Besides, as baseball paused for the all-star game, there was not much baseball joy in New York.
- The Yankees were six games out of first place;
- Voters around the country had just snubbed Yankee favorite Jason Giambi for the last spot on the all-star roster, generating some game boycott rumors;
- One Yankee star was getting headlines with a nasty marriage scandal;
- The New York Mets had no one on the National League all star starting team.
Adding to the challenge, Major League Baseball was counting on New York to rebuild interest in the all star game. Tim Brosnon, MLB’s executive vice president for business, told Richard Sandomir of the New York Times: "We’ve made a concerted effort to be ubiquitious."
They also assumed that the game itself could no longer generate sufficient excitement to create a sellout and a huge TV audience.
With all that in mind, the promoters scheduled a baseball Hall of Fame parade and a free concert to supplement the baseball game. They added a five-day fanfest featuring a home run derby, a three-point basketball shootout, daily autograph sessions, memorabilia from the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown and personal appearances by former baseball greats. They also staged a "Homers in the Hudson" hitting contest. The Postal Service issued a "Take me out to the ball game" special stamp.
Statue of Liberty in Baseball Apparel
They created a new attention-getter: Statue of Liberty replicas adorned in baseball apparel. The human-sized statutes were spread around Manhattan for pedestrian and television exposure. Minature versions were sold on the Internet.
Brosnon estimated the statue cost and distribution at about $500,000. "We’ve gotten enormous attention from it, more than you’d get from spending a half million dollars in media," he said.
MLB planned to later auction the statues for charity, another potential publicity maker.
The promotions paid off. Besides the stadium sellout, 14.5 million people watched the Fox telecast, according to the Nielsen Media Resarch.
Reviewing the New York effort, Larry Baer, the San Francisco Giant executive vice president, said future all star games will be promoted "at a higher level than it has been."
Reference:
- New York Times, July 11, 2008
- David Bauder, Associated Press, July 22, 2008
- Brandweek, July 14, 2008
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