2010 NHL Winter Classic Can’t Miss, Commercial Does
Posted on December 7, 2009 - Filed Under Advertising, culture |
Last week, I wrote in Ad Age about the coming third annual NHL Winter Classic and how it’s become a very important brand for the league. The consensus among U.S. ad buyers, NBC execs and the NHL itself was that the game had put hockey into a lot of business conversations that it previously hadn’t been a part of. It’s elevated the NHL’s status (at least in the US) by creating a meaningful event that’s acted as a magnet for casual fans and marketers. Yeah, yeah, feel good hockey stuff, right?
Well, while the game and event itself may be bullet-proof — how else would you describe a game at Fenway Park between the Boston Bruins and Philly Flyers on New Year’s Day? — the newly unveiled commercial made to promote it is not. As I said in today’s Cheap Seats entry, I get it, I know what the folks at the NHL’s ad agency Y&R were going for. It’s the modern rink-morphs-to-frozen-pond thing. Makes total sense. Except the end result is just utterly lacking any sort of emotion, be that nostalgia, adrenaline, humor, anything. This is hockey. The ads for a game like this in a city like Boston should feel more like a punch to the face than a long-distance phone commercial.
In that same Cheap Seats bit, I say they should’ve looked at favored Beantown sons and sports fans the Dropkick Murphys. The band’s played at Bruins games before, has a few Bruins-flavored tunes and rocked the Red Sox theme for the team’s historic 2004 World Series run. And they’re insanely popular in that city. You couldn’t find a better fit for a musical hockey/Fenway/hometown hero hat-trick. So until that puck drops and interrupts our New Year’s hangover, we’ll have to make do with this:
Comments
Leave a Reply