A couple quick notes today:

Don’t miss your chance for a $1 Million Dollar prize with the Gameops.com College Bracket Game.  Register and pick your brackets now.  If you don’t manage to win the $1 million dollar grand prize the best bracket in our game wins $100 from the Gameops.com Store and a Prize Pack frrom Gameops.com (what could be sweeter).

Also, just got this in from the good folks at Raymond Entertainment:

Don’t miss your chance to join me in Lake Elsinore California and learn from the mascot pros. Graduates of my Boot Camp include some of the best mascot performers in the business today! Space is limited so don’t get shut out!

Raw recruits, seasoned vets and mascot coordinators. Anyone who wants to increase the level of their performance and learn the tricks of the trade.

Register Now with Raymond Entertainment Group

Good luck on your Brackets.

-Cudo

The Bridgeport Bluefish professional baseball team has created a March Madness ticket package that will give one fan the chance to watch a Bluefish game from a luxury suite. The Basketball Tournament Package includes four tickets to one of the Bluefish games on Opening Day Weekend, one Bluefish mug and Bluefish foam finger, and a NCAA tournament bracket form. Fans that purchase the package must turn in their completed basketball bracket by March 20. The winner of the bracket pool will win the luxury suite. The package costs $65. (Team Press Release)

The Bluefish are tapping into the crossover sports fan with this seemingly unrelated (by sport or level) promotion.

As we discussed earlier this month there are ways to engage your fans with the College Bracket, both on and off line.  The above ticket package could have been managed all automatically on-line allowing fans to check in and see the on-going results.  (I actually could not find this promotion on the team’s website, which seemed like a lost opportunity.)
There is still time to register and join the Gameops.com College Bracket game….two million dollar prizes and more.

–Cudo

The Macon Music announced today that the team will host “Eliot Spitzer” Night on Friday, June 13th 2008 when the Music play host to the Aiken Foxhounds. (Team Web Site)

During “Eliot Spitzer” Night, the following elements will exist:

1. The Music have extended an invitation for former New York Governor Spitzer to be on hand and throw out the first pitch
2. The team will give away a New York Vacation including a one night stay at the MayFlower Hotel
3. Client #9 (or fan #9) will receive a free Music prize pack
4. Any fan with the name Eliot, Spitzer, or “Kristen” along with any fan from New York will receive $1 off admission
5. The Music will play Frank Sinatra music throughout the evening in honor of New York
6. Wire Taps will be placed throughout the ballpark this evening
7. ATMs will be available for cash withdrawals not to exceed $5,000 per hour
8. Any fan who has resigned their position will be given $1 off admission
9. The 871 fan will receive a gift certificate for the Macon Music Team store.

I won’t be holding my breath to hear if Spitzer appears to throw out the first pitch, but he probably has the time to swing down.

A playful promotion, arguably in poor taste, yet timely, well publicized and thorough.

It’s just a shame that this was done by the Macon minor league baseball team and not by the now defunct minor league hockey team, the Macon Whoopee. That would have been gold.  Promotions like that would have certainly kept the Whoopee in business.
–Cudo

10,000 Takes Blog openly questioned the MN Twins choice of a Billy Martin Bobblehead, giving it three strikes.

Strike 1: Promotions should be for kids. What kid in their right mind would want a Billy Martin Bobblehead. No kid knows who he is and no kid wants a bobblehead of a manager.

Strike 2: Promotions are attendance incentives when facing bad teams. We’ll cut the promotions department a little slack on this one. No one anticipated the Tigers being in first place before the season started.

Strike 3: There’s that whole anger management issue. In 1969, Martin got his first MLB managing job with the Twins and took them to the league championship. After the season was over, Martin was fired by owner Calvin Griffith. Why? Earlier in the season, Martin slugged star pitcher Dave Boswell in a brawl outside a Detroit bar (there’s no way the Twins promotions department recognized the irony) sending his pitcher to the hospital to get twenty stitches. That’s not the only punch Martin threw as a coach with the Twins. Martin also punched Howard Fox, the traveling secretary. (10,000 Takes Blog)

Interesting any time a fan takes the time to blog about your promotions, and probably as good of unsolicited feedback you can get. This blogger raises and interesting point about Billy’s rather tumultuous history as a drinker and brawler.

I do disagree a bit that promotions are only for kids. Promotions are targeted, some for kids, other for older fans, women, purists, or left-handers (okay, I made that last part up). Point is your promotion can be used to draw in any slice of your growing fan base.

This giveaway received a lot of pub, both in NY and MN (it was given out in 2006), many questioned the choice. When questioned Twins Marketing Guru Patrick Klinger clarified that the team polled fans on its Web site, asking which of half a dozen former members of the Twins they wanted for bobblehead days this season. “He was the runaway winner,”.

–Cudo

• Patrick Klinger Interview on Gameops.com from May 2002
• Celebrity Bobbleheads Spotlight
• Core Bobbleheads on Gameops.com

With the end of the hockey and hoops season coming, I thought I would do a couple posts about Fan Appreciation Night.  My main question is “What’s next?”

What I mean by is pretty much every team has a Fan Appreciation Night….and most do the traditional jersey giveaway….which like a bucket of Gatorade over the head coach’s head has grown a little clichéd.

So I am scouring the web and reaching out to readers for original ideas and new twists on the old tried and true.

The one that jumps out in the last couple years is the Dallas Airline Ticket giveaway from 2006, where every fan got an airline ticket.

I found this great starter list from the Seattle Mariners:

• 42″ Plasma Television
• Vacation Package for 6 nights for 2 in Cancun
• Mariners Season Tickets (Field Seats)
• Front Row Tickets to a Game
• Opening Day Tickets
• First Pitch Opportunity
• Lawn Consultation from Head Groundskeeper Bob Christofferson
• Mariner Moose Office Party
• iPod Nano
• 30 GB iPod
• Karaoke Machine
• Olympus Digital Camera
• Portable DVD Player
• Complete DVD Series - Star Wars & Indiana Jones
• Flight Museum
• Safeco Field Tour for Ten
• Autographed Jersey and Caps

Personally I find the most compelling prizes to be items like the lawn consultation by the grounds keeper and the Moose Party.  It makes your own internal elements seem more important and in the case of the Moose Party, even can help promote those parties to your fans.

If you have ideas or success stories, please drop us an email or use the comments on this blog and share them.

Thanks.

–Cudo

The Seattle Mariners will hold “J.J. Putz Soul Patch Night” at their April 12 game. The first 20,000 fans through the gates will receive a “stick-on” version of the tuft of facial hair, called a “soul patch,” sported by Putz, the Mariners closing pitcher. (Team PR)

Like Joe Mauer Sideburn Night, the Mariners have a quality giveaway that builds the identity of a player.

I have one slight nitpick with this, and that is that I am not really sure that Putz’ facial hair is really a “soul patch”.

The soul patch is a small patch of facial hair just below the lower lip and above the chin. It came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was a style of beard common among Black men, most notably black jazzmen. It became popular with beatniks, artists, and those who frequented the jazz scene and moved in literary and artistic circles. Jazz trumpeters in particular preferred the soul patch for the comfort it provided when using a trumpet mouthpiece. (wikipedia)

This hairy turf was covered before on ESPN’s Page 2, discussing the growth on skater Anton Ohno:

As for Ohno, the tuft of hair below his lip is technically a little more than a soul patch — reaching down to cover his chin, it’s a soul patch with delusions of goatee grandeur. (Minds, bodies and soul patches)

Ohno is from the Seattle area….so maybe this is just a facial hair nuiance in the Pacific Northwest….so I will let it slide.
–Cudo