Dear Wade Howell [Vice President; Down East Wood Ducks and Hickory Crawdads]:
Today is the Ticket Pickup Party! Can you feel the butterflies? Do you have a tingling sensation in your extremities? I am not ashamed today I felt a stirring when I awoke, and I was reaching across the bed to my wife, I was blindsided by creative genius.
You need to take the Wood to the enemy. By using social media, your organization can get your brand name out while building a cohesive fan base around a phallic rally point. Before every away series, we bombard the opposing team with “The Woodies are coming! The Woodies are coming!” We can even give DEWD a Paul Revere hat in this simple, but brilliant homage to the Revolutionary War. Your fan base will desperately want to join the Woodies Revolution. You might even be able to sell Paul Revere hats with the DEWD logo on them.
Once the Woodies Revolution gains momentum, your organization rolls out the targeted merchandising. “Grip the Wood!”, the new battle cry of the future Woodies Republic, can be plastered on various colors of t-shirts (properly presented online with mannequins) for the regular foot soldiers. If your organization follows my advice about the nursing home recruitment, “This Grandpa Has Wood” will be a top seller, along with “This Grandma Can Still Grip the Wood!” We can put “Remember Your First Woodie?” on the infant and toddler gear. Are you hearing those cash registers ring?
Wade, you might be thinking, “Bads, Bads, Bads – the poverty rate in Kinston is over thirty percent, and the median income is just $31,000 while the median home value is $104,000. People are not going to buy a great deal of merchandise, which is why we did not put much effort into our online sales presentation to begin with. Plus, this is a basketball town.” You know what, Wade, you are right, which is why we have to create a sense of need like those guys on Madmen used to do before the show was cancelled.
The first step to creating a need is to create a community that people desire to be a part of. To do that, there needs to be a place for people to hang out. Grainger Stadium does not offer much of that with the exception of Mother Earth Pavilion, but many people do not like to have with those craft beer snobs, as evidenced by the highly successful, Bud Light “Dilly! Dilly” campaign (hey, what do you think ever happened to those girls in the Spuds McKenzie commercials?).
There appears to be a quad area just outside on of your gates that would be a great meeting place for fans from the fifth inning on. I know you are thinking, “But then the fans that can’t see the game!” Well, yeah, that is sort of the point. By the fifth inning, most minor league fans are tired of watching baseball. They need a break. This allows them to stretch their legs, mingle, and share ORAL TRADITION. Put a hot dog cart and umbrella with a beer stand out there, and you have a social gathering place. Call it Woodies Commons, and you have an identity. Once you have an identity, well, you have a need, and the merchandise sales start booming.
I know this is some heady stiff and will probably take even a great minor league baseball minds like yourself some time to grip (see what I did there?). That is okay because the springboard possibilities to your Woodies Revolution and Commons are practically endless. Enjoy the Ticket Pickup Party today, and worry about the revolution tomorrow when I share the counterespionage campaign we will wage on social media.
Your friend in baseball,
Bads85
PS: Those Spuds McKenzie girls could be grandmothers now. Do they still grip the Wood?
Dead Religions 