Dodgers Shoot for Star Power, Market Team to Younger Fans
By REBECCA FLASS
Staff Reporter
A shot of Jack Nicholson in a front-row seat, strains of “I Love L.A.” in the air, an electronic scoreboard that seems on the verge of exploding Staples Center, right?
Try Dodger Stadium during an afternoon game against the Yankees.
Even as they sit atop the Western Division of the National League, the Dodgers are looking for ways to spruce up a brand that has been tarnished by years of lackluster play. And it’s all about bringing entertainment to the park.
“Sports is entertainment,” said Lon Rosen, executive vice president and chief marketing officer who joined the team in May. “People come here to get away from the problems of the world. But there’s a new generation of sports fan it’s more of the Nintendo/PlayStation generation. The way people watch sports has changed over the years and we need to do a generation shift, as well as being responsible to the fans who have been here for years.”
The Dodgers project an 8-12 percent increase in attendance this year, but Rosen said that isn’t good enough. “We still have empty seats,” he said. “We’re not going to be happy until we hit 4 million.”
To drive the gate, the Dodgers are targeting younger fans by bringing more energy into the stadium, holding up the Los Angeles Lakers as a model. The club has invited the likes of Nicholson, Owen Wilson, Rob Lowe and Sylvester Stallone and then displayed their faces on the stadium’s big screen.
“All of it helps,” said Rosen, who years ago used to head promotions for the Lakers. “With everything you do, you throw it into a bowl and you see what works and you see what doesn’t work.”
It’s quite a switch from the days when the O’Malley family owned the club and the notion of marketing was pretty much limited to cap days and group sales. That started to change under the ownership of News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment Group, and sports marketing experts see a further shift under the new owners, Frank and Jamie McCourt.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the team is doing well this season.
“You’re always going to market, but the strategies are going to be different based on winning and losing,” said David Miller, president of Integrated Sports Marketing in San Diego. “There is greater demand for tickets when the team is winning and you can change the emphasis away from price, so that it’s more, ‘Come and see the game, you can’t miss it.’ If the team is not doing so well, you may have more of a value message targeting giveaways.”
Rosen acknowledges it’s a work in progress. Some fans have griped about the minimal presence of longtime organist Nancy Bea Hefley, whose renditions of old-time standards have been replaced by the boom of hip-hop.
“We’ve had people say they prefer to have more organ music, but we expected that,” said Rosen. “These things are obviously something that goes with the territory. We’ve tried some things, and some of those might not have worked.”
There also was Rosen’s off-handed remark about considering a team mascot, which led to a flood of negative letters, e-mails and phone calls. Rosen says the idea was not seriously considered.
“The idea of broaching a mascot so early into McCourt’s new ownership was a combination of testing the waters to see how people feel about it and maybe not understanding the fact that Dodger fans care so much about the team that they do not need to add a cheerleader,” said David Carter, principal of the Sports Business Group.
The team is ending its relationship with the agency that handled its advertising for the last five seasons, WongDoody in Los Angeles. This year’s campaign, conceived under the old regime, featured the family of talking bobbleheads that got a mixed reaction.
“It was safe and conservative, and in a transition year, with a new owner coming in and a transition with the marketing and business staff, I don’t know that they had the chance to roll out the most creative of campaigns,” said Rosen.
The Dodgers are expected to name a new ad agency as early as this week. WongDoody officials did not return calls.
“This is a brand that is in need of refinement more than an overhaul,” Carter said. “Its customer appreciates the past, appreciates being able to pull up to Dodger Stadium, see the palm trees, sit down and have a Dodger dog and escape the rat race for a few hours.”
