To signal change is coming, the Devil Rays unveil a new marketing campaign.
By LOUIS HAU, Times Staff Writer
Published October 14, 2005
An image of home plate appears against a plain, white background. Suddenly, a huge wrecking ball crashes down on top of it.
"Our temporary baseball," reads the legend at the top of the screen. With a loud clang, a yellow road sign flaps down over the scene, featuring the Tampa Bay Devil Rays logo and the words "UNDER CONSTRUCTION."
This wry 15-second TV spot is one of six the Rays will launch Sunday as part of an advertising campaign. The ads indicate big changes are coming to the team after a new ownership group led by Stuart Sternberg took control of the troubled franchise last week from former general managing partner Vince Naimoli.
"We are sending a message to our current fans that it's a new day," said Dave Auker, the Rays' senior vice president of business operations. "And we're connecting with baseball fans that may have stayed away from Tropicana Field that we want to invite back."
With the regular season having ended, mid October is an unusual time for a Major League Baseball team to launch a marketing campaign. Such efforts aren't even a given when a team undergoes a change in ownership. The Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, did not take out ads touting real estate mogul Frank McCourt's takeover of the team in January 2004.
But then, the Dodgers maintained a winning record during six seasons under their previous owner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. And these are unusual times for the Rays franchise and its new owners, who have come in amid hopes they will make a clean break from the team's past, build it into a contender and repair its strained relations with local fans and sponsors.
The three-week ad campaign, which was designed by the Tampa advertising firm of Pyper Paul+Kenney, will include broadcast and cable TV advertising throughout the Tampa Bay area and print ads in local publications.
Auker declined to say how much the team was spending on the effort, saying only that the budget is "well into the six figures."
The TV ads are 15-second spots that play off the "Under Construction" theme and follow the same story line as the wrecking-ball ad. The other spots feature a construction worker ("Our temporary mascot"), a yellow hard hat ("Our temporary batting helmet") and a sledgehammer ("Our temporary baseball bat").
They include no voiceover narration and no sales pitches for game tickets or merchandise. "We wanted it to be very simple," Auker said.
Auker and new Rays president Matt Silverman decided in late September that the team should prepare an ad campaign to be launched not long after the anticipated announcement of the changeover in team control from Naimoli to Sternberg.
In consultation with Pyper Paul, the Rays settled on the "Under Construction" theme, Auker said, after Sternberg remarked, "We're going to look at the organization from top to bottom, everything from off the field to on the field, in the community to Tropicana Field. Those comments helped forge where we went with this."
That left Pyper Paul with just a few weeks to bring the concept to fruition. At one point, the firm considered a story line involving local residents coming en masse to the Trop to tear it down and build a new facility. But the team thought the concept would have put too much emphasis on the ballpark, when it was the organization that was being overhauled, Auker said.
Pyper Paul executive creative director Tom Kenney said the point of the ads is to convey the message that changes are coming, without getting into specific details because it isn't yet certain what those changes will include.
"We know that exciting things are coming," Kenney said.
Although Sternberg was kept abreast of ad proposals, he wasn't directly involved in most decisions, relying on Silverman, Auker said.
"Matt's got a great sense of what Stu's looking for," Auker said, adding that Silverman had on occasion turned down some ideas he described, as "not Stu's style."
But Sternberg was involved in a last-minute change to the print ad, when he called Wednesday night to say he wanted to insert a reference to the warm reception he and his partners have received.
In the print ad, slated to appear Sunday, Sternberg thanks the bay area for an "exceptional welcome" and pledges hard work to merit the support.
"In the meantime," he adds, "please pardon our dust."
