An underdog collars the Islanders
A. J. CARTER
A.J. Carter can be reached by e-mail at aj.carter@newsday.com
July 17, 2006
Sometimes, taking a chance pays off.
Chris Botta, the New York Islander vice president for communications, didn't know what he'd get when he asked the ad agency blumenfeld + fleming to pitch the team's account. "I figured it would be hit or miss," Botta said. "My hunch was that when they made their pitch, we were all going to be looking at each other like, 'Oh, boy, you know, this is not going to work,' or that they might give us stuff that really opened our eyes."
Which is what happened with Lynn Blumenfeld and Jill Fleming made their presentation, which explains how a small agency, run by women and based in Montauk, beat out larger, male-dominated, up-Island firms for the team's outside advertising work. "They were the one group that, when they showed us their stuff, the Islander people were looking at each other and saying, why didn't we think of that?" Botta said.
Hockey wasn't new to the two. Fleming grew up in hockey country, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Blumenfeld went to Rangers games with her family while growing up in New York City. Both had sports-related accounts working for agencies in Manhattan. "The male mindset thing, that was not an issue for me," Fleming said.
What made things work was that the Islanders weren't looking to sell hockey. "It's not just a matter of saying hockey's a great game, come out and watch hockey, which is sort of the facile, superficial approach," Fleming said. "You'll see that with a lot of sports advertising." Instead, she said, the Islanders wanted to combine "the excitement of the game as well as the feeling of pride one has in their hometown team."
To get the sense of hockey fans, Blumenfeld filmed and taped interviews with about 40 people. She also posted a questionnaire to people on an e-mail list. In the end, a line Fleming came up with was the winner. Blumenfeld noted it is aimed at recapturing "lapsed Islanders fans." The line: "Long Island: surrounded by water, united by ice." It appears in one of the first of the ads, along with the tagline: "We're all Islanders."
Blumenfeld noted that she and Fleming will help bring back lapsed fans - some of them family - as they attend a couple of games a month. "Jill's son is 15 years old and clamoring with all of his friends out in Montauk," Blumenfeld said, talking about Mack Fleming's sudden interest in his mother's clients. "He's not that involved when we win the Advantage Title account."
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