How NHL Marketing is using its Players to reach a Whole New Audience through Storytelling
The National Hockey League is a marketing machine. As star athletes are building their personal brands through sponsorships and merchandise, the NHL is doing the same thing. NHL hockey cards, team jerseys, video games, and anything branded with an official logo is an exercise in marketing the organization’s been performing for decades.
Beyond the same merchandising and revenue-generating marketing the NHL has always done, they’re also starting to take the players and use their journeys or stories to sell more tickets, merchandise, and more.
Somebody like the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews can be featured in GQ Magazine and that’s promotion for the league. They’ve started to market a number of stars with great success, the NHL is investing more in telling players’ stories because storytelling sells.
In digital marketing, leagues like the NBA and the NFL have been marketing individual players whereas the NHL has always promoted teams. The result of this for the NHL has been lower TV ratings for their games compared to other sports and less attention overall.
At the same time, storytelling and humanizing corporations has been a growing trend for brands. Consumers don’t want to interact with a faceless corporation – they want real human beings. These days, it’s more about the player behind the gear than it is the logo on the front. The NHL has finally begun to market in the same way.
Even the players realize this. A few decades ago, star players like Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux did build personal brands and had successful business careers however they were not flashy, not media-trained, and lived mainly private lives.
In today’s landscape of 24/7 access via social media marketing and 24/7 news, players like Nashville Predators’ P.K. Subban are almost required to be more flashy, make more noise, be extroverted and sometimes unnecessarily so. Every player or human being for that matter engaged in social media is building a personal brand.
The NHL has taken advantage of this by using storytelling through vignettes like their Skates Off series, in addition to working to get star player personalities out in front where younger people can fixate on them. Like the NHL, brands must adapt. Today’s generation is about lifestyle, social responsibility, and celebrating self-identity. That’s where a brand’s digital marketing has got to go.
The more press a player receives, the more people tune in. It’s like that in every sport, from UFC down through to the NHL, and social media provides the platform for every player to make publicity and get attention. Unfortunately, on-ice, players are covered in gear and helmets. Personalities don’t shine through, outside of team play. Although some may think focus on the team is what’s most important, in the name of selling tickets and generating attention, the NHL marketing’s taking a slightly different approach. As the culture has changed, so has the marketing.
Storytelling is a huge element and influence over how we market digitally at Unlimited Exposure. As experts in Toronto digital marketing, we’re got our pulse on the culture and want to help your brand succeed in the same way we’ve helped dozens of others. Like the NHL and other companies, use dynamic, personality-driven stories to get your brand in public view and show them a smile you can’t normally show behind a logo.
