By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The nasty social media comments about the Golden Knights’ new mascot, Chance the gila monster, were so vicious a year ago when the mascot was unveiled that the NHL team actually considered launching an anti-bullying campaign in response to the mean-spirited anti-Chance posts on Twitter and Facebook.
VGK Chief Marketing Officer Brian Killingsworth shared that choice nugget Monday afternoon at a sports branding discussion held by ThriveHive, a digital marketing company that is a sponsor of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open golf tourney at TPC Summerlin this week.
“We contemplated it,” Killingsworth told LVASportsBiz.com after he and five panelists chatted about sports branding at a hospitality building on The Hill at the 7,255-yard course. LVSportsBiz.com reported the story behind the mascot Chance in an Oct. 13, 2017 story.
Killingsworth brought up the social media mascot tale when the panelists talked about digital media strategies to build branding.
The Golden Knights ended up backing off the anti-bullying campaign idea and instead created an irreverent “Mean Tweets” video, which had fun with some of the actual anti-Chance tweets. The two-minute, five-second video consisted of players such as defenseman Colin Miller, staff and even owner Bill Foley reading tweets that hammered the mascot, with Chance absorbing the social media shots in humorous settings. Foley was the closer in the self-deprecating Chance video. You can see that mean tweets video here.
“When we launched the mascot, we knew we were going to take some lumps on social media,” Killingsworth told the listeners. But he noted the team knew that Chance the mascot was designed to appeal to little kids and wasn’t too concerned about the mean tweets from 40-year-old guys.
Joining Killingsworth on the panel were Kevin Camper, Las Vegas Motor Speedway senior VP of sales and marketing; Brandon Clark, Las Vegas (the ThriveHive event sheet said Las Vegas, not Oakland) Raiders, director of marketing; Rob Dondero, R&R Partners executive vice president; Lisa Motley, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) sports marketing director; and Heidi Noland, UFC vice president of global brand creative.
About 100 guests or so listened to the brand marketing advice from the panelists, who used the brand buzzword, “vertical,” a lot and talked about using digital media to reach demographic groups such as the coveted millennials.
Clark, the Raiders’ marketing chief, mentioned that 85 percent of the Raiders fans do not live in Oakland but he expects more than half of the fans at the new $1.9 billion, domed stadium project in Las Vegas to be southern Nevada residents.
The Shriners golf tourney is staging a Raiders watch party at The Hill hospitality center Thursday night, when the NFL team plays the San Francisco 49ers. The Raiders have about 20 full-time workers in Las Vegas as they prepare to open the 65,000-seat stadium in July 2020.
One discussion listener, Brandt England, who is the tourney’s volunteer division chairman for corporate hospitality, asked the Raiders’ Clark whether the personal seat licenses that cost as high as $25,000 to $75,000 apiece would price out local families from attending Raiders games in Las Vegas.
ThriveHive discussion moderator Mike Flanagan, also a Shriners Open board member, shot down that question. But Clark did say he expected most of the fans in the stadium on the west side of Interstate 15 across from Mandalay Bay hotel-casino will be from Clark County.
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Killingsworth explained that in VGK season 2, the team focused on local fans as the heroes in its Vegas Born 2.0 marketing campaign. While tourism and convention shows are big business in southern Nevada, Killingsworth noted that 85 percent of the VGK season ticket holders are locals.
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