Expect Great a New Ad Campaign?
WNBA: We want no part of your rec league team. I'm sorry, but you couldn't pay me to watch women's basketball. No offense, but women's basketball is a joke.
Hey, they said it, not me.
Have you seen the WNBA's new "Expect Great" ad campaign? Candace Parker, Cheryl Ford and Tamika Catchings say horrible things about their sport. It's like a Rodney Dangerfield joke, but without the funny.
Syndicated columnist (and Guy Who Provides Moderately Witty Commentary During Poker on ESPN) Norman Chad laughs in the face of the "Expect Great" slogan because, well, you know how at the end of each commercial, the words "She wouldn't say that. Would you?" come up on the screen?
Normal Chad would, in fact, "say that."
Mystics beat writer Katie Carrera is also not a fan of the ad campaign, but not because she disrespects women/basketball/women's basketball:
"I've seen the ads several times now and while I understand what the league was going for by poking fun at itself, all the sarcastic ads seem to have accomplished is taking self-deprecation to a new level and providing more fuel for those who already tear down women's basketball."
Exhibit A, Norman Chad.
Mystics Insider readers also question the effectiveness of the ad campaign:
A Hardwick: I believe it was a very bad error in judgement on the League's part to this type of ad. Irony tends to go over the average male sports fan (being male I don't have an opinion how it played with women fans).
Allmond: Don't like the ads. Too negative. Not the way to bring in new fans. They are the brunt of jokes by my teenage sons. My 7 year old daughter does not understand the ads nor does she like her brother's mean jokes about the adds
headmonkey: I don't care for the ads. However well-intentioned, a focus group or two might have told them DON'T DO IT. As it is, I hope enough fans are making noise so that the league pulls the ads. I'd say they are accomplishing the opposite of what was intended. And Norman Chad? He's an idiot. Hey, bloggers. Can't you raise the issue to your editors that Chad is blatantly sexist and they are paying him to be, making themselves complicit?
I like my Stacey Dales bobble head, which happens to look like an Angela Martin bobble head.
So here's the big question: How can the WNBA successfully market itself? Perhaps something a little more positive and a little less. . . defensive? Sensitive?
To start off, here's my idea: Free WNBA bobble heads with the purchase of tickets. Can anyone resist a bobble head?
Leave your ideas in the comments.
By Lindsay Applebaum |
May 21, 2008; 2:36 PM ET
| Category:
Mystics
,
WNBA
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Posted by: Papa Smurf | May 21, 2008 3:10 PM
I can't stand the WNBA. I do watch women's sports sometimes and I coach a girls soccer team, but for some reason the WNBA hurts to watch.
NCAA Women's ball is good and can get pretty competitive. The WNBA just doesn't have it.
I appreciate the concept of their ad campaign, but we'll call it a swing and a miss.
And Lindsay, I LOVE the newspaper clipping behind your bobbleheads... 2 Santana Moss touchdowns 1:12 apart. Eat that, Parcells.
I still glow every time I see that.... oh football, why are you so far away?
Posted by: Bobblehead | May 21, 2008 3:48 PM
Linds:
i will give you 10 dollars american for that stacey dales bobblehead.. i do believe that is a deal you cannot refuse
Posted by: sec404 | May 21, 2008 10:11 PM
Lindsay,
I'll give you nine dollars for it.
Posted by: Bobblehead | May 22, 2008 2:48 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Sorry, but I think that the only way I could tolerate a WNBA game is if they were giving away Dwight Shrute Bobbleheads like the one Lindsay has. I doubt I could get motivated for a Mystic's player Bobblhead.
Hey is that your real desk? Maybe in future posts you could show us more of your cool tchotchkis.