This is why you leave the marketing to the experts...your sponsors.
The Detroit Red Wings are into their full-on rebuild mode, so Bud Light decided why not have a little fun at Little Caesars Arena for the 2018-19 season.
If you have not seen the “Dilly! Dilly!” commercials that Bud Light has been marketing for the past 18 months, you are missing out on advertising gold. The commercials are funny, whimsical, and you almost have to watch them every time they come on.
Bud Light sponsored “Victory Fridges” for when the Cleveland Browns won their first NFL regular season game in almost two full calendar years. When the Browns beat the New York Jets a few weeks back, videos from ESPN’s Cleveland affiliate (WNKR 850 AM) and WWE’s Mike “The Miz” Mizanin begging the wifi-enabled chains to drop, allowing access to free beer went almost as viral as the commercials themselves. Even Browns’ quarterback Baker Mayfield asked the team on the NFL Network postgame show if the fridges opened, after he brought the Browns to a victory in his first professional game.
The good people at Anheuser Busch have now branched out to the NHL. If you plan on either attending or watching a Red Wings’ game this season, pay very close attention to when an opposing player gets sent off for a penalty. The player will now be forced to sit either two (or fewer), five, or 10 minutes in the “Bud Light Pit of Misery.”
Yes, as if the retirement of captain Henrik Zetterburg just two weeks before the start of the regular season was not enough of a damper of the spoked wheel faithfull, there is now visual proof that home games for Detroit hockey will be an advertising vessel for the next six months.
The Red Wings finished with only 73 points (30-39-13) in 2017-18, and were .500 (16-16-9) at home. The only part of the final record that seemed respectable was that it allowed Detroit to finish fifth in the Atlantic Division, yet a full 23 points behind the fourth-place Florida Panthers, who narrowly missed the playoffs. In fact, if you look at the five worst records in the NHL last year, Detroit came in at five, and the other teams below them in the Atlantic (Montreal, Ottawa, and Buffalo) claimed all but one of the bottom four spots.
So not only will the hockey be bad on the ice in “Hockeytown” this season, but fans will have to attend games in an arena named for cardboard pizza, and poke fun at opposing players sitting in a penalty box with a marketing campaign based in medieval times.
Artemi Panarin of the Columbus Blue Jackets has the distinction of being the first opposing player to be cast into the Pit of Misery, committing a tripping penalty at 13:09 of the first period on Thursday’s season opener for the Red Wings.
Zetterberg was the only one of two Red Wings to score over 50 points last season. Their #1 goaltender Petr Mrazek was traded to Philadelphia at the deadline last year. Tomas Tatar was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights (who in turn flipped him to Montreal in the off-season). Detroit’s current roster features 12 players age 25 or under, and 10 players older than 30. The Red Wings have $5.6 million in salary cap space to work with, so they should be buyers to make them competitive as the snow begins to fade in early 2019.
Bargain basement beer, bargain basement pizza, bargain basement roster. A Pit of Misery, indeed.
-JC24