As an “Original Six” team, the New York Rangers predate the formation of the NHL and have been iconic to the game of hockey for decades. Their fanbase goes back generations, and they have a unique language and traditions that make Rangers hockey a special experience each and every season.
Client
New York Rangers
Year
2016
Branding the 2017-18 Season
“Together, We Are RangersTown” was the strapline being used by the creative team when I joined in 2016. Every campaign under this brand identity focused on hyping up the Rangers as a community. Whether we were selling tickets, merch or events, the creative was always designed to inspire action by celebrating the Rangers fans, players, culture and history.
Rallying Around RangersTown
For the 2017-18 season, we continued using fans, players and past legends in our creative, only we elevated the campaign. We made it more story-driven and used stronger language, like the rally cry-style from our 2017 playoffs creative.
Pitching RangersTown Stunts
Every new season’s campaign included a deck of marketing stunt ideas. On the Rangers side, it was my responsibility to take 10-14 of the creative team’s best ideas and workshop them into realistic executions. The writeups needed to show how a stunt fit into the campaign and/or brand identity, how we could pull it off within a budget and what the expected community impact would be.
Calling RangersTown to Action
Hockey season offered about 7 months of consistent work. Ads for ticket sales, ticket plans, season ticket renewals, merchandise, themed nights, special events, brand ambience and in-arena activations were constantly being produced and refreshed throughout the season. The list of deliverables varied, but the big needs were usually arena boards, in-arena reads, TV reads and emails.
Career Highlight
I left the organization around mid November, and so there was a scurry to complete a bunch of the 2017-18 season’s earliest needs before my exit. I stepped up my workload to deliver creatives for various ticket plans, merchandise ads and special events campaigns like Jean Ratelle Night, which was slated for February. I even successfully pitched the 2018 Winter Classic campaign concept, an award-winning campaign I didn’t actually get to work on.
Season Ticket Membership
After reviewing over 1,000 real stories from New York Rangers fans and legends, I picked out and pared down about 50 quotes and stories for the creative used on the season tickets. The pamphlet itself offered a few opportunities to write creative copy about the new chapter ahead for Rangers hockey.
Career Highlight
The “Together, We Call the Garden Home” campaign was a massive undertaking. The campaign included an email journey with 11 emails, a comprehensive website, print pieces, video scripts, in-arena announcements, on-air reads, talents reads and other deliverables, all due in early spring when the playoff run was heating up. Despite the aggressive price up, the campaign surpassed expectations and achieved a 93% renewal rate.
Staying on Brand-ish
There are exceptions to the rules, and this project was a slight deviation from the season’s brand style. We traded the frenetic energy of the campaign for a softer direction. Visually, the illustrator was more playful with the design, and I altered the voice to promote togetherness in a family-oriented tone over the usual rally cry approach.