Minor-pro basketball franchise the Halifax Rainmen has launched an advertising campaign to coincide with the start of its new season.
The campaign, which includes print, out-of-home and radio spots, positions the Premier Basketball League team’s home games as a high-quality alternative to competing entertainment options, particularly movies.
For example, billboards that went up in Halifax last week depict five Rainmen players standing in front of a backdrop of clouds and lightning, accompanied by the headline “Better than any movie.”
Halifax agency Colour handled creative for the initiative, which includes new team logos and a revamped website developed in collaboration with Eclipse Media Group, also of Halifax.
“Colour came up with the campaign idea of ‘blockbuster basketball’,” said Leslie Macdougall, director of public relations and marketing for the Rainmen. “We were trying to get people to look at going to a Rainmen game instead of going to a movie, or instead of taking their kids to the Discovery Centre,” a science-focused family distination.
The “blockbuster basketball” tag line appears in the radio spots, which mimic the epic tone of major movie previews.
According to Chris Lydon, account manager at Colour–who also doubles as the public address announcer at Rainmen home games–the movie concept made sense from both a creative and strategic perspective.
“Part of the reason we’re targeting movies is that, from a price point perspective, they’re roughly equal,” said Lydon. “We’ve got a small group of dedicated basketball fans in Halifax and we also have a pretty good young basketball community, but in terms of a critical mass for a successful professional sports franchise, it’s not a big group.
“We tried to go as broad as possible by targeting younger families with the campaign.”
Print executions, as well as the Rainmen’s new logos and website, launched in December prior to the team’s pre-season schedule.
