Ahead of the fall hockey season, Sport Chek released a new ad Monday featuring Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, a long time spokesperson for the retailer.
The 30-second spot features young hockey players mostly from Crosby’s native Halifax decked out in his SC87 line of hockey gear – a Sports Chek exclusive – imitating the sports star during street and amateur games.
Created by Sport Chek’s agency-of-record Sid Lee, the spot pieces together footage of Crosby on the ice with kids playing hockey, each mirroring the others’ moves until all of them score at the ad’s conclusion.
Dave Roberts, executive creative director at Sid Lee, said that by using real consumers, the ad taps into the fantasy many young Canadians have of growing up to be a star like Crosby.
“Every hockey player imagines being the star in the middle of an important game,” Roberts said in a release. “In Canada, being a star means playing like Crosby. For us, this spot speaks to how much Canadians love the game and how much Canadians love Crosby.”
Wendy Robinson, associate vice-president of campaign marketing at Sport Chek’s parent company, FGL Sports, echoed his sentiment. “Every hockey player wants someone to have someone to aspire to,” she said. “I believe aligning Sport Chek with Crosby and having that aspiring athlete, to be able to emulate an athlete of that stature, is something that’s pretty exciting.”
The ad also features Dayne Greiner, a young hockey player from Calgary whose family was affected by floods in Alberta earlier this year. The retailer flew Greiner to meet Crosby – one of his heroes – and be part of the ad.
Touché‘s Montreal office handled the media buy, running running the spot on a variety of sports and network properties through Sept. 1 (because hockey season doesn’t start until October, Touché purchased ad space on other sports-related properties, including tennis matches and golf tournaments). The ad is currently running on specialty networks including ESPN, CSN, Sportsnet and the History Channel as well as conventional network channels like CBC and CTV.
As part of the campaign, which also includes online pre-roll on YouTube and the French-language Dailymotion, a 12-page magazine style catalogue distributed nationally, point-of-sale materials and social media, Touché also arranged a partnership with Sportsnet to feature 10-second sponsorship ads during games and campaign messaging on the lower third of the screen during programming.
Popular among brands, Crosby has also been featured in ads for Gatorade, Tim Hortons and Dempster’s. Sport Chek has been working with him since 2010 and in the past it has featured Crosby in several commercials and ran contests offering consumers a chance to meet the hockey player.
Robinson said the brand also plans to use him in its upcoming Olympics campaign ahead of the Sochi Winter Games.
