Sport Chek is all set up for a swish.
The retailer launched a marketing campaign Wednesday as part of its Toronto Raptors sponsorship, coinciding with the team’s season opener.
The comprehensive campaign includes a minute-long video, an exclusive clothing line and a nine-part documentary series produced in partnership with TSN. It marks the first Raptors-themed campaign Sport Chek has done since its parent company, Canadian Tire Family of Companies, signed a massive deal last fall to sponsor every Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment stadium and team.
Like the rest of the campaign, the anthemic, emotionally-driven spot focuses on grassroots basketball culture and stories gleaned from players in nine cities and neighbourhoods in the Greater Toronto Area.
The video, conceived by Sid Lee and produced by TSN, features amateur basketball players from nine communities – Toronto, Brampton, Markham, Vaughan, North York, York, Etobicoke, Mississauga and Scarborough. It will be supported by a media buy handled by Touché.
The brand went grassroots instead of filming a glossy star player spot in order to tell a “more authentic” story, according to Shelley Girard, associate vice-president of marketing at FGL Sports.
“We wanted it to be a celebration of the rich and robust basketball community that existed already,” she said. “We felt like there was an opportunity to celebrate these existing stories and tie it into the momentum of where the Raptors have been and where our partnership is going.”
The campaign takes inspiration from the Raptors’ marketing, most notably its recent #WeTheNorth campaign. Like Sport Chek’s spot, that ad (also by Sid Lee) was a black and white anthem about the intersection of basketball and community pride in Toronto.
“There’s no doubt leveraging the “We The North” momentum was something that was part of our thinking,” she said. “It was absolutely a uniting force in basketball culture in the GTA. It’s what got us excited for the partnership.”
The “We The North” campaign title will be splashed across t-shirts at Sport Chek this fall; one of two Raptors-related lines the retailer’s selling. Starting in mid-November, Sport Chek is also selling an exclusive collection made in partnership with Adidas that will feature designs focused on each of the nine Toronto areas from its campaign.
Sport Chek is also asking customers to share their own basketball stories using its campaign hashtag, #MyNorth. It plans to cut together fan photos, videos and stories into marketing materials that will be used on social media and shown on the jumbotron at games.
This season the brand will have an increased presence during games, including more ads and logos in the arena and spots running on the jumbotron.
Canvasing the basketball community
In crafting the campaign, Sport Chek enlisted the help of Elvis Dennis, a prominent figure in the world of GTA basketball. Dennis, who works with CIA Bounce, a player development program, acted as a consultant, teaching Sport Chek about where the basketball community hangs out, what they’re talking about and the “it” courts to play at.
Those courts and meeting places ended up as locations for the video and helped inform the campaign at large, according to Girard.
Sport Chek will tell more of those stories through its short-form documentary series, also produced by TSN, which will roll out throughout the season.
Each short will focus on a different city or neighbourhood. The first is a five-minute film about Phil Dixon, who is believed by many to be the best high school basketball player in Canadian history. A legend in Toronto’s North York neighbourhood, Dixon has been called the “King of Toronto Basketball.”
The films will be distributed on Sport Chek’s YouTube page as well as TSN.ca.
As part of the grassroots effort, Sport Chek has also set aside 85 tickets in a special #MyNorth fan section at every Raptors home game for members of local teams and basketball “ambassadors” from the GTA.
Raptors Pro goes ‘undercover’ as Sport Chek employee
Just ahead of the campaign launch, Sport Chek teased its Raptors program with a video featuring forward Patrick Patterson. In the video, Patterson “goes undercover” as a Sport Chek employee, helping customers at the brand’s East York location in Toronto.
Patterson names himself “employee of the month” in the video, directs customers to the Raptors merchandise and stocks his own jersey ahead of other players.
Since it was uploaded on October 27, it has garnered almost 50,000 views.
