You can put the White Sox in a parade. You can cast them in TV commercials. You can write songs about them. But there is nothing mere mortals can do to really prove the White Sox are as big in this moment as the Bears, Cubs or anything else in Chicago.
For that, you turn to Oprah Winfrey.
Friday morning, on the same stage where Tom Cruise announced his love for Katie Holmes, where an entire studio audience got their free Pontiac G6 cars, where Tina Turner has serenaded her, Winfrey, the queen of mass appeal, made it official. The White Sox are the biggest thing this side of everything.
“Thank you for this magical time. The whole city is alive, buzzing,” Winfrey gushed on her show. “It’s great.”
Yet a moment on “Oprah” doesn’t necessarily turn people, Pontiacs or sports teams into beloved icons. To do that, in a town long dominated by the Bears, Cubs and even the Bulls, the White Sox will need to mount a marketing blitz that’s as effective and error-free as their World Series campaign.
And even that might not be enough.
“To beat the Cubs?” muses Robert Brennan, director of marketing services at Miller Brewing Co. “They’d need to have a run like the Chicago Bulls did in the 1990s. … If it’s a passing thing, then it’s going to be very hard to leverage this year’s Series into a brand identity.”
In the flush of excitement over the World Series sweep, it’s easy to feel that every Chicagoan is a White Sox fan. And while certain sectors of the Sox fan base don’t want anything to do with converts from Cubdom, there are many who are glad to see the party grow bigger.
Owner Jerry Reinsdorf has made it clear he sees no geographic barriers to the Sox fan base. So have longtime fans such as Jason Osborne.
“I know the die-hard Cubs fans are going to stick with their team, but I hope this will bring some casual fans … who got swept up in this thing and will stay,” said Osborne, 23, who was decked out in full “World Series Champs” T-shirt and cap. “It’s such a gift to finally revel in the glory of a world championship.”
Can the Sox build a base big enough to rival the Cubs? Invigorating as Friday’s South Side parade and downtown rally were, the Sox, in recent years the B team in an A-team town, would have to overcome significant challenges to do so.
They don’t have the beer-garden ballpark that Wrigley Field has become. They lack the break-out personalities that turned the 1985 Bears into instant-yet-enduring stars. And they still lack the record of accomplishment that turned the Bulls into a lasting dynasty.
An awkward start
The first step toward broadening the Sox franchise after the World Series was not as strong as it could have been either. For example, virtually all the players left town immediately following Friday’s parade. A series of post-championship public appearances would have benefited them and would have built the team’s marketability, said Brandon Steiner, chief executive of sports memorabilia firm Steiner Sports Marketing.
Steiner believes the Sox near sweep of the playoffs and World Series caught the team and the city unaware.
In town to line up White Sox players to sign thousands of baseballs, uniforms and poster-size photos in a downtown hotel room after Friday’s parade, Steiner was shocked to see so little Sox merchandise for sale as he walked the streets waiting to meet up with the players.
“This town was not ready,” Steiner said. “This town is so Cubbed out that they couldn’t get White Sox stuff out fast enough.”
Jerseys and T-shirts with team logos are like walking billboards, and Steiner said the Sox, Major League Baseball and sports retailers missed a chance to get human signage walking around the city.
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“The Sports Authority, Foot Locker, Champs, they’re not feeling this,” Steiner said of three major retail chains. “They’re working from a distance. Somebody from the White Sox needed to go knock on their doors and say, `Hey, we’ve got something going on here.”‘
Savvy promotions
Yet the Sox have shown savvy this year in building the team’s image. The Sox marketing slogan this year, “Win. Or Die Trying,” seemed to match the team’s hustling, grind-it-out style. And they continued to pitch such popular game-day promotions as half-price Mondays, Dollar Hot Dog Day and Saturday night fireworks.
In another smart move, they have capitalized on the appeal of Hispanic Sox like Venezuelan manager Ozzie Guillen by bringing back Spanish-language radio play by play after a six-year absence.
“All sorts of demographics are up for grabs,” said Doug Shabelman of Burns Entertainment and Sports Marketing. “Ozzie has absolutely helped build a strong Latino base. And who knows, maybe [Tadahito] Iguchi will help with the Asian market.”
Even so, fewer than 10,000 season tickets were sold for the 2005 season, and despite the team’s quick start, the park did not begin to fill until after the All-Star break.
The 2005 World Series win will bring fans to the ballpark. The Sox made World Series tickets available to buyers of 2006 season tickets, and they need to focus on next year’s events–the ring ceremony, the raising of the World Series flag–to sell more.
Howard Pizer, Sox executive vice president for business and administrative matters, said bigger attendance brings other virtues.
“Our sponsorships become more valuable,” Pizer said. “Our signs become more valuable.”
Drive for sponsors
Marketing experts said the Sox need to lean more on sponsors to participate in building the team’s name. More promotional giveaways, more player appearances, more advertising tie-ins all would help.
“The sponsors have to activate their sponsorships,” said David Brenner, chief executive of Paragon Marketing, a firm specializing in sports sponsorships.
More marketing helps build on the buzz, but a championship itself can do what no marketing plan or sponsorship package can: It attracts young people to the team and gives the Sox a chance to build lifelong fans.
“When you win a championship, you are building young fans,” Brenner said. “Any kid who was watching this is going to be thrilled by what the White Sox were doing and become a White Sox fan for life.”
A youth drive will have its own challenges. Baseball has fallen out of favor with young people. A survey by Northbrook-based Teenage Research Unlimited found that 57 percent of teenagers were either “very” or “somewhat” interested in football, while 54 percent felt that way about basketball. Baseball was third, at 39 percent.
“The sport remains one of their parents’ generation, not theirs,” said Peter Zollo, head of Teenage Research. Baseball’s daily games are not attractive to teens, who prefer to focus on football’s Sunday-heavy schedule, “the best down day for teens,” Zollo said.
Moreover, there are fewer African-Americans attending games and playing baseball, Zollo added. “When you’re talking about the youth market, they tend to be trendsetters,” he said.
The Cubs’ key competitive advantage in the citywide popularity contest is with young adults. For that demographic, there is no marketing asset quite like the Wrigley Field experience.
“The Cubs have done a great job of marketing, not just the team, but Wrigley Field,” said Allen Sanderson, a University of Chicago sports economist. “The Sox have marketed baseball, and it’s tough to get interested in just that alone.
“Wrigleyville is just a fun place to be. Bridgeport is more like a suburb, and no one says, `Do we come early? Do we stay late?'” Sanderson said.
With no neighborhood to sell, the Sox have focused on the inside-the-ballpark experience, improving food choices. They long ago left behind U.S. Cellular’s derisive nickname of “the ball mall,” but there’s no evidence they could ever hope to create a Wrigley-like neighborhood atmosphere.
Even so, the Sox have something now that the Cubs do not. They have their championship. Yet one of the very facts that made the White Sox successful may play against the team’s marketing potential.
The World Series win was a true team effort. Unfortunately for the White Sox, team efforts don’t always draw new fans. Sports marketers prefer to have a strong handful of players they can sell to consumers.
“Remember the Bears of ’85? The personality of that team had marketing written all over it,” Steiner said.
Promising signs
Still, Steiner does see some potential for the Sox. Players Mark Buehrle and Joe Crede and coach Harold Baines were among those who came to the Marriott Hotel on Friday to sign 350 team balls, 145 pictures, 25 jerseys and 25 bats. All together, Steiner said, he would have more than 1,000 White Sox items for sale.
That’s not as high as the record of nearly 5,000 items signed by the 1998 Yankees, but it is close to the runner-up, the 1,500 items signed by last year’s Boston Red Sox.
Buehrle spent an hour and 15 minutes signing with his multimillion-dollar left arm in a quiet 10th-floor room. If he is any indication, the players are not terribly concerned about all these marketing challenges. They have their fans, and they’ll soon be getting their World Series rings.
“We won one. That’s what we wanted to do,” Buehrle said. “We played for us and the Sox fans we had. We don’t need no bandwagon fans jumping on.”
Reinsdorf might not see it that way.
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