“Get your but down to the Dome”

From the Seats, January 29, 2005

MINNEAPOLIS - That’s right, kick it into gear, get down to the Dome, don't spend any more time outside when you can be in the Dome watching the Twins. The Twins are taking a more aggressive approach to marketing this year, almost putting a guilt trip on the fans.

 

It is worth a try, anything is worth a try to get more people into the Dome and at the games. In theory Johan Santana should be enough  to get people down to see him pitch, to watch games. Joe Nathan should be enough, to watch him close out games. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau should be enough. Unfortunately for Minnesotans they are not. So the Twins are taking a new approach.

Twins to defend their turf

Jay Weiner,  Star Tribune January 28, 2005

"Friends, Romans, Woodburians, lend me your ear. For it is time for loyal and faithful Twins fans to band together and stop the spread of Red Soxism ... You must latch onto our boys like milfoil on a boat prop ... For this is your state. This is your team. And this is Twins Territory."

-- From a forthcoming Twins radio commercial

 

It is as if the Revolutionary War pamphleteer Thomas Paine came back to life as a Twins fan, his Homer Hanky adorned with the words, "Don't Tread On Me."

It is as if Paine's stirring words -- "These are the times that try men's souls" -- were transformed into a 21st century battle cry intended to poke a populace of couch potatoes out of their living rooms and into a legion of partisans in the Metrodome's blue seats.

 

"We're putting a stake in the ground," Twins marketing vice president Patrick Klinger said. "We're going to defend our territory."

 

Actually, they're going to try to sell more tickets in a baseball marketplace where attendance has foundered, failing to reach 2 million customers since 1993 and dipping way below the Major League Baseball average despite three consecutive AL Central Division titles.

 

As TwinsFest, the team's Hot Stove carnival, begins tonight at the Dome, get ready to hear a lot about "Twins Territory."

 

It's an advertising agency created designation for a longstanding marketing region -- from Aberdeen to Zumbrota, from Bismarck to Burnsville -- in which the Twins have sold themselves and had their games broadcast since 1961.

 

But, recently, it's been a region that -- while regularly watching Twins games on television -- has shunned buying tickets to attend Twins games.

 

Twins surveys and anecdotal evidence reveals many reasons.

 

Busy families claim they don't have the time to carve out a summer's night for a game. Many customers abhor the Dome and on lovely days stay away.

 

There is a perceived hassle of downtown Minneapolis parking, even as light rail has arrived at the Dome's front door. Years of team management trashing the Dome -- while unsuccessfully lobbying for a new ballpark -- have come back to bite the team's ticket-selling efforts.

 

So now, "Our goal is to take people from being passive fans to be more active fans," said Charlie Callahan, vice president and creative director at Periscope, which was hired last fall to crank up the Twins' image-making volume.

 

The print ads, the radio scripts and the TV spots, the main piece of the team's $1 million annual marketing budget and all about to roll out soon, perform a handful of tasks.

 

They link Twins players to activities Minnesotans do instead of going to games. They connect the Twins to the outdoors, taking head-on the Dome atmosphere. They position a Twins fan as fanatical as those in Boston or New York. They dip the franchise's attitude into a giant vat of hubris.

 

Listen to another radio spot: "In case you hadn't noticed, every yahoo from Boston, New York and Chicago thinks they're the only real baseball fans. Well, you know what Minnesota? It's time not to take it anymore. Get your butt down to the ballpark and cheer our boys on. They even think they out-cheer, out-boo and out-hot-dog-eat-us in places like Milwaukee and Arizona. Arizona, they don't know baseball. Their idea of a change-up is a set of implants."

 

That envelope-pushing radio attitude will be supplemented by bucolic images soon to be unveiled in a print and outdoor signage campaign; an LRT car might also be wrapped in these summery pictures.

 

For instance, there's Torii Hunter leaping off a lake-side dock to catch a ball. There's supersized Johan Santana, a la Paul Bunyan, winding up next to Babe the Blue Ox. Joe Mauer, in his catcher's crouch, holds a hot dog over a campfire.

 

Finally, there will be TV spots, like the one filmed in a St. Paul Summit Avenue mansion recently. There, a collector of all the Twins bobblehead dolls opens and fondles his new Mauer bobblehead.

 

As he goes to place it on his manelepiece, he finds there's no more room for it, unless ...

It turns out Mauer's bobblehead must replace the urn of Uncle Phil's ashes.

 

"Sorry, Uncle Phil," the Twins fan says to the urn, " but you were a Yankees fan anyway."

Meanwhile, the Twins have hired a new vice president of ticket sales and service, Steve Smith, a veteran of NBA, NHL and Toronto Blue Jay ticket offices. He's added two other sales people and a customer service account executive, increasing his staff to 14.

 

Among Smith's goals: to boost group sales within the small- and medium-sized business community. He said there are 18,000 such firms within a 60-mile radius of the Dome.

 

In another new element to reach corporate customers, the team has added 133 "Dugout Seats," each sold for $6,315 for the season, that will be on the field, from first to third base.

 

"These seats are literally closer to home plate than the pitcher is," said Smith.

 

Which is as deep into Twins Territory as you're gonna get.

Jay Weiner is at [email protected].