ILWT Audition: How the Devils Market Themselves

Agree and Disagree
First, Facebook isn’t terrible on fans following the team. There are 45,268 people following the Devils on Facebook. The Coyotes have 16,180 followers of their respective team. So the advertising may be there for the Yotes but still no more than the Devils. I don’t have a twitter account so I can’t tell but it will probably be in the Devils favor. The Winter Classic really wasn’t a surprise and I wasn’t expecting it to be the Devils. They haven’t been on NBC since the series against Ottawa. Remember way back to the Gomez and Rafalski era? Yeah. We have been on versus for only maybe 3 times a year. Atleast 2 of the games are against the Rangers and one against the Flyers. Since the defensive motto for the Devils it has kept them out of NBC’s and Versus’s game of the weeks, sadly. The website does do a pretty good job of marketing the team and telling which events are now going on. Like the equipment sale soon. I agree on the Jersey’s Team thing. Devils Legion was for the playoffs at the end of the year and it seemed pointless because it was against the Rangers. Lots of Ranger fans there….. No matter what the PR crew does for the Devils, it won’t persuade people to be a Devils fan. As much as I hate bandwagon fans. They may successfully get people to like the Devils but look at the state we live in…. North jersey, Rangers fans and Devils fans I guess, central jersey Devils fans, south jersey Flyer fans. You have two big market teams bordering a small market team. You would think the Brodeur, Parise, Kovalchuk would attract some marketers but I guess no. I don’t care about marketing but when it comes, I love it. I don’t expect it being a Devils fan. As long as the team wins I am a happy Devils fan.

Yeah signing Kovalchuk is a major marketing move. It will get even bigger if MacLean is the coach. Offensive guy, offensive players, best goaltender in the league. I don’t see why this team doesn’t get enought marketing. Once again, I could care less, as long as the team succeeds and wins I am happy.

This was great topic but very poorly written and researched.

The Devils are actually fantastic on Twitter. they’re very active, engage fans, constantly tweet links to articles on the team, run promotions. I know for fact that the teams twitter and actually all Social networking aspects are handled by an outside firm who does a good job of it. Them hiding it on their twitter and facebook inf o on their site is I don;t really know what to say about… It’s right there. Maybe it could be a bit higher so you don’t have to scroll down, but what do you want huge tacky pop-up ads for it?

The devils biggest problem marketing is that they do not aggressively go after fans outside of Jersey. The Rangers and Flyers all steal fans right form the Devils backyard…and while that has to do with how long both have been teams, there is no reason the Devils couldn’t try and grow their fanbase all across the tri-state area. The tri-state area has a huge surplus of transplants from across North America. Hockey fan transplants, many of whom who have distaste for the Rangers and Flyers (and even Isles) but would like to root for a local team. Why not go after those people!? Don’t just be Jersey’s team, be the North Easts team!

Chances are, I’ll have more to say on this come summer, but you raise something near and dear to my heart. Good point out on the Social Networking. Someone here even said the Devils don’t do it, they lease it out to an outside company for their twitter feed.

1) Parise – He should be “America’s forward and Langs is America’s captain.” Can’t the Devils do that with billboards in Newark and the rest of North and Central NJ?
Say what you want about talking down to female fans, but women are mostly in love with Parise. My female students who are Devil fans all cite him as their favorite player (except one who likes Mike Mottau) and Sherry Ross even stated with one of the head NJ librarians during a radio interview that Parise is loved by women and she sees his name on more female fans jerseys than anyone else.

2) The Trenton Devils. A genius idea to market a minor league team in New Jersey’s most divided county when it comes to sports. Along with “Jersey’s team” their slogan the 1st year was “Let’s paint this town Devil Red.” I talked to a lot of Philly fans who thought about ditching their season tickets when the name changed from the Titans. Luckily it hasn’t gone far. But attendance is down.

3) The rules the Devils have had to play by. Would it kill Marty or Zach to join Newark East Side Hockey team on the adjacent Health Pavilion rink when they’re practicing for a skate? Or to make appearances in Trenton? No, it wouldn’t and I’m sure any active players would love to do that. Instead, it is left to retired Devils like Grant Marshall and Ken Daneyko who do this type of PR stuff instead. Lou’s philosophy is not to mix the PR with the team. It has created this image of invisible walls sometimes between the community and the team. I’ve cited it before and I’ve heard from the ESHS side. Parise’s library visit seemed like a chance to try and break that. But when I watched that Broad Street Bullies Documentary and learned how the Flyers all went out to a South Jersey bar afterwards and play pickup street hockey in South Philly – that’s frickin awesome. Yeah, I know, different times. But still. That part did give me some chills and made me think what if . . .

4) I agree with above posts on Kovy. His signing saw attendance rise. (Click on games to see). But the marketing did get better then. The Devils started having meetup parties for road games. I went to one on a snowy Tuesday night across at the Brick City Bar and Grille and Stan Fischler was there. We got on TV.
Also there was a Telebrands promo on a Tuesday night against Columbus. They docked lower bowl seating and it was SOLD OUT. And you know what? The first Telebrands commerical was actually funny and hip. It made fun of a Columbus fan and was done in a tounge-in-cheek manner. The 2nd one was unfortunately not as good.

Sadly I think the Devils will always be ‘inferior’ to the Rangers and Flyers because of the massive cities that feed them. One of the problems I believe, is that we are the New Jersey Devils and we did not have a City (until Newark) to call our own. East Rutherford did not cut it, nor did it help we were in ‘The Swamp’ to those outside of the area.
Now we have to contend with Newark being perceived as a dangerous city (I can tell you Id rather be in Newark than sections of NY or Philly). Having viewing parties helps in a few ways. First, get interest going outside of just the Arena area. Second, show Devils fans that they have other fans in their area. Third, show other local teams that the Devils fans are more loyal than any other, however few (relatively speaking of course) we may have.
We will get there eventually, but there are only two generations of Devil fans, contending with an Original 6 team, and one with the most rabid fan base possibly in all of sport.