Call it Hogtown, Big Smoke, or The 6. Whichever nickname you use, Dave Freeman, Head of Brand Marketing for Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, wants you to know that Toronto, Canada, is coming into its own. Freeman spearheads all of the brand strategy for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and all of the farm teams that feed into their respective clubs, and his accomplishments this year have been outstanding.
From the moniker “The 6,” to Norm Kelly’s viral tweets, to the Blue Jays’ run at the MLB pennant, Toronto has seen more action this year than in many years past. Through it all Freeman has been at the center, making sure that Toronto is coming out on top with hometown heroes, national pride, and a whole lot of swag.
I had the distinct opportunity to speak with Freeman and get his take on why his strategy for Toronto’s teams has been so utterly successful.
Tell me about the biggest campaign that you’ve done so far.
It’s all about the We The North campaign that started in 2011, when the Toronto Raptors were bordering on irrelevancy in the professional sports landscape in Toronto. Players were leaving, the Blue Jays and other sports teams were way ahead of us, and we needed to have a point of view and stand for something. So, we put together a four-year marketing plan that was going to re-brand the team and elevate the iconography: the logo, the uniforms, all of it.
We wanted to have large scale basketball events -- we have the NBA All-Star Game in Toronto next week -- and we also wanted to create a following, a cult, with a culture around our team so when times are good, it makes it better, and when times are bad, it’s not so bad.
It really started when we went to higher levels of management and asked to apply for the All-Star Game, and someone (who is no longer at MLSE) said, “Why would you ever want the All-Star Game in Toronto? The game happens in February, it’s freezing, Americans need passports to get here, no one will come; that’s not the best view of our city.” That got us thinking: well, that’s who we are and where we’re from. Why can’t we be proud of these things instead of using them as negatives all the time?
We engaged an agency called Sid Lee, who are in New York, Toronto, Montreal, Amsterdam, and Paris. With them, we came up with our mantra. It’s really based on the notion that we’re outsiders playing our own game. Basketball was invented by a Canadian, Dr. James Naismith, so it’s a Canadian game. We’re the only NBA team outside of the United States, and we’re the only foreign team, so we’re outsiders. You need a passport, and it is cold! So we turned all of those negatives on their head, and came up with We The North. And now We The North has moved from just being about the Toronto Raptors to Canadians across the country using it to say that they are proud Canadians.
How did you get that going? Where do you start with something like that?
Unexpectedly, the team made the playoffs in April of 2014. We hadn’t been in the playoffs in seven years, so there was this euphoria that we finally made it. Four days before our first home playoff game, we launched a one-minute video on YouTube -- it has about 900K views right now -- that explains beautifully what it means to be a Raptors fan, and what We The North is all about.
Then, on the Saturday right before our home game against the New York Nets, our GM, Masai Ujiri, went into Jurassic Park, which is our outdoor viewing area, and made a comment against the Nets that created a lot of attention. We The North is all about being outsiders: we’re doing it our own way and are proud of it.
Was that scripted? Or did it just happen?
I think Masai thought he might do it, but would err on the side of caution. Then we had five thousand people in a frenzy before the game, and I think he got caught up in the moment. He was fined by the NBA, but that line went everywhere:
He took a chance.
He did. He’s very good at that.
Obviously the players are the stars. How did you get them involved?
They were involved all along, especially with logo and jersey design.
Another important element of the Raptors elevated brand has been our association with Drake. He is the team’s global brand ambassador, and he’s involved in team branding. Each year, over the past three seasons, we have hosted a ‘undefinedDrake Night’ at a game. This year we recreated the Hotline Bling video, the Bling box, before the game, and he came and spoke from the Bling box.
Literally -- and this number seems insane to me -- but, in one day it said that we got one billion impressions, and that’s because we’re blurring the line between sports and pop culture. You have all the typical sports writers writing about it, but we also have Rolling Stone, GQ, and Billboard who are all tweeting it as well. Blurring that line between sports and pop culture, if you can get there, really drives your brand.
The reason why Drake works so well as a celebrity endorser is that he loves Toronto. He loves the Raptors. He gave Toronto the name, “The 6.” He is uber authentic, and even if he didn’t help us out on the Raptors side, he would still love the Raps, love the city, and come from a great place. Because he does really cool stuff with us, that really helps drive the We The North movement as well.
And he’s great at making content, as well.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. This past Saturday he released his new track on Beats 1. We were playing the Pistons, and tipoff is usually about 6:35 PM. If you were listening to Beats 1 and looked at the time, his track “Summer 16” dropped about 6:33, and at 6:35 he strolled out to his courtsides at the Raptors game. As the Internet is exploding, he is on live TV. Just beautiful. Perfect.
And people are taking photos and adding to that stream, just adding to your social media.
Absolutely, just through that association for us that Drake is at the Raptors game as he drops his new track. He’s obviously associated with us, but again, the biggest key is that he is coming from an authentic place. We’re not asking him to do that; he does it because he loves it, and that’s why it really works. Obviously it’s not impossible but very hard to find those advocates for different brands, but if you do find them it is really great.
Any tips for someone else trying to create their own program in a similar way?
The thing that we learned from it was, be who you are. Yes, it’s cold. Yes, you need a passport. But the city of Toronto is not moving! So, be proud of it, identify the good and bad of your brand and own it, acknowledge it and don’t apologize for it. That’s big advice I would give to people based on our experience.
And now your campaign has almost become bigger than you. Are there challenges with trying to deal with that?
Oh, for sure challenges. The flip side -- if you look at your marketing 101 textbook -- is that it’s death by a thousand cuts. It’s brand erosion; everyone is using it. When we got knocked out of the playoffs by the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, their fan base started using “Oui The North”, for Montreal. Mike Weir, a Canadian golfer, was in a golf tournament and people started saying Weir The North. That stuff starts to happen, and Canadians start to identify with it. At the Blue Jays’ playoff run this fall you could see We The North flags in the stands in the Blue Jays’ font, not from the team, but from the fan base.
I go back and forth on it. People know that it’s a Toronto Raptors campaign and it started with us. But now that it has a life of its own, I’m not the brand police and shutting that stuff down. That’s not where it is. Talking out of the other side of my mouth, sometimes you see stuff that’s not ideal and it doesn’t make you feel great about what we really stand for. People mess with fonts, counterfeit merchandise, all of that, which is very hard to control. But I think erring on the side of letting it go is better than that police-state nonsense.
Who else do you admire? Who is doing a great job with messaging and communication?
The We The North campaign has gotten to the point where we’re trying to pattern ourselves after the behemoth of all time in sports, Nike. When you see a Nike ad, it ends with that tag, Just Do It. When you see something from us, it ends with our black flag in the wind, We The North. We have now identified We The North as our core creative idea, and we have different engagement platforms every year that run off of that, same as Nike. Nike does a basketball commercial and it ends with Just Do It. Nike does a running commercial and still ends with that swoosh. I really admire them for sticking with that idea for twenty years, but being able to have different platforms off of it. So we’re trying to pattern ourselves after that.
Murray Newlands would be thrilled if you’d share this story with your networks. You can find him onTwitter(@murraynewlands), Instagram (murraynewlands) and Vine (murraynewlands) and learn more about his work at www.murraynewlands.com
