Mid September saw the National Hockey League launch a new ‘ Two Places’ campaign, led by TV commercials in the USA and Canada, that aims to celebrate the idea that a person actually has two teams and two sets of fans they are loyal to – club and country.
The idea is that a player plays for his country and then plays for his city: the insight aims to leverage both the ‘World Cup of Hockey’ and the upcoming new NHL season.
The ad’s creative, which includes plenty of stock footage material from the NHL’s archives, aims to prove that players really can be from two places at once.
Launched on 14 September, the ad’s objective is to prove that players really can be from two places at once and links the World Cup Of Hockey (running from 17 to 29 September) to the 2016/17 NHL season (which started on 12 October) .
The 2016 World Cup of Hockey (#WCH2016) is the third edition of the international ice hockey tournament organised and sanctioned by the NHL (and took place a lengthy 12 years after the second World Cup of Hockey in 2004).
The team working for the client (the NHL’s EVP and CMO Brian Jennings, plus Group VP for marketing Casey Hall and marketing manager Tom Lafe and footage coordinator and operations Georgia Roxon and James Natalie) was led by creative outfit Baby Bear’s Porridge Productions, with editorial, audio and finishing by Cutters Studios.
The editor was Steve Bell, the assistant editors were Austin Rauterkus and Meghan Sims, the flame artist was Moises Tavera, with audio mixing by Eric Thompson, the producer was Stephanie Rose, the executive producer Elizabeth Krajewski, color correction was handled by Adrian Seery of MPC and music was run by Found Objects.
‘The creative teams at the NHL and Baby Bear’s Porridge know exactly what works with hockey fans in these anthemic, emotional, sports genre pieces. Once again, they pushed us to extract every ounce of emotional material from over 40 hours of footage. We loved the concept from the beginning; the script is beautiful,’ says Cutters Studio’s New York editor Steve Bell Steve Bell about the Two Places spot.
‘Every new project with the NHL allows us to focus on a different aspect of what makes the sport so amazing. In this case, we focused on those players who participated in the World Cup of Hockey,’ he outlines.
‘There, of course, they play for their country of origin, but NHL fans will soon see them playing for their home team. With the new NHL season, these world-class players will soon become one with their teams, fans and cities – establishing themselves as being ‘from’ two places at once.’
Comment
This campaign is the latest in a long and impressive line of commercial collaborations between the NHL, creative shop Baby Bear’s Porridge Productions and Cutters Studios – the tripartite team behind several strong NHL promo campaigns including 2008’s ‘Cup Raise,’
2010’s ‘No Words’,
2011’s ‘History Will Be Made’,
2012’s ‘Boys’ ,
and the Clio Sports Award-winning ‘Name’ for the 2015 Stanley Cup Finals.
Does the ‘Two Places’ spot’s 54,664 YouTube views suggest that it might join that impressive back catalogue?
Links
NHL YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/NHLVideo
NHL Twitter:
NHL Facebook:
NHL Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nhl/
NHL Google+:
https://plus.google.com/108494779459623667377
NHL Web:
WCH:
