By Tripp Mickle, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal
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Red Bulls Launch New
Marketing Campaign |
The MLS Red Bulls Friday launched an integrated marketing campaign in the N.Y.-New Jersey market, the first since the energy drink company bought the team in '06. The campaign, featuring Fs Jozy Altidore and Juan Pablo Angel along with the rest of the team, will appear in print, online and on three billboards outside Manhattan's Lincoln Tunnel. It will run through the end of April and appear in various forms through the end of the season in November. The campaign is designed to raise the profile of the club in the metro area, where it has struggled early in the season for attention in a competitive sports market. Last year, the team averaged less than 11,500 spectators during the first half of the season. Red Bulls VP/Marketing & Communications Andy McGowan: "It's not just an ad campaign, it's a brand image campaign." The campaign's slogan, "The Power of the Bulls," was developed by Red Bull's internal creative agency in Austria. It is designed to show the team's power and employs the same explosive language that has supported the company's energy drink for years. The company hired fashion photographer Oliver Gast to shoot Altidore and Angel, who are depicted kicking a soccer ball that morphs into a bull. They will appear on billboards that are
60-feet-by-100-feet wide and online at nytimes.com, nj.com and foxsports.com. The club also will use the images for print ads in the Newark Star-Ledger, El Diario, El Especial and Noticiero Colombiano, and the New York Daily News. Its wraps of the Daily News will appear three days a week for 16 consecutive weeks in around 50,000 papers each day.
