Lou Imbriano Featured in Boston Herald Story: Save nets Reebok win, too
Posted by Kelly Downing on Wed, May 25, 2011 @ 09:47 AM
Boston Herald: Save Nets Reebok Win, Too
May 24, 2011
To the Bruins, it was The Save.
To Reebok, it was The Ad.
In Monday’s Game 5 playoff battle between Boston and Tampa Bay, Reebok scored a sports-marketing goal that was just as “lucky” as Tim Thomas’ stretching save that will stick in B’s fans’ brains forevah.
The puck-stopping product placement netted replay after replay for the Canton-based athletic equipment maker. “Reebok” was so easy to read in slow motion and laid out, like Thomas, left to right across the gaping goal mouth.
Even Versus play-by-play announcer Mike Emrick paused from singing Thomas’ praises to marvel at the stick manufacturer’s good fortune.
“This was picture perfect,” said Glen Thornborough, sports marketing chief for Reebok’s Montreal-based hockey unit that rang up $266 million in sales last year. “It’s almost like someone from our marketing team went down there to set it up the way it actually needed to be placed.”
Reebok is under contract to make all NHL jerseys — stemming from its $200 million takeover of hockey brand CCM in 2004 — but not all players use its equipment. Thomas, who has no official endorsement deal, happened to pick Reebok over its rivals for his goalkeeper gear.
Boston University advertising professor Chris Cakebread said Thomas’ historic save gives “added value” to Reebok’s sponsorship deal with the NHL.
“It was serendipitous. To me it was a fluke that the camera caught it so cleanly,” he said.
“That’s why brands invest in sports, because they get the ancillary benefits of dramatic moments.”
Tim Marken, founder of the Hub’s Altus Marketing and Management, called it a “Reebok billboard.”
“Think of all the games that are played and all the tools of the trade. . . . You can probably count on one or two hands a framed opportunity like this,” he said.
Nike got a memorable money shot at the 2005 Masters when Tiger Woods’ key chip shot rolled ever-so-slowly into the 16th hole as a CBS camera zoomed in on the trademark Swoosh.
Last year, Lumber Liquidators emerged a winner in the infamous “imperfect game” pitched by the Detroit Tigers’ Armando Galarraga. The Stoughton-founded firm’s revolving sign slid into view behind home plate seconds before umpire Jim Joyce botched the call that gave a lucky break to an everyday ad that ended up in countless replays as the baseball world burned.
Lou Imbriano, a sports marketing expert at Boston’s TrinityOne Worldwide, said Reebok will reap a massive marketing payoff from the heroics of Thomas and his $99 stick.
“That was like a movie save,” Imbriano said. “You don’t see that in a regular play, you see that in movies and TV commercials, so (Reebok) got a live-action commercial.”