Celebrity Acquisition

As a new feature on our blog, we’ll be interviewing professionals from a variety of relevant industries including PR, sports, marketing, celebs, agents, SM experts, etc.  If you have an interview idea or would like to be featured in our “Spotlight On” series, please contact aubrey.brewis@octagon.com.

Q: Tonight feels like a new beginning for Washington Nationals baseball. Thoughts?

A: It really is an exciting time to be affiliated with the Washington Nationals.  We have a great mix of veterans and young guys who play competitive baseball and expect to win.  It’s a much different attitude surrounding the team this year - very refreshing .   

Regarding Strasburg’s debut, I’m glad that it is finally here as the hype and build up have been overwhelming - we have more than 200 credentialed media on-site today.  We are treating this game as our second Opening Day and recognize that many people in the stands this evening will be attending a Nationals game and experiencing our brand for the first time, so we are trying hard to over-deliver on the experience.  Hopefully, everything goes well, our fans have a great time and will want to come back to Nationals Park soon.         

Q: How will the team market Strasburg? Will he be in new TV advertising? Print?

A: That’s a good question for our Marketing Department.  I would imagine that he will be in the mix, but remember that he has yet to throw a pitch in the Major Leagues and we have a number of other talented players who have contributed to the team’s success.    

Q: Tell us about the experience at Nationals Park?

A: It’s great and always getting better as we continuously strive to enhance the fan experience.   We are fortunate to play in a beautiful ball park with views of the Capitol’s dome.  Metro is just 2 blocks away from our main gate and we have a lot more parking spaces available this year.   We try to offer something for everyone (kids, gen x, gen y, hard core fans, corporate, etc.) and are always designing new programs and elements for the fans.  I have been traveling with the team recently and have seen a number of other stadiums across the country and the more stadiums I see, the more I like our ball park and the experience that we offer to our fans.  I would encourage anyone who has not been to Nationals Park to come to a game and check it out for themselves.    There is nothing better than watching a baseball game with friends on a warm summer night.

Q: How will you use Strasburg with your current (and future) corporate partners?

A: In order for us to do our jobs effectively, we need to fully understand each of our corporate partner’s brand, goals and marketing objectives.  Having this understanding enables us to develop activation programs that are on-strategy and will drive business.  We don’t want to over-commercialize Strasburg, or any other player, and we will only use him, or other players, where it makes sense. 

One example where using Strasburg makes sense is a program that we are developing for the Washington Post.  The Post will place a Strasburg poster that commemorates tonight’s Major League debut in their newspaper on Sunday, June 13.  It’s going to be cool and it will be a collector’s item, so I would encourage everyone to purchase a paper on June 13.  

PS- The Nationals sold out tonight’s game (Strasburg’s debut) almost immediately. We’ll keep you posted if their numbers continue to increase during the season.  

Tags: MLB, Strasburg, Washington Nationals

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 9:02 am and is filed under All, Athletes, Business, First Call, Marketing, Sports, Spotlight On Series, website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.