Hmm, more marketing nightmares for the Beavs.
This video was released last week, and I was going to let it slide since only a few thousand people were likely to see it, but Ted Miller commented on it (on his ESPN/national blog), so suddenly the entire country had their eyes on the Beavs, which I can’t recall, outside of the Fiesta Bowl or USC victories, ever being a good thing. This is the video in question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzd6rLk-4k
Okay, a list of gripes:
1. The video opens by showing Quizz with a caption that reads “Category 5 Speed”. Er, no he doesn’t. In fact, speed is his one foible.
2. Then it says “A Heisman Trophy Hopeful”. Yes, this is true, no problem there except…
3. The third caption says “The Power of a Hurricane” and shows a different player, Stephen Paea.
Okay, let’s pause. Ooh, I get it, category five speed and power of a hurricane…but…Heisman Trophy hopeful? That doesn’t quite mesh with the tropical storm theme, Beavs.
4. The video continues. The next caption is about how USC and Oregon are home games. Yay?
5. They talk about the deafening thunder of Reser Stadium. Okay, I have been to Reser many times. It’s never deafening. The fans are too far from the field, the rafters are open, etc. In short, a lot of noise escapes. Compounding the statement is that last year’s attendance was horrendous, and the home games were actually quiet.
6. Next graphic is about tickets being $49. That is just flat out tacky and shouldn’t be in a marketing video. If the video were done right, the product would sell itself.
7. “The Storm is Building”…with dramatic drum crescendos as the backdrop. Question: when was the last time there was a hurricane in the state of Oregon? My guess would be never. So why a HURRICANE? This idea makes no sense! This is not the ACC country, folks.
8. After “The Storm is Building” there is silence and “I am Orange” flashes on the screen. Oh, so we’re back to last year’s slogan? Way to assemble a new, concise, and focused message!
Okay, so I have eight gripes.
The overall feel of this video is Bush League. The message is a jumbled hodgepodge of fibs (Quizz having “category 5” speed, west coast hurricanes, etc). It honestly has the look and feel of a student-intern job. The program would be better off not marketing their product at all rather than putting out second-rate material.
I totally agree. I saw this on Cliff Kirkpatrick’s website at G-T and thought about how senseless it was. A hurricane analogy, for the Willamette Valley – really. And back to orange, whatever that means. Never mind that their is a college football team that a few people have heard of that associates itself with hurricanes. AND they’re located in a part of the country where hurricanes actually occur…
The quality of the editing and presentation has improved greatly, the marketing tag lines are lame and embarrassing.
I have thought of a few ideas – one is “O!” “S!” “You!” which would have the crowd’s chant superimposed over a montage of highlight plays and crowd shots…the other is an “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” – featuring Quizz and James, with answers to the question like – “in the record books” (with titles of the various honors and awards the brothers have won, “in the end zone,” with td’s obviously, and “Reser Stadium.”
Goes to show why I work in natural resources and not marketing…
On the hurricane issue….the origin of the word “Oregon” is somewhat of a mystery. One theory is that it comes from the french word for hurricane which is “Ouragan”. French explorers may have named it after the high winds that constantly blow at the coast.
No point…but thought you would be impressed by this piece of useless trivia and that the hurricane analogy has some historical reference if you like to take history back 250 years!!!!
Hm, interesting. That’s one obscure campaign–maybe it’s a bunch of elitist, hipsters running the marketing department.
By the way, a quick follow up on google yielded this nugget:
Q: The Oregon Coast often has winds in excess of 100 mph. Why are these storms not reported as hurricanes like those on the east coast?
A: The strong winds that hit the Pacific Coast are from extratropical storms, not hurricanes, which are tropical cyclones. While 100 mph winds are strong for an extratropical storm, a 100 mph hurricane is relatively weak compared with what hurricanes can do.
Interesting, I vaguely remember something like that from a Climatology course I had to take. I don’t know the french word for “extratropical storm”!
Also, I never liked the “I am Orange” campaign. Beaver is bad enough. What does that mean…I am a tasty tropical fruit that can be grown in Florida? Plus don’t the Syracuse Orangemen kind of have rights to that phrase…maybe they don’t even want it!
Angry,
I just watched it again. The graphics have certainly gotten better. As for the slogan of “Hurricane” and at the end of the video “I am Orange” could be saying goodbye to “I am Orange.” since it’s last in sequence. Also, I think the Beavers defense used to have the nickname of the “Black Swarm” for their swarming defense that had the likes of Swancutt and Delorance Grant, et. al.
So going with a “Hurricane” theme just means that were anticipating and excited to go crazy in Reser Stadium and try to sell out Reser against USC and Oregon since they are the most known teams. Notice our schedule also hosts Wazzu, ASU, Louisville, and Cal. So, all but Wazzu are gonna be good games and we should try to sell them all out. That is the goal of this video. Also, Hurricane could be a metaphor, in fact, it is for that the team is ahead of schedule in academics, spring ball, and also in strength and mostly speed.
I remember reading an article by buker that quoted Quizz saying something like this, “I’ve gotten faster than the last 2 years and that’s due to the fact that we focused our strength conditioning to make us become faster and by doing so, I can make my moves quicker and read quicker because everything around me feels slower.” That’s where the Category 5 speed comes to play. Also, it’s to play up and hype his heisman hopeful up to darkhorse(if he isn’t one already). We want people to know that OSU is ready to compete with TCU and Boise State. Isn’t that what you want? You want the mind set to change to we can take anyone on and we’ll be ready and we are ready. Am I wrong on that one?
On Paea, he’s one of the strongest DT’s out there now in NCAA. So to compare him to a Hurricane would be accurate with the double/triple teams and still produces TFL’s, and sacks. I’m just saying that the comparison is a stretch, but I can see it at the same time…we’re teetering on that edge of fast, strong, and hard hitting to we’re ready to play our best game of football we can from where we are today. Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes champions. So practice to play like champions. That’s what the Beavs are trying to do.
I can’t find one thing I agree with in this lengthy response. It seems like you’re justifying a video that you don’t actually like a whole lot. That’s how it read to me.
“You want the mind set to change to we can take anyone on and we’ll be ready and we are ready.”
Yes, it would be nice if OSU were ready to compete with those teams, but I don’t know that propaganda aimed at selling tickets to fans is going to give our USC-rejects the confidence they need to win said games. I guess you could make a case that more fans cheering their names=more confidence. That rarely seems to translate on the field, though, so it’s weak.
“We want people to know that OSU is ready to compete with TCU and Boise State. Isn’t that what you want?”
Yes, but they don’t mention TCU or BSU once in the video so I don’t think that’s the goal of the video. I’d like to see a sport’s psychologist on staff. I’ve said this many many times. It would be the best investment, and you’d see dramatic results.
Angry,
I kinda liked the video, and as far as the tickets grip goes, if I am not mistaken it says season tickets at $149. According to Cliff the Beavs have breached the 25,000 season ticket level, an all time best. Trying to get people in the stands seems to be the overall goal. So the hurricane / Oregon State analogy is a little weak, but the theme of the video carries well throughout. Better to compare them to a Hurricane than a tropical depression with category 1 speed and lack of direction.
“Better to compare them to a Hurricane than a tropical depression with category 1 speed and lack of direction.”
hahah
Hey, at least out homepage doesn’t look like it’s from 1999 anymore!
http://oregonstate.edu/
Looks good actually.
The entire country reads Ted Miller’s Pac10 Blog?
Ok…..
The idea behind these marketing videos is pretty simple. They are marketed toward the casual fan. Not hardcore fans who follow everything related to OSU and blog about it. In order to capture their attention you need flashy, catchy ads. Mr Casual fan doesn’t know Quizz runs a 4.5 40, all he knows is that he is a good player. You want to get those fans excited to come out to games. So you use words like ‘deafning’ to describe Reser (which it can be at times).
Watch most ads, the majority don’t necessaryly relate to the product their selling. The point is to get you excited about the product. In this case, OSU is trying to get casual fan excited. Mission completed.
Also, I’d just like to point out another error on your part. You mentioned that outside of the Fiesta Bowl and USC games every other time OSU is the national media it’s negative. WOW, you are dense!! Those back to back baseball NC’s sure cast OSU in a horrible light. There have been several other examples, but I’ll stop at those two.
“You mentioned that outside of the Fiesta Bowl and USC games every other time OSU is the national media it’s negative. Those back to back baseball NC’s sure cast OSU in a horrible light.”
Anti, I was clearly talking football.
1. I agree. Quizz has Emmitt Smith speed. Emmitt ran something like a 4.8 at his combine, and it dropped his status. So he was picked at lowly number 17 or 18. His career mirrored that pick… eh? Compare that to the real Cat 5 speed of the great Blair Thomas, and his illustrious career in the NFL, after he was picked #2 overall in the same draft due to a 4.4 combine run.
2. No prob with the Heisman Hopeful caption.
3. No prob with this as long as it’s referring to Paea. If they’re trying to impose the nick ‘Hurricane’ on Paea, they should start with a separate campaign for him alone.
4. USC and Civil War at home… ok. It looks like they’re selling tickets now.
5. Reser can be loud. It’s just up to the fans to do it. We can’t tout it unless it becomes a standard, and it isn’t at the moment.
6. Season tickets $149… ok. Selling tickets again.
7. The storm is building? Buliding what? Don’t storms destroy? Aren’t beavers as a species the second best engineers in the world due to their ability to manipulate the ecosystem AND weather storms? If they leave out the Cat 5 speed, they don’t need to use this phrase.
8. I never really liked ‘I Am Orange’. But I understand they had some success with it.
It’s not a terrible campaign, but it could be a lot better.
Jack, you see the Beavs signed this guy?
http://www.oakhillhoops.com/roster-player-profiles/chris-brown-2009-2009-player-profile/
ESPN had some good things to say about his raw talent.
I like the pick-up of the two bigs. It gives us good size across the frontcourt. Suddenly, half our scholarships are players over 6’7″.
On Brown… he has good size, and he’s only played hoops for four or five years. He’s pretty much Aziz N’Diaye with a more effective offensive skill set and three less inches. There are some questions about his conditioning, but those can be addressed by our pushover of a coach.
Jack, regarding #7 (even though I don’t necessarily like the hurricane analogy myself either) is referencing the storm itself building, or accelerating in strength. Which actually is a somewhat solid one in my book about a video on preseason and trying to increase hype. THAT IS, if the hurricane analogy in the first part was a proper one!
Either way, I like to get pumped up too, but this still isn’t quite where I would like it to go either. I am in the marketing/advertising field, and do have to give some credit/agreeance to ‘Anti’ above on the part that this is geared towards a casual/want-to-be-entertained-fan, which is realistically probably a vast majority (unfortunately?).
The quality of the technical product is getting better (woohoo) I noticed too.
The fact that the “I am Orange” is the last thing you see for the most part only enforces that slogan, rather than hinting it’s on its way out. I have a feeling it’s not going anywhere as soon as i’d hope.
Good to know the technical details are getting better.
I’ve never heard the term ‘storm is building’ before. I’ve heard the incorrect term ‘storm is rising’ where ‘rising storm’ should have been used. I’ve even heard ‘blahblah storm, building in intensity, blahblah’.
Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed that a university would so mangle the English language for a marketing campaign.
That’s the story of the Hurricane
But it won’t be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done
Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.
-bob dylan; jacques levy
Maybe I’m the only old guy on here, but was anyone around for the Columbus day storm of “62”. Here is an account of the Typhoon.
During the Columbus Day Storm, many weather stations in Oregon reported wind gusts over 100 mph. Although the official top wind speed in North Bend was 81 mph, Newport clocked gusts up to 138 mph before the equipment failed.
Our region often receives topically-spawned storms. What made this cyclone so severe?
Typhoon Frieda developed in the tropical western Pacific about the third of October of that year. The storm weakened a bit as it moved east and north over cooler waters, then continued traveling east toward central California. According to a summary of government reports in The Oregonian (9 October 2002), Typhoon Frieda veered north around a very cold air mass that was moving south from the Gulf of Alaska. Frieda gained momentum as it was pulled around the cold air, peaking in speed as it slammed into the coast.
When Typhoon Frieda made landfall at Cape Blanco, it had sustained winds of 150 mph and was producing gusts up to 179 mph.
I lived in the Willamette Valley during the 1960s; during the Columbus Day Storm we lived not far from the Air Force Base, Camp Adair, north of Corvallis (where wind gusts reached 127 mph).
I remember a shift of wind direction after the calm eye passed over, likely exacerbating the damage. To lessen the strain on the house, my folks opened the windows on the lee side—first on the north, then on the south.
Myself, I lived in Lake Oswego at the time. Any large tree in the Willamette Valley was blown down.
They could have used the Columbus Day storm analogy, but that wouldn’t have been so widely understood. Hoping for an exiting season. I wonder if OldSchoolDuck was here for the Columbus day storm, what am I talking about, he came over on covered wagon.
Reser is only as loud as the fans want it to be. The lack of volume has nothing to do with the architecture… in fact, Angry you are completely wrong when you blame the lack of noise on the stadium’s structure.
Reser can be ridiculously loud… I haven’t made many trips there in recent years (I work most Saturdays in the fall and I’ve got a pair of young kiddos) but the loudest I’ve ever hear new-look Reser was in 2005 versus Boise State… from the penalty on Mike “High Steppin’ Hass until the end of the game the whole crowd was p!ssed and screaming.
Our fans just don’t GET that they can negatively affect the opposing offense. That’s a result of the fact that because of the “lost generation of Beaver fans” (due to the streak) we have to fill our stadium with idiots.
Contrast that with stadiums in the SEC or Big 12… Those people understand that their job is to make freaking noise. Our fans sit like church mice and only make noise when the Beavers entertain them. Reser could be the toughest place to play in the PAC-10, but only if the fans are up the task.
As far as the video goes, I thought it was humdrum. The hurricane analogy seemed a weak connection. Storm might have been a better choice, but who knows.