The NHL Launches its Largest Advertising Campaign for the Stanley Cup Playoffs: "How the Cup Changes Everything"

Today the NHL launched what is likely the largest and most encompassing advertising campaign in its history, on NHL.com. The campaign features NHL stars Martin Brodeur, Henrik Zetterberg, Jarome Iginla, Roberto Luongo, Joe Thornton, Ryan Getzlaf, Daniel Alfredsson and Roman Hamrlik, talking about the more intense aspects of playoff hockey games and how they are different from regular hockey games because: "The Cup Changes Everything." The Alfredsson ("Shorthanded"), Getzlaf ("Tighter") and Luongo ("City") spots have already been launched, the rest will launch at a later date.

The NHL is leaving no stone unturned as they are flooding as many media outlets as possible with these ad spots. All local and national tv partners (NBC, VERSUS, CBC, TSN, RDS, HD Net and NHL NETWORK), radio affiliates (XM Radio and Westwood One), print media (Sports Illustrated, The Globe & Mail), 30 arenas, internet sites (Yahoo.com, NHL.com, MySpace, Youtube etc) and 1,400 Canadian Cineplex movie theatres are taking part in this campaign. The partnership with the Canadian theatres was likely one of the carrots the NHL got through their sponsorship deal with Scotiabank earlier in the year.

Personally, though I thought the graphics on these spots were amazing, it failed to move me. It seems like thats what the NHL was really after, considering the melodrama of the spots. I thought Alfredsson had a little too much dialogue (it sounded like he trying to get all his lines in before someone cut him off) and Getzlaf was trying too hard. He was almost barking at the end when he was saying: "Thats how the 'K'up changes everything." The melodramatic music was also quite over the top. It seems like whenever the NHL conciously tries to convey the intensity and drama of the game, it backfires and the ads end up being overzealous (ie. the MY NHL Campaign). Of all the three spots launched so far, Roberto Luongo's "City" was the best. Even though his lines were supposed to be pretty charged with emotion (I mean guarding a city??? c'mon!), he kept calm, didn't rush and didn't try to dramatize. He was also aided by the fact that the music in his spot was the most subdued of the three. This all helped his ad come off more authentically.

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