• Sustainable Movements in Action: The Hartford Whalers Booster Club

    Posted on March 27th, 2008 by and currently 8 commenting.

    On Tuesday, Geno gave us his thoughts about what sustainable word of mouth looks like. And, as he mentioned, around here it is our goal to help create movements so powerful that if Brains on Fire ” or our client’s budget ” were to get hit by a bus (God forbid) that the movement would continue on.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Hartford Whalers Booster Club. If you don’t know the back-story, the Hartford Whalers were a pro hockey team founded in the 70′s (originally they were the New England Whalers and based in Boston). And they actually attracted an extremely passionate fan base. But then in 1997, the franchise was moved to Raleigh, NC and became the Carolina Hurricanes.

    That’s right, they left Connecticut. But the Hartford Whalers Booster Club lives on. And strongly, I might add. They hold regular meetings, have frequent newsletters and get this: show up at Carolina Hurricane games in their Whalers garb and cheer on the team. Talk about sustainability.

    I know what you’re thinking, ‘Sure, Spike. Its easy for people to get passionate about hockey.’ And I say to you that you’d be surprised what people can get passionate about. Books. City parks. Health. Scissors and paper.

    But it’s not only the ‘what’ that people can get passionate about. If you build a movement in such a way that it allows people to own it and use their own talents and gifts to express their passions, then it’s hard to go wrong.

    So long live the Hartford Whalers.

    Update: Check out the documentary “Bleeding Green,” which “is the story of Hartford’s major league hockey fans…Find out why the Hartford Whalers, even though they don’t exist, still have a lot going for them!”

  • http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress BIG Kahuna

    Once again you say movement and I say fanatic. There was a reason they left Hartford…no one was supporting them. No one went to games, even playoff games were half full. I know because they use to play the Bruins all the time. It was really sad.

    If it was such a great “movement” they’d still be in Hartford. Just like the Quebec Nordiques who are now In Colorado.

    I think it’s neat that they have their booster club but sustainable movement…I think not. Just a bunch of fanatics holding onto a past long gone by.

    Now Jericho fans I can get behind. I hate CBS!

  • http://brainsonfire.com Spike

    Scott, you’re missing the point, which is that when people get passionate they will carry the banner of those passions long after that company/product/service no longer exists.

  • http://www.whatsthediff.com Christy

    What’s the difference between Jericho fans that will exist two years from now twittering about how much they miss it, getting together for Jericho trivia parties, using Jericho avatars everywhere… generally keeping Jericho alive long after it’s dead and this? It’s the same thing.

    You know they’ll do it.

  • http://www.musicisforloversblog.com josh

    Great post, Spike. Puts some good context to Geno’s previous post. And long live the Whalers.

  • http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress BIG Kahuna

    Sure I understand and I think it’s cool. It would have been even cooler (making up new words now) if they could have been as passionate when they were around. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of “retired” brands like this.

    I think bringing or keeping brands alive even though they are officially dead (insert Atari) can sometimes be a creative/cultural thing as well. It’s cool to wear a Space Invaders t-shirt even though people are now playing Guitar Hero.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Spike

    Ummm, Atari isn’t dead. In fact, they are one of the top software game producers around.

    PS – “cooler” is a real word.

  • http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress BIG Kahuna

    Really? Who knew… I thought everything was with PlayStation, Wii, XBox etc. Where does one buy an Atari system. I lost my version of Pong!

  • Fletcha

    I realize that I arrive a year late with this comment, but I’m here nonetheless to offer fact and perspective. And to say to ‘Kahuna’: Get a clue.

    The Whalers left Hartford, not the other way around.

    By 1994, a perfect storm had hit Connecticut and the Whalers: 1) The local economy was in shambles; Hartford was the U.S.’s fastest-shrinking city at that time. 2) The team was still reeling from the fateful 1991 trade that sent captain Ron Francis and others to Pittsburgh (and lifting the Penguins to Stanley Cup glory). And 3) Peter Karmanos, a Detroiter who unsuccessfully tried to buy the moribund Red Wings, got his mitts on the Whalers.

    Remember, the core fans of the team were the children of the first Whalers ticket-holders. These kids, who were born about the same time as the team, are in their 30s now, with hockey-loving children of their own. The Whalers were the intoduction of pro sports for kids of the ’70s living in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. And Peter Karmanos chopped this fanbase at the knees. By not fighting for the team — and as we all know, the best way to keep a team in town is to build a winner — he betrayed a generation of hockey-crazy Whalers fans. After a series of arrogant demands — which the mayor of Hartford said amounted to blackmail — Karmanos moved the team out of town even before he found it a new home.

    Also during the mid-90’s, the NHL was about to step on a land mine. The crippling NHL lockout would eventually send salaries skyrocketing. The league, which was bent on Southern expansion, would become weaker than ever and ill-equipped for the 21st Century.

    The league torpedoed itself. While battling to stay alive in Hartford would have been a struggle – let’s face it, just about every NHL team is carrying an unhealthy amount of debt – the fight would have played out in its natural backyard. A backyard with frozen ponds and knowledgeable, die-hard hockey fans.

    Whatever the case might have been in the 1990s, the fact is that today, Winnipeg, Hartford, and Quebec City – as well as Hamilton and Saskatoon, two cities that have been begging for decades for NHL teams – are better able to support professional hockey teams than Nashville, Phoenix, North Carolina, and Florida. There’s a reason why the Devils stayed in New Jersey. Or why the Penguins stayed in Pittsburgh, the Sabres in Buffalo, and the Islanders on Long Island. This is where hockey lives, and where hockey survives.

    Connecticut isn’t simply the home of legions of heartbroken Whalers fans.

    ESPN is located in Bristol, which is about 20 minutes from the Civic Center. It’s no secret that many of the network’s employees were unabashed supporters of the team – it got to the point when, even a few years after the move, Carolina Hurricanes fans would complain to the Bristol offices about the occassional Whalers references during SportsCenter broadcasts.

    There’s no doubt in my mind that if Peter Karmanos had kept the Whalers in Hartford, today we would be watching nationally televised hockey games on ESPN.

    Letting the Whalers wander out of Hartford was a horrible, horrible mistake. And that’s why, more than 10 years later, you’re still hearing the haunting cries from the team’s fans.