commercial – Memphis Flyer

In one of the new television commercials to promote the upcoming Grizzlies season, forwards Rudy Gay and Hakim Warrick are shown playing a game of one-on-one, trading step-back jumpers and blow-by dunks. You might assume that the activity was choreographed for the camera but apparently not.

Turns out it’s a real game, played to 21 by ones and twos, with the winner getting to choose the team’s entrance music for the first preseason game. (When you hear Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got” on October 15th, thank Rudy Gay.)

“They played for 40 minutes, and we just went from different angles and shot them all over the place,” says John Pugliese, the team’s senior director of marketing communications.

The commercial — and the story behind it — signifies fun, which shouldn’t be unusual for a professional sports team but has been sadly lacking for the Grizzlies, on and off the court, over the past couple of seasons.

It also signifies a dramatic tonal shift throughout the organization, one perhaps unlikely in the aftermath of a dismal 2006-2007 season, ownership chaos, and a bitter outcome during the league’s summer draft lottery.

Yet this change is very real and can mostly be credited to two men: new coach Marc Iavaroni and new basketball operations honcho Chris Wallace, who have replaced the dour, standoffish personalities of predecessors Mike Fratello and Jerry West with an openness and (guarded) optimism than feels palpable to anyone who’s spent time around FedExForum lately.

Starting this week, fans will get a chance to see the new-look Grizzlies in preseason action, but for now the changes happening off the court may be more important.

Wallace and Iavaroni have been repairing breaches across the Grizzlies landscape this offseason. They’re being remarkably open with fans. They’ve been more open with the media. They’ve reached out to the local minority owners, including an appearance at Fred Jones’ Southern Heritage Classic. And, perhaps most importantly, they’ve developed a better, closer working relationship with the team’s business staff, a change best symbolized by this: When Jerry West ran the team, he was generally referred to as “Mr. West.” In short order, Wallace has become known as simply “Chris” to many Grizzlies employees.

This improved working relationship seems to be embodied in the team’s current marketing campaign, driven by the simple slogan “New Game.”

“The advertising and marketing has to be an extension of what’s happening on the floor,” Pugliese says. “And who knows that better than Iavaroni and Wallace? Whatever our message is, it’s hollow without their support.”

Pugliese credits Wallace and Iavaroni with bringing “a broader vision of the business side of basketball” than the team has had from basketball personnel in the past and, as a result, having “changed the entire culture” of the franchise, comments that echo similar words from other employees throughout the Grizzlies organization.

The team’s business and marketing staff hopes the “New Game” campaign, which uses the players and coaches as personalities in a way reminiscent of the team’s effective “Round Town” campaign from a few seasons ago, can communicate the positive changes they’ve experienced internally. But they also know that rebuilding the team’s ticket-buying fan base won’t be a quick or easy fix.

“We know we’re not going to be able to advertise or market our way out of this,” Pugliese admits. “If we spent another $200,000 and put up more billboards, is that going to translate to butts in seats right now? No. But can we set the tone? Right now, there’s a general groundswell of optimism, I think we can all agree, about the team. Can we set the table for when that optimism, combined with some team performance, can push the sales numbers?”

That journey back — in terms of winning games and winning back fans — begins this week, but credit Iavaroni and Wallace for getting the Grizzlies off to an unexpectedly good start.

I want my f*&king money back. I keep seeing a paid advertisement on television that deeply offends me and probably millions of other red-blooded Americans. It’s the commercial for Positive Changes, the company that swears it can help you lose weight through hypnosis. You may have seen it. It’s the one in which the still-overweight woman is talking about how great the program is and how it gives her so much more energy and, just when she says that, her eyes close and she appears to doze off. It’s pretty spectacular in its badness and to think that they actually paid an advertising agency to create the spot is hilarious. But what offends me about the commercial is that right after she seemingly falls asleep on camera while talking about how much more energy she has, a very loud man appears and makes the statement: “Diets just don’t work. Positive Changes does.” Well, as a person who has been on a diet since the age of 11 and who has had success in some instances (though not lately, as gravity and old age continue to ravage my once sleek physique), I am offended and I am sure millions of other Americans who diet are too. Here we are trying to look better to make the United States of America a more pleasant country and cut down on healthcare costs associated with being overweight, and this man has the audacity to question us. I think the FCC should look into this and I want a portion of my Direct TV bill taken off. No, wait, I have a better idea. Let’s have the U.S. Senate spend a great deal of time debating this paid ad and then spend more time voting for a nonbinding resolution to condemn it, like they did with the controversial MoveOn.org “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” ad that the group ran in The New York Times. And politicians wonder why we don’t trust them. Sure, the ad backfired on them and gave those who live in constant fear of the terrorist bogeymen something to come together about, especially the Republican senators who aren’t so happy with Bush and his war but don’t have the ‘nads to speak up about it because they might lose some of their conservative base. Now they have one extremely important vote under their belts to realign themselves with Bush in some way. Yes, they took the brave step of voting to condemn an ad in a newspaper. And even 22 senators from the Democratic side thought long and hard about this and cast their vote in favor of condemning the ad. What they should be condemning is the fact that The New York Times charges $142,083 for one page of advertising, even though Moveon.org somehow got the brother-in-law discount and paid only $65,575. Chicken feed. And pretty stupid of MoveOn.org to shell out that much money on one ad when they could be using that money on a campaign to get Bush impeached. But they have since said they will step up and pay the difference and the whiny Times issued a letter of apology for giving them the rate, in response to complaints by FreedomsWatch.org, the organization that pushes the war in Iraq and pays to run those horrible commercials about not “surrendering” featuring maimed, legless soldiers from the war talking about how they would like to go back. I went through every link on their Web site the other day, just for fun. Although they claim to be nonprofit, their site informs visitors that donations to the organization are not tax-deductible. Sounds pretty fishy to me. I also registered to become a member and sent them some questions, like: Do you pay these soldiers and their families to drone on and on about how great the war is and how much “progress” we are making? Of course, I haven’t heard back from them, but that might be because I registered under the name Phil McCrackin. But back to the Senate vote — the brainchild of Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from, naturally, Texas. I guess he was bored with all the hard work he’s been doing as the vice president of the Congressional Sportmen’s Caucus, which is dedicated to making sure Americans have the right to hunt, fish, and trap animals. I guess it also gives him the right to trap senators in a room and have them waste their time admonishing a newspaper ad rather than trying to figure out a way to keep more soldiers from having their legs blown off. So, as I mentioned above, I want my f*&king money back. If one red cent of my taxes was used to pay for those senators’ salaries and the time they spent, I want it redistributed to something worthwhile. And while they’re at it, telling me that it is treasonous and unpatriotic and disgusting to ever, ever question or say anything bad about members of the U.S. military under any circumstances? Please. Watch a tape of the Abu Ghraib hearings. Trying to force us to be noncritical about the military is completely and utterly against what the military is laying their lives on the line for in Iraq, even if they are in the wrong country.