Over the years DDB New York has taken on some great Manhattan clients. There’s the New York Lottery, American Stock Exchange, Museum of Jewish Heritage, and some New York-specific efforts for Anheuser-Busch. But a few months ago the agency scored the ultimate New York brand: the Yankees.
Well, it isn’t the team that DDB is advertising for, per se, but rather a new cable channel: the YES Network, which launched in March. It’s part of YankeesNet, the holding company for the Yankees and for two New Jersey teams: basketball’s Nets and hockey’s Devils. The YES Network has exclusive rights to 130 Yankees regular season games, and 75 regular season Nets’ games. The channel will also offer arena football, college basketball and original sports-themed programming. YES is available to viewers in New York, Connecticut, and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. (However, because of a pricing dispute with Cablevision, a cable provider in the area, some three million people do not currently have access to the network.)
Regardless of price wars, DDB was called upon by the YES Network to call attention to the new venture, and with baseball season front and center, the obvious solution was to focus on the Yankees. It’s hard to think that bringing attention to Yankees baseball would be difficult. After all, this is one of the most storied franchises in baseball—having won 26 world championships—with a following that has surpassed cult status. The challenge is to make a mark in a sea of cable channels and sports networks, which is one reason why John Staffen, executive creative director at DDB New York, chose a humor-based approach.
"We knew that Yankees fans were among the most committed and loyal fans out there," notes Staffen, "but we also knew that to really make the amount of noise that we needed to quickly, and with not a lot of money, we needed it to be funny. In the sports genre, people are looking to be entertained, and at the end of the day, the YES Network is entertainment."
The resulting three-spot campaign conceived by Staffen, along with creative director/copywriter Thom Baginski and creative director/art director Gary Rozanski, centers on the idea that Yankee fans are so committed, they’ll do anything to get closer to the game. In "Bat Boy," Barney Miller alum Abe Vigoda shows up to interview for a job as a batboy. Yankees manager Joe Torre and bench coach Don Zimmer aren’t convinced he can handle the job, especially when the octogenarian’s behavior suggests a combination of dementia, incontinence and a bad back. "Hot Dog" features a teenage hot dog vendor who’s been a bit too involved in the game to actually sell any frankfurters. And in "Rain Tarp," a fanatic female groundskeeper asks Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter for a date by writing, "Derek, how about dinner Friday night?" on the tarp intended to protect the field during a downpour. "Rain Tarp" was shot on video and interspersed with real rain-delay footage to appear like something that was actually caught on television. Each spot ends with a voiceover explaining that the YES Network provides better ways to get close to the New York Yankees.
According to Staffen, there was really only one director for the job: Bryan Buckley, partner/director at bicoastal/international hungry man. "Bryan is a New Yorker, he’s a baseball fan, he’s worked with sports celebrities before, and he knows the intricacies of dealing with teams and leagues," Staffen observes. "Plus, he has a great ability to get the most out of talent, both celebrities and regular actors." Other key contributors to the spots’ success include Celia Williams, director of broadcast production at DDB, and editors Sherri Margulies, Chuck Willis and Bill Cramer of the New York office of bicoastal Crew Cuts.
Although Buckley is a fan of a certain Boston baseball team that has a bitter history with the Yankees, he was seduced by the prospect of helping to launch the YES Network, which is, of course, owned by George Steinbrenner, mercurial owner of the Yankees. "To me, it was somewhat of a historical thing to do," says Buckley. "If you follow baseball and you’re a fan of the game, then Steinbrenner’s network was noteworthy in the media world."
Historical implications aside, Buckley had to get the trio of YES commercials made in under a week, shooting two in Tampa at Legends Field, the Yankees’ spring training facility, and one in New York at Yankee Stadium.
Casting turned out to be a tricky aspect of the production, because when looking for people to play "New Yorkers," you run into a lot of clichés. "When you cast for a hot dog vendor and his boss, you get a lot of ‘dees’ and ‘dos’ and ‘how you doin’?’ and that whole shtick, and if you’re really from New York, you realize that it’s not actually about that," Buckley explains. "It’s evolved into a whole new group of people from all walks of life."
For "Hot Dog," Buckley found a young actor from New York who actually loves the Yankees and can talk about the team for long stretches of time. Playing the part of the boss was a man from India. "The blend of those two guys together just worked," notes Buckley. "It was important for this whole campaign to have a genuine New York feel, but what I liked about [‘Hot Dog’] was that it didn’t hit it on the cliché level, but actually went one step beyond that."
Vigoda turned out to be another casting surprise. The script had called for an "Abe Vigoda-like" character, but when the call went out, the casting people happened to know the agent representing Vigoda, and after a few phone calls, the actor agreed to do the job. "It was weird because I grew up with Barney Miller, and you never imagine in your whole life that you will actually direct Abe Vigoda," Buckley relates.
When dealing with professional sports organizations, often all the decisions come down to one guy sitting at the top. In this case, not only was the campaign to center on Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees, but the ads were for Steinbrenner’s network, so top brass had a fair amount of involvement. "There were some tense moments," recalls Staffen of some of the decisions made during the shoot. For instance, in "Rain Tarp," the original script had a fanatic fan rolled up in the tarp. When it started to rain, the fan would emerge as the tarp was rolled out. The shoot was already scheduled at Yankees Stadium when word came down that Steinbrenner didn’t want a fanatic fan rolling out of a tarp, for fear that someone might actually do it. "So, we have the guy and the tarp and Yankees Stadium, and we’re shooting the next day and we had to change the script to have the writing on the tarp and a fanatic groundskeeper," Buckley recounts.
But that was only the beginning in terms of on-the-shoot adjustments. When the production got to Yankees Stadium, the grounds crew wasn’t going to let the film crew on the hallowed field to shoot. That’s where the negotiating began. At first the groundskeepers agreed to give the production 10 to 15 feet of the field. Then another 15 feet were wrangled, which was just enough space to roll out the tarp to reveal the message.
Problem number three involved the extras. Because this was more or less a low-budget effort, the extras were there for the glory of sitting in Yankees Stadium when no one else was around. Everyone was having a great time until Buckley called in the rain towers. After all, rain was central to the concept of the spot, and something the extras should have thought about before agreeing to do it. "We had a mass exodus," says Buckley. "Everybody left." If you look closely, the overhead shot when the tarp is rolled out includes the first few rows of seats where a dozen die-hard fans sit under umbrellas. A closer look reveals that there aren’t actually any people sitting under those umbrellas—the umbrellas are just sort of propped up on the seats to make it look like people are sitting there. Who says you need special effects to make a commercial?
