Pass the mic: Promo Seminar ignites offseason
The 2017 Minor League Baseball season officially ended on September 19 in Moosic, Pennsylvania, when the Durham Bulls triumphed over the Memphis Redbirds in the Triple-A National Championship Game.One week later, with 2017's successes and failures still front and center in the cerebral cortex, front office members from over 100
The 2017 Minor League Baseball season officially ended on September 19 in Moosic, Pennsylvania, when the Durham Bulls triumphed over the Memphis Redbirds in the Triple-A National Championship Game.
One week later, with 2017's successes and failures still front and center in the cerebral cortex, front office members from over 100 teams gathered in Greenville, South Carolina, for the annual Minor League Baseball Promotional Seminar. These individuals, joined by representatives from a wide variety of other sports organizations and businesses, spent three days and three nights dissecting the season that was.
The Promo Seminar, the abbreviated name by which it is commonly referred, originated over 30 years ago as an informal idea-sharing and brainstorming event organized by El Paso Diablos owner Jim Paul. It has since grown into an annual end-of-season benchmark, organized by St. Petersburg-based Minor League Baseball staff and taking place at a different Minor League city every season. Last year's event was in Birmingham, Alabama; in 2018 it shifts to Des Moines, Iowa.
The Promo Seminar's three days (and nights) consist of a community service project, cocktail hours, presentations by dozens of sports business professionals (including, full disclosure, this writer), and smaller, more participatory Group Therapy and OPEN (Ongoing Professional Engagement Network) sessions.
Long tossing
The Promo Seminar's Wednesday morning Around the Horn session is a longstanding tradition in which a representative from each team in attendance shares one of the season's biggest promotional successes. This year marked the introduction of a soft, square passable microphone that could be literally thrown around the room.
What was discussed as the microphone was handed, or thrown, from speaker to speaker over a marathon three-and-a-half-hour period? Pretty much everything.
Frisco RoughRiders senior directing of marketing Matt Ratliff advocated staging a "Gilligan's Island" promotion, noting that 78-year-old Dawn "Mary Ann" Wells is a wonderful and enthusiastic ballpark guest; Myrtle Beach Pelicans assistant general manager Jen Brunson said that her team had staged a "gender reveal" fireworks show, with the initial blue firework indicating that the baby was a boy; Kannapolis Intimidators director of communications Josh Feldman touted "Father's Day Batting Practice," joking that it cost "$20 a pop"; Fort Wayne TinCaps marketing VP Michael Limmer revealed how the need to fulfill in-game mascot requests led to a sponsored meet and greet area on the main concourse; Charleston River Dogs promotions director Nate Kurant, looking to make promotions more "experiential," turned a standard t-shirt giveaway into a post-game "1K t-shirt toss."
And then there were the Erie SeaWolves. In the spirit of the team's much-lauded "Alternative Facts Night" promotion, community engagement manager Hunter Horenstein went ahead and accepted a Golden Bobblehead Award for "being the best team of all teams. Period."
The last person to speak during the "Around the Horn" segment was, perhaps, the individual with the most out-of-the-ordinary job: Noah Petro, NASA research space scientist. Petro, a huge baseball fan, played a key role in helping to coordinate and promote several of the Minor League ballgames that were played in the solar eclipse's "path of totality" on August 21. He sees these efforts as the start of something much larger. Infinite, perhaps.
"I'm here to gauge interest in, not just the eclipse, but every day phenomenon," Petro told the crowd, going to on to propose alliterative astronomical promotions such as "Sun Day Sunday" and "Moon Monday."
Reedy is fundamental
This year's MiLB Charities Community Service Project took place along the banks of Richland Creek, a tributary of the Reedy River. Approximately 100 volunteers worked to clear invasive plants and plant native ecology, planting approximately 700 plants total. This writer apologizes for using a variation of the word "plant" four times in the previous sentence.
Tuesday, Tuesday
Tuesday, the first full day of the Promo Seminar, was split between presentations to all attendees and smaller "Group Therapy" sessions.
A sampling of the former:
As for the latter, this writer sat in on a session entitled "Keeping Fans Coming Back for More." Among the ideas that could, in theory, keep fans coming back for more? The Tennessee Smokies staged a Thirsty Thursday adult chicken run, modeled after their popular between-inning youth promotion. The Tulsa Drillers' Usher Base Race was a season-long tournament, in which the team's ushers competed to win the Golden Walker. Finally, Bowie Baysox assistant general manager Phil Wrye praised the entertainment value of a between-inning on-field endeavor in which the contestant "beats the [crap]" out of an intern wearing a cockroach suit.
Benjamin Hill is a reporter for MiLB.com and writes Ben's Biz Blog. Follow Ben on Twitter @bensbiz.