Gnats' ads are award winners

When you think of groundbreaking advertisements, you think of Wendy's' "Where's the beef?" and Apple's "Big Brother" campaigns from the 1980s.

Now the 2006 Savannah Sand Gnats' television and radio promos can be added to that pantheon.

The Gnats produced 10 30-second commercials that ran on television during the 2006 season and starred their mascot, Gnate the Gnat, groundskeeper Chuck and beer man Frank.

The general campaign was honored with a Judges' Choice Award and a Silver Addy on Friday night at the 2006-07 Savannah Addy Awards ceremony.

The campaign was focused around letters from Sand Gnats fans, and one of the questions was, "Gnate, do you ever work out with the players during practice?"

The ensuing shot showed Gnate struggling to throw strikes to an exasperated player during batting practice.

"To be a TV celebrity is quite amazing, but the commercials were just a small thing after being featured on ESPN's 'Cold Pizza,'" said Gnate, who was also shown eating breakfast, driving to work in a golf cart while wearing a sport coat and carrying a briefcase and doing calisthenics with the team.

Now that the ads have won a Silver Addy, they're eligible to move on to the district competition in Memphis.

The successful ads turned Sand Gnats employees into local celebrities who even signed autographs at games. In one, "Frank the Frosty Beverage Man" revealed that empty beer cans were recycled in humorous ways around Grayson Stadium. In another, Chuck showed that he kept the bases looking fresh by "baking" a fresh batch before every game, adding new meaning to the "hot corner."

Many of the ads were dreamed up by Greg Vojtanek, the Sand Gnats' director of ticketing from 2005-06 who is now the director of marketing for the York Revolution of the independent Atlantic League.

"I'm very proud of [the award], it's something that's going on my resume, that's for sure," said Vojtanek, who spent five years working in Los Angeles as an actor before getting involved in Minor League baseball. "We just did it for fun, but to be recognized as doing something more than goofing around is kind of nice."

The Sand Gnats have been in Savannah since 1996 and have been affiliated with the Dodgers, Rangers, Expos and Nationals over the years. To go along with their new status as Class A affiliate of the New York Mets, the Gnats are renovating the Grayson Stadium, including installation of a new scoreboard with a video screen and tearing down an old set of bleachers and turning the area into berm seating.

The next set of ads, due to begin production next week, will feature Gnate donning construction garb to work on various projects around the stadium.

Scott Gierman, the team's creative director who co-produced the commercials with Vojtanek, said the ads provoked a positive response from fans, who would stop him and his front-office colleagues to talk about them.

"Our attendance went up last year," Gierman said. "And while the ads aren't the only reason why, they probably contributed to it."