The Saint Paul Saints baseball team and marketing gurus are well known for their grandiose and popular promotions and they have hit another homerun with the Bobblefoot promotion. This Sunday, May 25th 2008 the Saints are giving away Bobblefoots to the first 2,500 fans in attendance. The Bobblefoot is a form of the popular bobbleheads given away at many ballparks but the Bobblefoot features a bobbling toe-tapping foot sticking out from under a bathroom stall.

Of course most all will recognize the salute to the Larry Craig’s toe-tapping incident at the MSP Airport last June but the Saints like to put it another way.

“Some of the most famous dance halls in the country include Radio City Music Hall in New York, the Fox Theater in Detroit and now the list includes a restroom at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. With so much fanfare around dancing, the St. Paul Saints will honor “tappers” during National Tap Dance Day.

During the Sunday, May 25 game the first 2,500 fans in attendance will receive a bobblefoot. The design is a bathroom stall, with a foot that peaks out of the bottom and “taps” up and down. The day coincides with National Tap Dance Day.

While many people tap their foot because they are impatient, others may do it because they are nervous. It doesn’t matter if your tapping style is done with a “wide stance” or is used as some sort of code, the Saints are asking all fans to tap to their heart’s content on May 25.”

Always intrigued by the Saints promotions I decided to ask Sean Aronson for the Bobblefoot photos (oops, I should have asked him for a bobblefoot!) so I could include them in this post and also if he could answer a few questions on the promotion and the Saints marketing work on and off-line. He was quick to reply and provide all the material a great media relations guru would. Here’s the scoop:

SA- There has been A LOT of positive feedback from this, but as in anything you do there are going to be people that don’t see the humor. We handle the good and bad calls and emails and we try to explain to people how we came up with the idea and what our thinking was, which of course is based around May 25 being National Tap Dance Day. We’ve been doing off the wall promotions for 16 seasons and this is just another in the long line of ideas we have come up with.

SA- Of course the media in Idaho has been calling us non-stop, but we were the #2 best person in the World on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show on Thursday night. The Washington Post, The New York Post, media outlets in Los Angeles and everywhere in between have been tremendous. I do want to give credit to the smokinggun.com who were one of the first to jump on this and I think that definitely helped spread the word. Bill O’Reilly’s show also called and asked for a couple of the bobble-foot dolls for one of their shows next week. The media exposure is something you can’t quantify. We sold nearly 500 seats on Thursday for the game on Sunday once word had gotten around, so that’s another good way to tell ROI.

SA- No he hasn’t but we have received a call from the man that prosecuted Senator Craig and he said he will be in attendance at Saturday night’s game and would like to get one. I thought that was pretty interesting.

SA- We have some go to people that we send out our releases too and I think with the online services and blogs taking off over the last few years they are instrumental in spreading the word. deadspin.com and the smokinggun.com are huge of course and when you have an idea that takes off like this you find out more and more about different sites. It’s the great thing about our country. Anyone can start a website and put whatever they want on it. If you don’t like the content you can respond immediately with a comment.

SA- If anyone media member asks for a credential we give it to them. It can be traditional or non-traditional. The Saints are ahead of the curve on so many things that we are often times seen as non-traditional, so we can relate to the bloggers and independent writers and web sites. They have the same access as any of the bigger local or national outlets.

SA- VITA.MN is HUGE for us. We rely on them a lot. I’ve heard of the others you’ve mentioned, but I’m not as familiar with them. I didn’t think at 31 I’d feel out of touch, but perhaps I am.

SA- Our fans can get up to date information sent via text to their phones, plus a Saints tool bar on their computer. We also started something last season where you can purchase tickets via your cell phone which is definitely ahead of its time.

SA- We use every media source that we can find. Whether it’s online or traditional we use all we can to get the Saints name out there.

SA- Usually the best ideas come on the fly like with last year’s Michael Vick Chew Toy which we had to be quick about. The next one I’m personally excited about is “Even A Monkey Can Do It” on July 16. We were sitting around a table one day and joked that a monkey could do our jobs and so we thought why not bring a monkey out here. So a monkey will do some jobs around the ballpark on that night from taking tickets, to dragging the field and even joining myself on the TV broadcast. It’s a monkey, who doesn’t love monkeys.

A few additional notes about the Saints Bobblefoot promotion and their online marketing are worth noting.

• First the idea is a dandy one and linkbait material for online use.
• The Saints phone number on the side of the stall is a great touch.
• Since this article is about marketing I want to mention the All Over Media sign on the back of the stall shows off the sponsor, nice…..
• I think most folks can see the lighter side of this and get a chuckle, overall a win for the Saints. The Saints are about fun and not getting too serious about stuff.

The Saints are obviously getting into the online world for marketing with the Facebook and Myspace pages, plus the presence at the local VITA.MN and great coverage at Smoking Gun and DeadSpin. But their Search optimization and ability to take advantage of these great promotions with their web site is lacking. Right now the Saints web site does not even show up on the first page of the Google search results for Bobblefoot.

The Saints don’t have a simple optimized title tag on their news release page of the bobblefoot promotion and I could not find a dedicated page with pictures, video, or audio on their site for the promotion. I won’t even get into linking structure and other strategies. If they created a dedicated and simply optimized page for the Bobblefoot with fun content, and put the word out through Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr, BUZZ and other social sites and tools along with their current channels, they could push up the traffic, unique visitors and page views big time and get that number one Google spot easily. This traffic would help garner bigger advertising rates and even bigger sponsor fees for the promotions because the exposure would be even that much more. Also if they did get into the online aspects of their promotion they could quantify their ROI in an online statistical manner.

Again I want to thank Sean Aronson and the Saint Paul Saints for the interview and the fun promotion. Even if the Saints don’t have the optimum online strategy yet, their marketing department is definitely one everyone can follow and learn something from. They never cease coming up with good stuff. I’m sure they will get there on their website and online strategies. Maybe we can check back with them down the road and see how things are going….. cheers!
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