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…it’s not easy being a Mets fan - not just because of the team’s more successful, older, cross-town brother, but because my favorite organization has no idea how to manage expectations…
…the Mets need to do us and themselves a favor and stop leading with their chin…
…my professional background, prior to writing MetsBlog, was as a media consultant - and there is an old adage in journalism that goes, “Never get out in front of the story,” because if the story changes or dies on the table, you’ll be lost and alone and looking like a fool…well, i’d impart this same advice to the Mets: don’t get out in front of your results…because when you do, and you fail, like last season, you look lost, alone and foolish…and what’s worse, you drag us with you…
…it’s all about managing expectations, which, from what i can tell, the Mets have never been very good at doing…
…for instance, when you hang a gigantic banner on the front door which reads, “Your Season has Come,” or, “The New Mets,” or, “Catch the Energy,” you are setting yourself up to be mocked - assuming you do not win the World Series…i mean, in this media environment, and with such arrogant rivals, if you stick our collective head out that far it’s bound to get lopped off…not even the most successful team is going to be able to meet this level of hype, which is probably why the team’s who are perceived to be most successful simply let their results for speak for themselves…
…in other words, please, quit it with the slogans…and definitely do not put them to music, like this horrible effort…believe me, i’ll know if you are a good team just by watching the product, i don’t need you to raise my expectations in advance…
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One of the best posts I’ve read on this site for a while. I strongly believe that this failure in the PR department can be directly linked to the problems we were having earlier this offseason - that other teams did not like the Mets prospects. This team has a PR problem, from the way it markets the team to its fans to the way it markets its prospects to other teams.
Yeah, they are embarrassing sometimes with the way they handle things.
…and please for the love of God can they stop playing the “everybody clap your hands” thing every 3 seconds? Like NY fans need to be told when to applaud.
I’ve heard that at other stadiums too. It’s a standard practice across the industry.
It doesn’t matter. It’s the most annoying thing … get rid of it.
OK, you set up the meeting with the 30 owners, I’ll make the pitch.
Done! You have a good curveball?
More of an eepheus pitch.
Nice, that will work. Hypnosis.
Agreed, and the play “Everybody clap your hands” FAR more frequently at Shea than elsewhere.
What’s embarrassing is the misplaced confidence coupled with an embrace of second-tier status, e.g., wild card banners.
Mets: sell it as exciting baseball. Don’t “hype it,” don’t pretend it’s World Series or bust this year. Just say — “watch David Wright, Jose Reyes, and the New York Mets take on X in the last year at Shea.” If thwy win, the marketing takes care of itself. There’s no need to have a marketing department constantly justifying its existence with stupid slogans, songs, and shallow hype that just makes the franchise look silly.
This has become a huge issue in all sports today…teams think they know what the fans want to make the experience more enjoyable, and yet they completely miss the big picture: if you give them a superior product, the rest takes care of itself. I grew up attending a ton of Lakers games in LA in the 80s, and there were no t-shirts being fired into the crowd, no digital screens that implored people to make ‘noise’ (actually, the scoreboard was always missing a few lights, and only kept track of the most basic stats)….and, because the team was so entertaining, the atmosphere was electric. One of my favorite baseball spectating experiences happened two years ago while watching a Giants game in San Francisco. In the third inning there was a ballpark-wide power failure, which killed all the scoreboards and PA systems, everything except for the lights. Somehow, the crowd knew when to cheer, and the only sounds were actually created by the crowd, the ump and the game…it was beautiful!
It’s the “baseball (or other sports) as carnival” theory, which posits that the “experience” is what makes people attend rather than just watch TV, and the “experience” includes all of that ridiculous hot dog gun/ dancing on the dugout/”Cotton-Eyed Joe” crap. They think that there are family members or friends who would otherwise veto a trip to the game that are convinced too attend because they’ll be “entertained” even though they don’t like baseball. I think this theory is fundamentally flawed, but they have record attendance, and it’s tough to make the argument that the figures are up IN SPITE OF the peripherals (even though I think that’s the case.)
i love everybody clap your hands. it sing it to myself all the time. its fun. i seriously effing love it.
then i heard that commercial with mc hammer and his kid and realized it was a song by mc hammer and i downloaded it right afterward. im going to listen right now.
every body clap your hands
ha hah!
Are you wearing a helmet right now?
Every…body….crapyourpants….
poot-poot-poot-poot-poot-poot-poot-poot
Perfect example is Endy Chavez “the catch” bobble head day - what organization celebrates a play in a game that they LOST! and an elimination loss…
Seriously Matt, one of the best posts this site has seen.
amen.
second it
thiiiiiird.
The Mets will be mocked regardless of banners or slogans or whether they win everyg ame or lose every game. It’s the function of sports fans to root for your team and tear down everyone else.
For example… the Spankees are mercilessly torn apart by fans of every team, because they spend tons of money and their fans are less than hospitable.
Very well said Matt. I agree 100%!
Ok nice post. But I have a more succinct PR strategy.
After a mindblowing collapse, give your poor fans a break: do not trade Lastings Milledge for overpaid scrubs and cynically raise ticket prices unreasonably. If you follow these rules, then you can sing any damn song you like.
What spurred this post? Fed up with the Santana stuff or Omar’s SI jinx that he has placed on the franchise? Lets GO GIANTS!
yeah upon reading this post i thought it would end with “johan to the yankees.” a suicide note of sorts
Matt,
It’s just a slogan. Selling 2008 playoff tickets in April would be something that constitutes “leading with your chin”.
Of course some of these slogan conjur up good memories.. “baseball like it outta be” is seen in a positive light as opposed to “your team, your time”
What I would like to see, and they come far a few between, is a team rallying cry..not something manufacture by a marketing team but by the team itself that extends to the fans.
Something like “you gotta believe” did alot in ‘69 and is still reverberates today. Some type of quote or saying reminding them that they have to earn the division and there are no off days in the season.
As a raider fan i say we borrow “Just win” since they dont seem to be using it at the moment.
Hey, Raiders and Mets, me too..Not much to cheer about lately
not to nitpick, but “You Gotta Believe” came from Tug during the ‘73 run.
youre right xavier22, thanks for the correction.
I always loved when they played The Doors after every win in the 99 season. Or was it 2000? Whatever, that used to get me pumped…loved it.
Jedimynd,
“ya gotta believe” was Tug’s rallying cry in 1973, NOT the 69 WS team, which was the miracle mets.
You have much learning yet to do, young paduan,
‘73
i’m surprised anyone really cares, who cares what other people think, this isn’t a popularity contest, and for that matter, who cares what the PR people put out, thats my last concern. I like the Mets because I like baseball, bottom line. Decide for yourself what to expect/think, if you let other people, the media, a baseball team, decide for you, then what’s really left for yourself?
Darksie, do you expect us to believe that you don’t like really cool slogans? What about: “the New York Mets: Itsmetsforme’s Favorite Team.”
You’re shameless.
Couldn’t agree more Matt. Let’s leave all that BS to the smaller market teams. At the risk of sounding arrogant, THIS IS NEW YORK. Let’s start acting like a big market team. Let’s stop with these idiotic slogans like we’re Tampa Bay or Kansas City….PLEASE.
Agreed!
Although Catch The Rising Stars and Baseball Like it Outta Be were very catchy and memorable when I was 10 and 11 years old.
A lot of the marketing around the Mets is so freakin tacky it makes me want to puke. I think this is more marketing than PR. Although the face of our PR department is a long lasting joke even internally in the Mets domain.
Wow. I like “This is New York.”
Works on so many levels. We aren’t some backwater team, and hey, a nice little shot against that other NY team…
Pitch it!
wow matt quite profound and emotional.
Here here. It’s like crying wolf with all the slogans….This is the year. No, THIS is the year. No, THIS REALLY is the year. No, ACTUALLY, WE MEANT THIS is the year.
I mean, jeez. Enough!
éste es el año
Amen
i thought we already had an unofficial slogan that omar made up last offseason and its held up ever since…”we’re looking for a top of the rotation pitcher”
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet Caroliiiiiiine….
Now THAT has got to go. I’ll take everybody clap your hands over sweet caroline any day.
agreed, sweet caroline must go. i would love the organization to emulate the red sox, but i dont want our fans mimicing a bunch of massholes.
Having been to many Red Sox games and lived in Boston for four years, I must say that I literally hold my head down in shame every time I hear Sweet Caroline. It’s an embarassment. Next we’re gonna start playing New York, New York after games.
Actually the Yankees ripped off “New York, New York” from the Mets. The Mets would play that song often back in the 80’s when two players hit back to back home runs.
Yea they used to play “New York New York” after wins in the 80’s and early 90’s…well not so much in the early 90’s. With that said I like “taking care of business”. If New York State of Mind was more upbeat that could work. Damn you Billie Joel
me too!
oh oh oh…….. ♫
“The Magic is Back”, remember that one? This has gone on ever since Doubleday/Wilpons (now just the Wilpons) took over. I agree, it’s totally bush league. It’s something you would expect in Kansas City or Milwaukee, not New York. Matt makes a great point that all it does is give others, especially the cross town fans, more to mock us with. Focus on baseball. The wiining will take care of everything else.
But..
we’ve got the teamwork
to make the dream work.
Let’s Go!
LET’S GO METS GO!
Somebody oughta buy you some freakin pompoms & a commercial spot
How bout ‘”Choke This” for 2008
I like it!
Great post Matt
I kind of liked “Catch The Rising Stars”, but seeing as most fans are willing to trade away all of them, I guess it’s no longer appropriate. Ah… the 80s… what a decade!
The inferiority complex and woe-is-me attitude of a lot of Mets fans is down right pathetic.
So what if the Mets have an optimistic slogan for each new season that is ultimately unrealized?
Sports is a zero-sum game to the extreme, with a lot of disappointed fans across the nation.
I hope fans aren’t going to jump over the Brooklyn Bridge if the Yankees end up with Santana, or the Mets don’t make the playoffs again.
Lower that blood pressure and take a few deep breaths.
The sun will still shine in Flushing tomorrow, and I’ll still cheer on my Mets.
Well every single major league baseball team has a season slogan. All 30 teams have a slogan so is this really fair?
Not all the teams have it up right now, but some of them include
Reds: C you there
Astros: The Return of the Good Guys
Blue Jays: Its Always Game Time
Orioles: This is Birdland
Mariners: Mojo Risin’
So by March every team is going to have an embarassing slogan.
But that song is inexcusable.
great post. every team has them, and every team’s real fans are embarrassed by them. who cares?
Yea, but do you notice that none of those other teams’ slogans are saying that they are going to win this year? I’m fine with “You gotta Believe,” or ‘Always Amazin’” or something along those lines. It’s when they tell me that “my season has come” that I have a problem with it.
so what do you expect them to come up with? they are marketing people, of course it’s gonna have a positive spin…
“the 2008 Mets. We’re pretty good, but don’t get your hopes up. God forbid our fans end up embarrassed if we don’t win the world series because the pre-season slogan said we would”.
i have to reiterate what was said in some other posts: who bases their expectations on the team’s slogans?
The only problem comes when you really start believing your season has come…otherwise, it should roll right off you just like “Coke is it” or “This is our country…”
Who bases their expectation on the team’s slogans? I’ll tell you who, the media. And the majority of uneducated fans (callers to WFAN) base their expectations on the media. Hence, I would say at least 50% of the Mets fans base their expectations on the team’s slogans
Please don’t forget my favorite…
The Braves…Welcome to the Bigs…basically inferring that before this Atlanta was a minor league city…way to go city spirit Bravos
anyone see the irony in the Astros slogan? They traded for Miguel Tejada the day before the Mitchell Report and he is now under Federal Investigation. Thats a good guy indeed
That’d be nice from a fan perspective. I’m certainly tired of the phenomenon you’re discussing, Matt. But the club feels that marketing the team that way puts asses in seats. They could care less if the fans feel silly, as long as casual fans still buy tickets.
We could also try, ” No Johan No Cry?”"
“Your postseason has come” … ’nuff said
Let’s Go Mets, Let’s Do It Again! - 1987
I would really love to see a tough question interview with the Mets marketing department. They’re terrible.
Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll have the Mercury Mets again.
who would have thought the team would collapse before shea stadium?
2008: Your Higher Tickets Prices Have Come
anyway. it’s getting close to spring training. hoping they get off to a good start in april. i doubt they would recover from a slow start.
Or …”Still Losing After All These Years…”
just an fyi
my company just shelled out the cash for season tickets to skankees and mets. $42K for the skanks and $19K for the mets.
pretty sure comparable seats.
i still think the mets charge too much for anything and everything.
new slogan - “2008 - Collapse? What Collapse? $8 Beers!”
i’m sure the yankee tickets are more expensive, but there are a few things to consider:
1. there are a lot more yankee fans (at this time) = demand
2. success: playoffs every year for over a decade
3. 4 world series in recent memory (not 20+ years ago)
How about “The New York Mets — We Don’t Quite Suck”
This post is ridiculous. Call me crazy, but I don’t think these slogans are meant for people like you Matt. I think it is more to get people who normally don’t go to games or are not big Mets fans to get excited about the Mets. I doubt it is aimed at the Mets diehards who watch all the games anyways and know a lot about the team. It is designed to get other people excite about the team
“Your Season Has Come” is directed towards people who don’t normally go to games?
….yeah …. OK.
Great post except when you refer to Yankees as our older cross-town brothers. What’s up with that? The Mets have nothing to do with the Yankees and are in no way related to them aside from being in the same city as the Mets. They do their thing, the Mets to their own thing and that’s it. Brothers infer that they act in tandem with some sort of common, joint goal which is opposite of the truth.
I’m sick of hearing about what the Yankees are doing and Hank and blah, blah, blah. This is the whole problem with the Mets…they have an inferiority complex when it comes to the Yanks and it seems many fans do. I only follow them because my dad likes them and we discuss them as he does the Mets with me. Aside from that, screw what they do as it has not affect on me or the Mets.
Doesn’t every team have a marketing slogan each year? I am sure the Mets aren’t the only ones. Even the Yankees had “Pride. Power. Pinstripes.” and some other crap in years past…
There is nothing wrong with having a marketing slogan. It’s the stupidity behind the slogan that they choose that is the problem.
I agree. And for you guys who say NY doesn’t need marketing, that makes no sense. NY is actually the marketing captial of the world, and besides, everyone needs to market their product. The Yankees may (unfortunately) sell themselves but very few organizations in sports can claim that.
Yankee’s slogan last year (at least what was printed on their tickets) was “Where Players Become Legends”…I’d like to add “Where Legends Are Disgraced”.
The slogans weren’t so bad back in the day…Catch the Rising Stars, Baseball Like it Oughta Be, Let’s Do it Again…recent years haven’t been that bad. The New Mets, The Team, The Time…that was perfect, because 2006 truly was the team the Mets should have went all the way with.
Yeah, last year’s “Your Season has Come” blew up in our face, but we did have reason to be optimistic after the previous year’s success. At least they kept it simple this year with a Say Goodbye to Shea theme.
I don’t see what the big deal is. Its getting worked up for nothing if you are really that concerned about that kind of stuff. Yes the slogans are cheesy, but the Mets are going to be judged by what they do on the field, not by what the marketing dept does. Expectations for the team aren’t based on the slogan they come up with in the offseason. The Mets choke wouldn’t be mocked any more or less this past season had they had a different slogan. Maybe it provides people with a different way of making fun so they say “your season has come…and gone” instead of “hahaha one of the greatest chokes in history”, but if that kind of stuff bothers people, they need to toughen up.
Your offseason has come….and gone
this is like when your wife/gf yells at you for leaving the toilet seat up….thats not why shes angry, she has a much more deep seated anger thats been festering for some time. we’re all mad bc we are all getting the feeling we wont be getting santana and we will have to scratch and claw our way to probably losing in the 1st round to a team like arizona, and the window for a WS title at this point is basically this year then we may have to wait before we have another legit chance due to age/players leaving. We’re all growing incredibly inpatient and with good reason its going on 22 years, thats long and for some of us we havent seen any of our teams win a title in a while (assuming alot of people follow the mets/jets/islanders/knicks trend). If we got santana none of this nonsense would bother ANYONE, just like if you didnt do whatever you really did to piss off your wife/gf she would let you slide on the toilet seat thing.
I think it was the 1981 Philadelphia 76ers who, after totally blowing the playoffs the year before, had the team slogan:
“WE OWE YOU ONE”
Hilarious. Although Philly teams owe a lot more than just one to their fans.
I for one relish the fact that the Mets will be considered the underdog for the NL East this year. Philly teams have never managed expectations of being the favorite that well.
I’ll be amazed if they come out with a slogan this year referencing “The Team To Beat”…how about they win a playoff game and then talk.
WOW
Goodbye Matty SHILL-rone, Hello Matthew Cerrone?
Nice post dude.
Very nice Matty Boy
Matt, do you know somethine that you are saying? Are you trying to set our expectation low so we are not crushed by some news you are about to break?
Are we seriously having this discussion though?
The mets look like EINSTEINS every year when the team doesn’t live up to the slogans….
2008 Mets - Pardon us, we’re bored….
Matt -
This is by far the most objective, opinioinated, and well stated post you have ever written. A far cry from your usual and predictable middle-of-the-road, pie-in-the-sky, afraid-to-offend PC approach. This was a delight to read. Keep it up.
Best editorial post ever from Matt Cerrone. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!!!
this post is in response to the unveiling of the 2008 slogan, ‘We Are Definitely Going To Win the World Series’
Edit: We Are Definitely Going To Win the World Series (fine print: Maybe, don’t hold us to it.)
or…
2008 Mets: A baseball season is a terrible thing to waste.
As much as I love the Mets, they have never fully shaken the ‘62 image of being a bunch of clowns. They really need to reinvent their marketing group as much as their scouting.
Hard to shake the “Clown” image when the owner’s son is a graduate of Clown College.
About time someone said it. I’m tired of the team acting like a rinky-dink bunch. That “rap” song last year was fricking abysmal.
They put out a horrible rap song, Mets fans have to take sh*t. They put out a dumb slogan, Mets fans have to take sh*t. Do you realize that they’ll be hanging “the team, the time, the collapse” or some version of it on the mutts for years to come, until they actually win something?
There’s a reason why a good majority of the fanbase actually hates the organization.
Oh, and then lets discuss just why the Mets are the #2 team in their new ballpark?
wow