Commentary July 31, 2023
3 Lessons for Promo Distributors From the Mariners’ ‘Blue Jays Merch Mishap’
The team store at the Seattle Mariners’ stadium was selling official branded merchandise – for the Toronto Blue Jays. The swag was swiftly removed following social media pushback and national press reports. The scenario holds business lessons for industry pros.
When it comes to marketing and merchandising, optics matter.
It’s a good lesson for promotional products distributors from a short-lived fiasco involving the Seattle Mariners and some unexpected merch that temporarily went on sale in their team store, sparking headshaking among some fans and the Major League Baseball team’s players. There were other lessons, too.
“What the H*ll Is This?”
So what exactly happened?
Well, a couple weeks back the team store at the Mariners’ stadium, T-Mobile Park, began selling official branded merchandise – for the Toronto Blue Jays. The swag, which included T-shirts, went up for sale in advance of the Blue Jays coming to Seattle for a three-game weekend series with the Mariners.
Some Mariners fans and players were put off by the move. “What the hell is this - @MarinersStore,” Seattle reliever Paul Sewald tweeted. “Damn smh,” Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford wrote, adding a facepalm emoji (“smh” means “shaking my head”).
What the hell is this @MarinersStore 🤬 https://t.co/xtTre6lQ2g
— Paul Sewald (@ItsPaulSewald) July 18, 2023
Certain press reports indicated that the store was offering the merch for sale in an attempt to cash in on an anticipated influx of Blue Jays fans. As Canada’s only MLB team, the Jays have supporters throughout the country, and it’s become common for fans from western Canada to descend on T-Mobile Park when the Jays battle the Mariners in the Pacific Northwest, as it’s closer than traveling to Toronto, according to press reports.
Damn smh 🤦🏽♂️ https://t.co/JBLOM8I1Sa
— jp crawford (@jp_crawford) July 18, 2023
As tends to happen these days, images of the Jays merch on sale began circulating on social media – and major media outlets, sensing a potential click-generating controversy, picked up on the story and made it national news in the sports world. In the unwanted spotlight, the Mariners pulled the Blue Jays merchandise before the series started and issued a statement saying it was all basically a big misunderstanding.
The statement said that there was surplus swag from the MLB All-Star Game – which the Mariners had hosted earlier in July – and that’s why the Jays merch was selling at T-Mobile Park.
“Following the All-Star Game we had a limited amount of leftover merchandise from different (mostly American League) teams,” a Mariners spokesperson said in a statement to the New York Post. “The Blue Jays merchandise in question has now been removed from the team store.”
3 Lessons for Promo Distributors
Optics Matter: When advising clients or undertaking their own self-promotional efforts, distributors need to be acutely aware of how the messages they put into the world through merch will be perceived. Possible negative (even if unintended) consequences should be carefully considered.
Certainly, it wasn’t the team store’s intention to annoy Mariners’ fans or players. However, featuring another team’s swag has potential to be perceived as an act of disloyalty – a lack of commitment – to the fans who are the mainstay support of Mariners’ merch sales and the players whose feats on the field spur such sales. Taking into account possible perception pitfalls can help keep merch-driven campaigns from striking out with the people who matter most to a brand or company.
After a couple of Mariners players voiced their displeasure, the #BlueJays merch has been removed ahead of the series in Seattle this weekend.
— Hazel Mae (@thehazelmae) July 19, 2023
(📸 @Softykjr) https://t.co/WeC0lTdY00 pic.twitter.com/ky9IPKBb3f
Context Is Key: The Blue Jays merch was made well. It was presented attractively in the store. And yet, it yielded nothing but headaches for the Mariners. Why? Because the context and message (essentially, “Go Jays!”) were wrong. The key takeaway is that merch has to feature messaging/graphics that appeal to the purveyor’s primary target audience and be gifted/sold in a setting that works for that audience. The team store’s main audience is Mariners’ fans and the Mariners community, and having Blue Jays’ swag for sale was ultimately a swing and a miss.
Don’t Trade the Long-Term Good for a Short-Term Gain: Had the Blue Jays merch stayed on sale, you could make a case that it would have sold significantly with the Jays’ fans visiting T-Mobile Park. Still, that possible one-off bump in revenue probably wasn’t worth irking Mariners fans and players. The fans in particular are the most important audience; they’re the ones who will continue propelling sales en masse long after the Blue Jays crew has left town. Doing something that erodes goodwill with that all-important core audience isn’t a smart merch move. Distributors game-planning for success in business would be wise to heed the lesson: Make sure your short-term efforts align with your long-term goals and don’t detract from them.