“What’s the difference between Vincent Lecavalier & Tom Brady?” February 3, 2008

Really enjoyed this article on Canada.com on how Brett Hull is doing now that he’s gone from “Ambassador of Fun” to co-general manager of the Stars in the span of about six months. Sure, it’s a little unstable that Hull suddenly went from having responsibilities like appearing in TV commercials to help Mike Modano campaign for the All-Star team to responsibilities like making a serious decision about whether or not to trade the most promising rookie the Stars have seen in years, Matt Niskanen, for a scoring winger for Mike Modano’s line. And you kind of get the feeling that Tom Hicks gave him the job because Brett Hull is the only name he recognized on the payroll that he could promote when he fired Doug Armstrong. But you can’t say that it hasn’t worked out so far.

I liked this bit from Hull. Good to see he can still talk about nothing at all when he feels like it:

“My God, you drink a lot of coffee in this job. I mean, you practically can’t function without a venti latte from Starbucks to start the day. On the road, there must be 40 ounces of coffee going in a day. You get up, you have coffee, you go to the rink, you have coffee, you want to meet with someone, you say ‘let’s have a coffee.’ You’re in the press box, you drink coffee. Game’s close, you drink more coffee.

“That’s a lot of coffee.”

The article also talks about one of the things that kills me the most about the NHL…Hully agrees with me:

“For the life of him, Hull can’t understand why the league isn’t plugging its talent more aggressively. He’s not alone there. Those commercials a couple years back, Room Service featuring Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, or the Swedish Twins, starring Daniel and Henrik Sedin, were bright, breezy and generated a ton of interest.

More like those, please.

‘We’ve got to bring out the personalities…I mean, look at Lecavalier. Male model looks, six-foot-four, a stud. A marketing dream, right?

‘I turn on the TV or pick up a paper and who do I see? Tom Brady. Why don’t I see Lecavalier everywhere I turn? What’s the difference between Vincent Lecavalier and Tom Brady?’ “

You can’t make marketers use NHL players for endorsements, but you can use the commodities that you’ve got—these players who all have these awesome, selling personalities—and you can use them to market yourself. To be real, there really isn’t much wrong with the commercials they’re running…the problem is, they only run them during hockey games. Preaching to the choir. If you want to reach a wider audience, run ads during football & basketball games. The problem with hockey is, since the national broadcasts are now on a channel that nobody ever just surfs to—I mean, you have to really be looking for it to come across Versus—people never just come across a game & sit down to watch. They just forget about you. You have to remind them you exist & you’re awesome & they should drop in sometime because they’re missing out on a great show.

Maybe Tom Hicks didn’t know what he was doing when he put Hull in a position where people have to listen to him, but regardless, he’s there now & he’s talking, & that’s a start.