This month’s Party in the Back Podcast features the VP of Business Development from the Portland Pickles, Ross Campbell. The Pickles have been turning heads nationally with their dedication to FUN. Whether its Delta Airlines losing their mascot or tapping into iconic local news of the weird, the Pickles are finding a way to make their fans laugh and smile.
We talk to Ross about the impetus of some of these crazed ideas, storytelling, connecting with fans and pushing the envelope. Ross also talks about the new acquisition of the Lake County Captains and how the Pickles-brand of fun will play in MILB.
exploding whale night needs an exploding whale on the field pic.twitter.com/dlLXyRYLN8
— Portland Pickles (@picklesbaseball) July 21, 2022
Next we break some internal news about the Gameops.com Plus Huddle calls. They aren’t going away, but we are taking a break in February and relaunching an updated Huddle in March. For the podcast we have an excerpt of the type of insights and wisdom you find on the Huddle Calls, this one featuring Shine Entertainment’s Jonny Greco.
Jonny is sharing his Five E’s of High Level Event Experience, this one is EVALUATE. Jonny gives some tangible examples of how to Evaluate your production to find some incremental gains. Some are as easy as a two-word feedback comment used at Disney to a more in-depth after show report used by WWE.
Thanks for listening and sharing the podcast.
Related Links
- Last Month on the Podcast: The January edition of the podcast features returning guests Jeff Munneke (MN Timberwolves) and Jon Long (Newfoundland Growlers) to update us on big team initiatives. Plus crowd ignitor and motivational wiz Cameron Hughes splashes down to kick off 2023 with a bang.
- One Year Ago on the first episode of the Party in the Back Podcast: Serial Podcast Guest Rob Wicall and Touring Act Kevin Shiflett drop into the Party in the Back to talk game presentation, winning promotions and balancing surf boards on your chin.
- Five Years Ago on The Gameops.com Podcast: Jon Terry from SRO Agency joins the February 2018 Podcast to talk about the life of Rick Hader (aka Myron Noodleman)
As promised, here is the story of the exploding whale:
Huddle Except:
Jonny Greco: “I’ve been having some incredible conversation with people who worked high, high, high level with Walt Disney, which is kind of nuts. And they talked about something they do, and I had not heard about this. They teach this at Disney Institute. So it’s not a secret, but it’s like, “good show, bad show.”
Just quick raise of hands, has anybody ever heard of this or seen this in action? All right, so I was fascinated about it, and I just learned it. This will be the first time I’m kind of spitting it back out. Walt Disney kind of like WWE. He wasn’t until like, the six month appraisal or the one year appraisal. That’s too long to make the fixes we can make quickly. Right? So a thing that they do and it’s not even a tiered structure, because it can kind of go up, it can kind of go down, is very simply you’re constantly working together to put on the best experience for the audience.
Right. To make Disney’s purpose is to be the happiest place on Earth. Well, part of doing that is having your staff members constantly be living and breathing this. So part of their appraisal process and how you get promoted and how you get raised and how you get shout outs.
Is everyone’s watching everyone? Because we’re a collective doing our best. And if I see Carrie picking up trash, there’s a piece of trash on the ground, and she picks it up and cleans it up, which is one of their principles to make sure it’s a clean park. I walk by her and I say, Good show. And everyone in the Disney world, they know what that means. Oh, you just gave me a shout out. You recognize it and you’re probably going to tell my boss or you’re going to put it in writing somewhere. So there’s good show, bad show, whether it’s literally in character, wow, Cinderella, what a performance. Good show. Literally a good show.
Or are you putting on a good show for our brand to hit our common purpose with what we are? So good show, bad show. So constant calibrations, right? I’m seeing these themes amongst the greats in sports, entertainment and entertainment and experience.”
Recap: Jonny Greco 5 E’s of Entertainment, Part 2
RSS Feed: https://www.gameops.com/feed/podcast
The Party in the Back Podcast: If Sports Marketing was a mullet hairdo this podcast covers ‘The Party in the Back‘. We’ll let someone else do the data, analytics, spreadsheets and budgets… We’re talking about the FUN: In-game contests, theme nights, mascots, dancers, social media, atmosphere and giveaways. Join us at the Party in the Back for our monthly discussion with industry leaders on the fun side of Sports Marketing.
Time Codes
- 2:20 – Ross Campbell from the Portland Pickles
- 5:10 – The Pickles explode a whale post-game
- 10:00 – How they get their staff and game-night staff to buy in on their style of FUN
- 17:10 – The Collide Sports ownership group buys the Lake County Captains
- 24:20 – The story of when Dillon gets lost by Delta Airlines
- 29:50 – Cudo shares an update on Gameops.com Plus and the Huddle Calls
- 31:30 – Shine Entertainment’s Jonny Greco shares the value of EVALUATING your show
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