Of all the immigrants who have landed on America’s shores, who could forget Malcolm Alexander, that humble Australian, who gave us the modern bobblehead doll? A special forces soldier in the Australian Army, Alexander decided to seek his fortune in America. He brought with him a keen knowledge of how to get things done with manufacturers in the Far East. And so he migrated naturally into the promotional premiums business, establishing his own modest company in Seattle, named (somewhat wishfully) Alexander Global.
In early 1999, Alexander made a sales call on the marketing department of baseball’s San Francisco Giants. In addition to wanting quotes on the odd T-shirt and mini batting helmets of the time, the marketers asked him if he could do a bobblehead doll of their Hall of Fame legend Willie Mays to be used as a nostalgic giveaway. With all the bravado of a condemned man ordering a two-year magazine subscription, Alexander replied, “Of course.” Back in his office, however, he asked the first employee he chanced upon, “What’s a bobblehead doll?” (With chutzpah like that, we should have just given him a flag and his citizenship papers on the spot.)
The premium that the Giants wanted was a throwback to the early 60s; in truth, it hadn’t been all that popular even then. The bobbleheads of the 60s had two problems: every doll had the same little boy face on them, no matter who they depicted, and they were so brittle that they broke faster than Pete Rose at a craps table. The Giants were truly blessed in putting their trust in Alexander. Armed with scant knowledge, Alexander went to his suppliers and invented something that far surpassed what the Giants expected. It was made of a less-brittle poly-stone blend, and Alexander’s dolls really looked like Willie Mays. The Giants were so delighted that they scheduled a second promotion featuring Barry Bonds.
These premiums were driven by a perennial need to sell tickets, or as they say in the sports marketing business, “put butts in seats.” Major League Baseball’s 30 teams played 162 regular season games in 2004, in stadiums averaging 47,647 seats each. At the end of August, these teams were averaging 30,725 fans, or 64.5% of capacity. Said another way, there are 16,922 empty seats at an average game — and 2004 was considered a banner year for baseball. My old business partner Tom Wessling used to remark, “The three most perishable things in the world are an airplane seat, a hotel room and a ticket to an athletic event. Left unused, they represent lost revenue that can never be recaptured.”
So baseball has honed the fine art of the giveaway. “We sit down at the beginning of the season and review our opponents and our game times; weaker opponents get stronger promotion support,” says Patrick Klinger, VP-marketing for the Minnesota Twins. “We try to give away usable premiums at the beginning of the season, scheduling bat days, glove days and ball days early so that our customers can get to use the premiums over the course of the season.”
The San Francisco Giants get the credit for launching the rebirth of bobbleheads, but it’s the Minnesota Twins who established this genre as a genuine craze. “The Twins have been the best partners we could have asked for,” according to Alexander Global Brand Manager Mike Lewis. The Twins wanted to start using bobbleheads as a premium in 1999, but couldn’t find the necessary sponsors willing to help underwrite the promotion, so they had to wait until 2000. They more than made up for the time they lost by announcing that they would feature four different bobblehead giveaways that season: Harmon Killebrew, Kent Hrbek, Tony Oliva and Kirby Puckett.
“We didn’t realize what we had,” Klinger says. “We had lines of people at the ballpark farther than the eye could see. We gave away 5,000 bobbleheads in five minutes, but we had huge security issues, with line crashers and bobblehead snatchers who ran through the concourse literally stealing the dolls out of our customers’ hands. It was incredible.”
In fact, the early bobbleheads were very valuable, with resale prices of the Harmon Killebrew model hitting a high of $300 on eBay.
Its first two bobblehead giveaways taught the Twins some hard-learned lessons. “After the first two promotions, we doubled our order to 10,000 bobbleheads and changed our security both inside and outside the ballpark. We particularly wanted to eliminate the line crashers,” Klinger notes. “We had people lining up three days in advance of our promotions, so we were forced to announce that customers couldn’t start to line up until an hour after the preceding game had ended.” By this time the local news stations were using their traffic helicopters to issue aerial reports on the huge lines developing for each bobblehead giveaway.
The Twins followed their immense success with four more bobblehead figures for 2001: Rod Carew, Dave Winfield, Kirby Puckett (again) and Tom Kelly — and met with similar fan reaction. “Things became a bit less hysterical after 2001,” Klinger notes, “we still issued four figures in 2002, four in 2003 and five for 2004. The reason it works is that we’ve created a set. People want to make sure they keep their set intact, so they keep coming back.”
By a head
Both major and minor league baseball have led all sports in the use of promotional bobbleheads, but other sports have not sat idly by watching their success. The NBA, WNBA and NASCAR have run bobblehead promotions, as has the NHL, but there’s a seldom heard from sport that’s been having a field day with the little premiums — horse racing.
The biggest bobblehead purchase for a single event was 60,000 figures made of jockey Jerry Bailey for a July 28, 2002 promotion at Saratoga Racetrack. Some 50,000 bobbleheads were actually distributed on race day, and more were sold in the New York Racing Association store for $14.95. This trend has gone round the world, with the Hong Kong Jockey Club currently offering dolls of eight of the most popular jockeys at their tracks.
Alexander Global has made over 5,000 different bobbleheads since 1999, according to Lewis. “While retail sales seem to have crested, promotional sales continue to boom,” he says.
Leave it to Klinger to have the last word, though: “Retro items continue to be popular. We’re going to look at items we gave away 15 or 20 years ago to see if we can spot any new trends.”
Rod Taylor is senior VP for CoActive Marketing, based in Cincinnati, OH. He can be reached at [email protected].
Bobblehead Hall of Fame
There is no bobblehead hall of fame (yet), but if there were, these would be my picks:
MOST DRAMATIC
The second bobblehead of super horse Secretariat, issued in February of 2003, was 11″ long, 7″ high and weighed over two lbs. This limited edition of 1,973 pieces (get it, 1973) came complete with a certificate personally signed by owner Penny Chenery.
MOST COMMERCIAL
Clothes whitener Oxyclean was a 2002 sponsor of the Little League World Series. The company offered a bobblehead of their corporate pitchman, Billy Mayes, dressed in a baseball uniform and holding a container of the product as a consumer self-liquidator. It sold.
MOST FRIGHTENING
Alexander Global used laser imaging to scan the heads of rock ‘n roll’s Rolling Stones as premiums for their Forty Licks Tour. The incredible facial realism achieved was not to be believed. A Keith Richards doll with laser precision…be careful how you use it!
GREATEST TESTAMENT
The minor league Nashville Sounds offered a set of Bible Bobbleheads this past summer as part of its “Faith nights.” Fans received Moses, Samson and Noah during the promotion. What, no Job? After all, this is baseball for the love of God!
COOLEST
The NBA’s Detroit Pistons issued dolls of player Ben Wallace with “real” hair. (They should be negotiating with the Nashville sounds for the next Samson doll.)
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