Jim Beam is jumping on the bandwagon to preserve Wrigley Field’s name with a petition campaign online and in the streets of Wrigleyville.
A sign reading, “Save Our Ballpark’s Name” featuring a Jim Beam bottle, now stands across the street from the Wrigley Field marquee.
Guerrilla marketing teams from the Chicago-based distiller have been patrolling the neighborhood around the Chicago Cubs’ home ballpark, circulating petitions, handing out T-shirts saying, “It’s called Wrigleyville for a Reason,” and bumper stickers emblazoned with http://www.SaveOurName.com. That’s the site where Cubs fans can sign a petition if they’re not planning to be in Wrigleyville this summer.
“Wrigley is a true icon,” Beam spokesperson Kate Laufer said. “We think it would be a shame to lose that history.”
The campaign is part of a movement mobilized in response to the imminent sale of the team and its historic ballpark by the Tribune Company, which has pledged to keep Wrigley Field in the facility’s name in whatever deal it strikes.
But dubious Cubs fans have already established a 35,000-member Facebook group organized around the Wrigley Field cause. Since its guerrilla marketers went to work during Tuesday night’s Cubs game outside Wrigley, they’ve collected 1,200 signatures.
The ballpark—and its name—will become even more historic if the first-place Cubs break their 100-year schneid and actually win the World Series this year.
Beam is using the ballpark campaign as the leadoff to a larger campaign about “The Stuff Inside” people. It’s a twist on Beam’s theme about the stuff inside its bourbon.
That multimedia campaign puts the spotlight on two exemplary organizations and one individual in praise of the human spirit. The organizations are Operation Homefront, 4,500 volunteers who provide various services to U.S. military families, and the Crown City Rockers, a music group that turned down a record deal rather than sing raunchy lyrics.
The individual is amateur photographer Mark Murrmann who sleeps in the vans of punk rock groups he shoots to capture the gritty nature of their lives.
The Wrigley Field campaign and the larger “Stuff Inside” campaign were developed in collaboration with BBDO Chicago, which is handling execution of both.
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