Stop Insulting Atlanta Fans

There was a great article in Sporting News I want to call your attention to.

It talks about how inappropriate it was to insult Atlanta during the Jets first game. How Atlanta fans wouldn't know the name of the opposing goal tender and such. The Nasty Nest was famous for chanting the names of the referees, names not listed in the program or on their backs.

It's a good piece I'll hope you'll read. But I will stand by my earlier statement that Atlanta fans do not know the sport nearly as well as Winnipeggers do, so there will be more scrutiny about calls and plays that a novice fan (like many Atlantans were) would not notice or response appropriately.

Plus, if there is a lack of hockey knowledge, the article correctly points out it's not the fans fault so much as the ownership's. They are the ones that need to be putting the product out there and educating the people so they can get into the game and, from the owner's point of view, buy more tickets.

Think of food. When a new product comes out, you often see representatives of that product out there talking about it. Like Dominos did when they redid their pizza.



Continued here.

But Thrashers' owners did not do that. There was very little community events they participated in. They didn't advertise outside of a handful (less than 10) billboards, and they shared advertisement on some metro buses. They had commercials, but the only place I ever saw them was during Thrashers games.

How can you expect fans to just magically show up and spend maybe $100 a family for a night out when you don't tell them about your product and how awesome it is? This isn't Canada or New York or Philadelphia or Detroit or any of a number of markets where hockey is a tradition and advertisement isn't as necessary.



Sorry. Just wanted to share another great Dominos commerical. I do love their pizza and their commercials. The Braves and Boston Bruins need Dominos as a sponsor. Braves for me personally, and the Bruins because their Ice Girls are all about pizza. Seriously.

But do you remember that commerical where they put people in a field? One comedian does. And I have to admit, not the best commerical they've had.



This is how they did it. And I will add that the whole pizza recipe was changed, not just a new ad slogan. But point taken. And what's a little creepy is the fact that the comedian is kinda right. While going for a funny hypothesis for laughs (bag over her head), they truth is they actually took her and others to this place in a limo with blacked out windows.

Okay, so the field commerical fell flat with me and others. But they made up for it earlier this year with this:



I lost focus. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah.

Give Atlanta a break.

You got NHL hockey out of here which many see as a good thing. But don't throw salt in the wound of those of us remaining that miss our Thrashers. By throwing out insults, you're not increasing your viewer's knowledge or even making a witty observation. You're ignoring the true issues as to why the NHL failed in Atlanta under the Atlanta Spirit Group era.

TTFN