Ad Nauseum: My NHL Ad Campaign

The NHL has taken on a new branding campaign, My NHL, and as a result has launched a new series of ads that it hopes will bring back its long time fans as well as attract new ones. But several media critics have attacked the ads for their misrepresentation of the game and its portrayal of women. Street Cents examines the ads and the My NHL campaign and let's a female hockey team sound off on what they think is going on.

Behind the Ads

The ads have been created in response to the long 301-day lockout of the National Hockey League Association. After shutting out the fans for so long, the NHL realized they had a tough job ahead of them in securing back their fans. Hockey may be considered Canada's national sport and favourite past time, but viewers in the United States have been declining for the past five years. So, with the rebirth of hockey, the NHL knew it needed to do something to get people talking about and watching hockey again.

The NHL hired an LA-based ad agency called Conductor to help come up with a rebranding of the NHL. What they come up with is a series of five “cinematic commercials” and some controversy.

The first ad, It Begins attracted criticism from the media and women's rights advocates for its portrayal of women, with critics claiming that the woman in the ad is reduced to "a sexual ornament."

The ad begins with the definition of a warrior. It then cuts to a mystical temple/locker room with a male hockey player sitting bare-chested in the centre of the room. The ad cuts back and forth from the player to the word "Warrior" and then to an image of two players battling for the puck. And this is where the controversy begins.

A third of the way through the ad, a female dressed in undergarments and a gauzy robe walks towards the player, leans forward and whispers in his ear “Ready?” as she then proceeds to dress him in elbow pads, shoulder pads, and a red jersey with the NHL logo adorning the front. 24 seconds into the ad, the woman has finished dressing the player and says to him “It's time”. He gets from the bench in the centre of the room, strides towards an exit door as cheers from an unseen crowd grow louder and louder.

So what's up with the half-naked woman and what does she have to do with hockey?

The NHL and Conductor defend their portrayal of the woman, saying that she is an equal and "a spiritual mentor" to the male player/warrior in the ad.

Street Cents wonders if all “spiritual mentors” wear lingerie about town and whether or not the NHL really thinks that hockey is a man's game?

The NHL Has Their Say

According to the NHL's website, “the new advertising creative is intended to connect fans and players through an emotionally charged campaign unlike any other in professional sports”. The NHL wants to infuse their fans “with the sense that their passion and loyalty to the game is the life force that sustains hockey. As such, the campaign depicts hockey players as "Warriors" preparing to do battle on the ice in order to receive the adulation of their passionate fans”.

In an interview with Street Cents, Bernadette Mansur, Vice President of Communications for the NHL, states that she feels that the ad isn't sexist at all because the woman is "an equal" and "a spiritual mentor".

According to Conductor CEO Tom Cotton, the spot depicts the woman in the ad as "an equal" to the hockey warrior, commenting in the Los Angeles Times (October 3, 2005) that she is a “timeless companion to the warrior helping him prepare for battle.”

The Media Has Their Say

Martha Burk, the current chairwoman of the US based National Council of Women's Organizations, a network of more than 200 women's groups that represents about 10 million members in the United States, takes issue with the first ("It Begins") of the ads . She believes that “the woman is dressed provocatively and when she asks the player if he's ready, it's a double entendre. She's in the ad as a groomer, a sex object” (Marketing Oct 3, 2005).

Burk also comments on how “here the NHL is trying to portray itself as family entertainment and this ad doesn't support that very well” (Marketing Oct 3, 2005). “It's appealing to adult men while trying to masquerade as something for kids. That"s deeply offensive to me. As a mother of two sons, they see enough sex and violence anyway. Why put it in warrior terms? That's offensive, let alone the sexism.” In the same report, Burk said she has been receiving hate mail over her protest of the NHL's newest ad campaign.

In an LA Times report, Mike Bracko, the director of Canada's Institute for Hockey Research, commented that, “I don't think [the NHL] is going in the right direction, branding hockey with a phony warrior status. And this commercial absolutely … would not propel a family - well maybe if the father has high levels of testosterone -to go to a hockey game so his kids could see scantily clad women, warriors, and swords.”

Michael Bracko told Street Cents that he also had problems with the NHL's ad campaign and the subsequent fantasy created by it. He told us that, “generally speaking, the ad is irrelevant because there is a woman in a night-gown helping the hockey player put on his equipment and the player is by himself. This sends a message to viewers and fans that somehow women are involved in getting ready to play hockey. However, it could be that the ad company wants to use the woman as a metaphor to emphasize that when you play hockey, you do so for the love or lust of a woman. However, I view the woman as being irrelevant in the context of trying to sell hockey.”

While Bracko views the woman as being irrelevant to the context of trying to sell hockey, he does not believe she is being sold to the public as a sex object or that the ads are sexist.

Bracko also took objection with the NHL's target market, stating “I'm not sure what demographics the ads are targeted to, but it would appear to me they would appeal to young men.”

The NHL, according to Mansur, is enjoying the free publicity and media coverage created by Martha Burk's response as well as the response of other critics.

So where does all this leave the female hockey fans? We asked the Vaughan Flames all girls hockey team how they felt about the ad.

The Vaughan Flames Sound off

Here's what the all girls hockey team had to say about the first ad.

• "She looks like his mom!"
• "Why is she dressing him?"
• "It"s kinda weird. Hockey's not about anything sexual."
• "We're girls and we play hockey and we don't dress up in lingerie before a game."
• "I thought it was sexist. Any sport, hockey or otherwise, is a guy or girl sport. Not only guys can play, and girls aren't there to dress guys, come on!"
• "There's no point in having her there."
• "They're trying to get guys to watch the commercial cause mainly guys watch the NHL."
• "It's our NHL too!"

The girls felt very strongly that the ad campaign reduced women to sexual objects as well as ignored the fact that hockey is a game to be played and watched by women too.

It's up to you to make your own opinions about ads like these, just make sure you're making an informed opinion.