ECHL Charlotte Checkers

Greenspon Advertising Wins Best Of Show With Checkers' Television Campaign

Published on April 13, 2007 under ECHL (ECHL)
Charlotte Checkers News Release


CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The Charlotte Checkers announced today that the team's advertising agency, Greenspon Advertising, has won Best of Show at this year's ADDY Awards Show and Gala - as well as four Gold ADDY Awards - for its Charlotte Checkers television campaign featuring City of Charlotte Mayor Patrick McCrory.

The winning campaign now advances to the national competition, having also won a Gold ADDY and two Silver ADDYs in the American Advertising Federation (AAF) regional competition for North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

"We had so much fun working with Greenspon Advertising on this year's campaign," said Tera Black, vice president of the Checkers. "I cannot begin to express how excited we are to be recognized for something that was so fun to do. Greenspon Advertising really went the distance to conceptualize our vision and get our message out exactly the way we wanted."

"To win Best of Show is a big honor," says agency president Michael Greenspon. "It's especially rewarding because we work so closely with the Checkers on how the creative actually works in delivering results for the organization. This campaign has really delivered on all levels for them, and that's the most rewarding thing of all."

Partly as a result of the ad campaign, attendance at the Checkers' games is up significantly, including three record attendances in the last month.

Working with a modest production budget, the agency beat out all the big local agencies with generous budgets. Overall, there were 391 entries from 49 agencies and individuals, and 118 ADDY Award winners (30 Gold and 87 Silver) in the local competition, which is organized by the Charlotte Advertising Club, an AAF affiliate.

Judging the competition were Stacy McCullough, president of Sprenger McCullough & Co.; Art Haynie, film and commercial director; and Steve Bautista, copy writer and creative director. About 250 people attended the ADDY Awards Show and Gala, held at CenterState @ NoDa. Patrick McLean accepted the award on behalf of Greenspon Advertising.

"Last year we won quite a few Addy awards for the Checkers TV and print campaigns. We knew that we had our work cut out for us this year to top that, so we're thrilled to win Best of Show. The out-of-the-box thinking from the Checkers front office allowed our creatives to really run with the ideas this year. You can't overestimate how much that helps in delivering great advertising," Michael Greenspon said.

All three Checkers commercials - titled "Treed," "Icebox," and "Crawl Space" - won Gold ADDY Awards. The series, collectively titled "Animals," also won Best of Show. In the regional competition, Animals won a Gold ADDY and Treed and Crawl Space won Silver ADDYs.

The commercials are posted on youtube and can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Charlotte+Checkers+ad

The team assembled by Greenspon Advertising for the Checkers campaign included Wonderworld Film & Video (production), Patrick McLean (creative director and copy writer), Greg Smith (art director), Michael Greenspon and Laura Vossberg (account executives) and Stan Pearl (copywriter).

Mayor McCrory was an actor in two of the commercials.

"One of the cool things about this project is that we enlisted the help of Mayor McCrory, who is a big Checkers fan. He loves being part of the creative process when we film," said Michael Greenspon.

Check out the Charlotte Checkers Statistics

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