Success of Total Hockey’s Commercials “A Team Effort”

When U.S. hockey fans turned on their television sets on Oct. 8, 2014, it was with a specific reason. Whether it was to catch Boston and Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Jose or one of the Canadian matchups, fans were prepping for another exciting NHL season.

The TV ads featured during commercial breaks were the last thing most were anticipating. The folks in Total Hockey’s marketing department weren’t most people, though.

On this fall evening, St. Louis-based Total Hockey debuted a new set of commercials geared toward the theme Hockey in Real Life. These ads depicted everyday people in common situations, only facing life as a hockey player on the rink would.

The hockey retailer produced eight 15-second spots; four for immediate release in October and four during the 2014 holiday season. One spot featured a man taping his work socks with shin guard tape, as a hockey player would for a game, before leaving for work. Another displayed a young girl on Christmas morning showcasing hockey goal celebrations as she received her gift.

“We attempted to make a set of commercials that the majority of our audience could relate to and have a good laugh at,” said Chris Pickup, Total Hockey’s video production manager. “I couldn’t be prouder of how they turned out.”

Pickup wasn’t the only one impressed with the final product. The Total Hockey Twitter and Facebook pages instantly began receiving feedback, which was widely on the positive spectrum. The company’s social media manager, Keith Van Gels, saw the reaction materialize each time an ad was run.

“When we posted these videos on Instagram, they got double if not quadruple the likes that most of our Instagram videos have gotten in the past,” said Van Gels, who also played a large part in the creative direction of the ads. “The feedback on Twitter was so positive and extremely consistent. Almost every night, we were getting a handful of tweets with the laughing or crying emoji or people saying they are the funniest commercials they’ve ever seen. The feedback was phenomenal and exceeded my expectations by a long shot.”

Rachel Rackers during "Cleaning the Crease"

With viewer engagement came accolades. Total Hockey sent four 30-second commercials, each one featuring two of the 15-second spots, to an organization that honors pieces of work in the film and video industry. The Telly Awards, which are judged by a panel of over 650 accomplished industry professionals, awarded Total Hockey four bronze Telly Awards. The highest honor is the Silver Telly, which is awarded to less than 10 percent of registrants, while the Bronze Telly is bestowed upon approximately 25 percent of enrollees.

The Telly Award committee announced they received 12,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries. Each of Total Hockey’s submissions were awarded in both the Use of Humor and Sports/Sporting Goods/Games categories. The award-winning spots were titled Sock Tape / Handle Tape and The Water Bottle / The Celly.

“This is a company honor,” Pickup, 31, said. “The people in the marketing department, not just the video crew, should be proud of the fact that we are being recognized. I submitted these four awards not so I could get recognized, but we as a company can get recognized. We can be proud of the work we do and have tangible evidence that says we’re good at what we do. That goes so far in conversations with partners and associations around the country.”

Key to success – having fun on set

Although the final product was intended for the hockey-viewing audience to become loyal patrons of Total Hockey (if they weren’t already), it does not mean that the production was a snooze fest – quite the opposite.

“During my audition, I could tell that, if I were casted, it would be a really fun shoot,” said actress Rachel Rackers, the wife in the non-holiday ads. “They were laughing throughout my audition; I don’t think they were laughing at me, either. They were laughing at their copy, which was hilarious.

“During the filming process, the actors didn’t need breaks for laughter, but we could hear the crew laughing. It was so much fun being on set.”

One of Total Hockey's four holiday ads

There are always moments that cast members point to as their memorable moment on set. Whether it be something that happens off set (Taylor Swift dancing to Snoop Dog’s performance at the 2015 iHeartRadio Music Awards) or an improvised line (Chris Pratt’s famous “network connectivity problems” remark on Parks and Rec), a great moment can stay with actors and crew members for a lifetime.

These ads were not spared from such an occasion. Actor Chad Crenshaw, who performed as the father in the holiday ads, was meant to serve as a background character in The Celly, which depicted a young girl celebrating after receiving skates on Christmas morning. While the crew worked to achieve the perfect shot of the girl celebrating, Crenshaw, wearing a hockey helmet, decided to start fumbling with his coffee mug. The helmet prominently displayed a visor, which hampered his ability to drink from the cup. Cleverly, Crenshaw continued to unsuccessfully place the mug at his mouth, with an obviously confused look on his face.

“We didn’t even know he was doing it until the close-up shots in the end,” said Christopher Jordan, the director of photography. “When we saw it, we encouraged him to keep doing it. It turned out to be one of the better moments of the spots.”

Crenshaw said he was doing it between takes, hoping to get some laughs from crew members.

“I was just messing around with the helmet, thinking of funny things to do while everyone worked on getting the right angles and were concentrating on the focal point of the ad,” he said. “Overall, it felt like there was a good base, but if we came up with something on the spot, it seemed like there was a little wiggle room to pull out the best we could. It made for a functional and productive atmosphere.”

Key to filming – convincing the right people

Rackers and Richard Strelinger during "Cleaning the Crease"

In order to achieve the ultimate goal, the creative team had to navigate through a few obstacles. First, finding the winning idea was pivotal to move forward.

“We had done commercials in the past that were focused on growing the game that were successful,” said Van Gels. “It was always a voice over. Now, we wanted to transition Total Hockey into more real commercials with which viewers could identify.”

Because Total Hockey was yet to use actual actors or actresses in their commercial ads, pitching the idea in itself became a vital stepping stone to move forward with the commercials’ production.

The company had recently went through some changes in its marketing department, most notably bringing in chief marketing officer, Frank Castiglione. He gave the green light to Pickup and Van Gels to move forward with their project.

“In the past, we only used people that worked with us -- co-workers, family or friends of co-workers,” said Pickup, who played hockey through most of his childhood. “These were typically people who were not trained to act. It was a challenge in the past to have a natural- and professional-looking production in our TV ads. Frank challenged us and gave us full support of using professional actors. We auditioned at our corporate office with more than 50 people auditioning for six different roles.”

After four days of auditions, the creative team found its cast. Richard Strelinger played the sock taper; Betsy Bowman threw her kids in the penalty box; Rackers berated her husband as he left for work and Crenshaw poured water on his face at dinner.

“The success of our commercials was a team effort,” said Van Gels, a graduate of Mizzou’s Journalism School. “Everyone had to do their homework in this project. Trying to be fun is difficult and challenging, but it’s also crazy fun. We had a blast filming and conceptualizing all the way through.”

One of Total Hockey's many new ad campaigns
(Courtesy Total Hockey)

Key to the future – Don’t become dormant

Although this was a major step in the way Total Hockey conducts its marketing campaigns, it does not mean that the creative team plans to remain stagnant. It took a financial commitment, as well as a risk in changing what worked in the past.

Pickup feels the Telly Awards display a level of success that the commercials have bestowed upon Total Hockey and will help further future creative ideas.

“It says a lot, if not to the customer, to the industry,” he said. “We are capable of doing some really cool stuff and others believe in us. Those in our industry feel that we are worthy of some sort of credit that we rightfully deserved. We are capable of producing high-end content. We can’t take a step back. We need to take giant leaps forward now. We have made the footprint, now we need to add to it.”

This set of objectives is not exclusive to the hockey retail industry; loftier goals permeate through Total Hockey’s marketing department.

“We’re preparing for the ultimate result of being comparable to the Nikes and Gatorades of the world,” said Van Gels. “They do a phenomenal job with their marketing campaigns and we want to place ourselves among those elite companies.”

When viewers turn on their televisions to catch Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles or San Jose, they expect one of the keys to success to be a solid team effort. 

The TV ads that the Total Hockey marketing department creates should be no exception.

Blackmore, WMS Bring Total Hockey into New Age of Retail

If you walked into the Total Hockey St. Louis distribution center in May 2014, chances are you would not enjoy your stay.

Warehouse employees, as well as store patrons and office dwellers, managed inventory counts the same way most companies do in this day and age: totaling each and every item by hand. Although it was the tried-and-true way for businesses throughout time, it was a tedious task that never drew positive attention.

“It was barbaric,” said David Crosby, the St. Louis warehouse supervisor of returns and receiving. “(It was) completely impossible to stay on task and know exactly what you’ve already scanned in.”

One of the people working through this tedious task was Total Hockey’s chief information officer (CIO), Steve Blackmore. The leader of the company’s tech team stepped away from his desk and joined the warehouse staff to not only help with the daunting task of taking inventory, but to gauge the job itself and how it could be done more efficiently.

“I grabbed a scanner and went through the same process that anyone in the warehouse would do,” he said. “As I got into the warehouse, I couldn’t help but think this is cumbersome. You could easily lose your place if you were distracted. You had no way to see where you left off.”

Blackmore, along with his team of technology experts, set off to find a better way of managing the yearly inventory count. It was rolled into the company’s Warehouse Management System (WMS), as well as a plethora of other advances that have seemingly carried Total Hockey into a new age of retail.

“(WMS has) a long way to go,” said Blackmore, “but it’s brought us to a spot where we are with the retail big boys from an inventory-management perspective.”

Blackmore’s newest system, which was in development long before he partook in inventory, scrapped the old methods and ushered in an entirely new form of thinking in terms of warehouse administration.

It was this complete restructure that led to Blackmore’s nomination as a Retail Info Systems (RIS) News CIO of the Year in the Innovation category. He will be traveling to the 14^th annual Retail Executive Summit in Laguna, Calif. at the Montage Resort, June 17-19, and is one of 12 nominees up for four separate awards, which also include Strategic Impact, Rookie of the Year and Career Achievement (the latter selected by the editors of RIS News).

Blackmore received the nomination thanks to Total Hockey President Michael Benoit and strategy team leader Rob Bowers sending in their nomination request. The RIS News website asked for selections in each category – Benoit and Bowers couldn’t think of a better candidate.

“Our omni-channel technology is the single greatest competitive advantage in our niche industry,” Bowers said. “Steve made it all possible. This award is a symbol of Steve’s amazing contribution towards Total Hockey’s success, and we are incredibly grateful for his dedication, insight, leadership, architecture and ability to turn dreams into reality.”

Ending the Guessing Game

Another actualization with WMS is the ability for the system to alert warehouse staff where items need to go. In the past, when a pallet of merchandise arrived at a distribution center, the employee would scan each item one-by-one and decide where to send each individual piece, or await a report from the supply chain department detailing the desired locations.

Now, employees use handheld scanners and are instantly informed not only if it belongs in the warehouse or in stores, but exactly to which store it should be sent.

 “It was a complete guessing game, at times,” said Crosby. “We would have no idea where anything belonged and stores would be receiving an abundance of the same item. Now, the guessing has been taken out of it and we can focus our energy on more important tasks.”

Chaos binning is a relatively new term to Total Hockey staff, but it’s been welcomed with open arms. Items are no longer placed in aisles with other merchandise of the same category; they are now sporadically placed throughout the warehouse. This means that a warehouse shelf will not have 10 shoulder pads stacked together, but, for example, a shoulder pad, a tee shirt, a set of elbow pads and a puck.

Obviously, this helps with cycle counts and inventory tasks, as well. It was a concept that Blackmore and his team developed in the beginning stages of redeveloping WMS.

Blackmore (far right) at the RES Summit
(Courtesy RIS News)

“One of the things that came up early on was why do we need to keep everything organized by category?” he said. “There are some exceptions -- sticks need specific types of bins to hold sticks. When it came to pads and more fluid items, there were really no compelling reasons to keep those together. When we ran some tests, which included how long it took to take certain items out and put stuff back in, it was amazing how different and more simpler it was to find a certain item when it was mixed with other items that weren’t bred from the same cloth. If you have 10 pads in a bin of different sizes, you had to go pick through and be very conscious of what you’re looking for. But if you have a shin pad, shoulder pad and a helmet but you only need the shoulder pad, you can hone in on one of the items of the bunch and grab it.”

The outside-of-the-box thinking instantly benefited the warehouse crew, which includes shipping supervisor Michael Wilmas.

“It’s hard to quantify what these changes have meant to the company,” he said. “It’s made us faster in pulling customer orders and made a supremely efficient warehouse. We are far beyond from where we were to where we are now. It’s been a tremendous addition.”

It’s not just the warehouse crew that benefits from the changes, either.

“Chaos binning has given way to wave picking, which allows team members to pick multiple items within the same aisle,” said E-commerce marketing manager Jon Lynch. “It’s sped up transfers and sent product to the stores and directly to the customers even quicker.”

Redirecting the Kudos

Despite the award nomination and all of the praise coming from his peers, Blackmore is the last person to take full credit for the advancements to WMS.

He recognizes the progress in the industry set forth by leaders Amazon, Zappos and, from a technological standpoint, Newegg.com.  He also defers much of the workload to his team of coders, programmers and designers, while suggesting that Total Hockey’s business group is the outfit that comes through with solid ideas to get the creative engine started.

There is one new aspect, though, which Blackmore was proud to accept the accolades.

Transferring product from warehouse to store and vice versa is now heavily monitored through tracking of shipments. Before, an item might be placed on a truck and sent to a corresponding store with one employee completing the transfer from his computer. Now, Blackmore has installed a more advanced tracking system that allows anyone within the company to not only see that an item is getting transferred, but where it is en route and if it has been officially received by the final destination.

Think of when you order something through Amazon; most times, you can track your incoming package as it passes through multiple shipping facilities, all the way until it arrives at your front door. This is all made possible by multiple scan points throughout the process, which, in Total Hockey’s methods, can be seen by the shipper and receiver.  For example, Mike in St. Louis’ shipping department and Sophia in one of the Chicago stores can use WMS to track an order's progress.

“Through various positions I’ve held over the years, this idea came from my own experiences and tribulations I’ve had to deal with,” said Blackmore. “One of the things that I really learned through those processes was in order to know where your merchandise is, you have to have accountability for that merchandise.”

A 20/20 Vision

Although these advancements have already earned Blackmore a prestigious nomination, the future is even brighter for the company founded in 1998.

On the docket for Blackmore and his team is radio-frequency identification (RFID) and mobile point-of-sale (POS).

RFID tags allow retailers to embed chips into product and can be monitored from a fairly large distance. This would assist during inventory management and would be beneficial with theft monitoring.

Mobile POS is a system that, unlike WMS, directly affects the customer in the retail store.

“It’s going to affect the way we interact with the customers,” Blackmore said. “Right now, retail stores are very centric around the cash register. If you go to the Apple Store and other similar places, employees carry around devices with them. That’s kind of the vision for us, too. We’d like to bring that technology to Total Hockey and be able to work with customers anywhere in the store. At some point, we’d like to have it where customers can check themselves out.

“The experience five years from now in our stores with Mobile POS will be significantly different than it is now. We’ll be engaged with the customers where the merchandise is and be able to show them what we need to show them.”

For the present, though, Total Hockey employees are benefiting from the tech team’s recent roll out. Blackmore, who describes himself as internally motivated, will continue to break ground on upgrades to WMS and other Total Hockey automation.

And he’ll do it without asking for more praise.

“I’m not in this business for any type of fame or fortune,” he said. “Computers and technology are my passion. I would be doing this in a basement somewhere, whether I was getting paid to do it or not. The fact that I get to do something that I love for my job is something that most people can’t say they do.”

Thanks to Blackmore’s continued efforts, his mindset might now be shared by the 500-plus employees at Total Hockey.