Brand To Fan_Episode 29 w-Dave Raymond

Are your customers the kind who politely come and go and sometimes leave you little hearts on social media, or are they actually obsessed with what you do? The difference between an incredible brand and all the others is how they create fans. Welcome to the brand to Fan show, where we unpack the phenomenon of fandom and how to cultivate affinity, loyalty, and trust to build more fans so you can future proof your business. Here's your host, Lauren Teague. This summer, I was at the speakers conference when someone pulled me aside and said, oh, my gosh, I have exactly the person that you need to meet. You have to have this person on the brand fan show. And I said, oh, yeah? Who's that? And they said, the Philly fanatic. Now, I've been a sports girl my entire life, so if there was literally a mascot in the hallway, I would have seen that. But when my friend took me to go meet Dave Raymond, it absolutely clicked.

Dave has such a fabulous personality. He brings so much warmth and kindness to conversations. And we went from completely not knowing each other to developing this incredible rapport in the span of like 20 minutes over bad conference cocktail appetizers. Right? So I have been looking forward to having this conversation with Dave Raymond ever since. You don't know Dave Raymond personally, but you do know him as the Philly fanatic where he originated the role and spent 16 years as the green fuzzy furball. We're definitely going to talk about what that was like and what you've been up to ever since, sir, as the mascot Whisperer, as you were dubbed by the New York Times Magazine. Welcome to the brand of Raymond.

I can't tell you excited. First of all, it's Friday, Friday before a holiday. And you're know you were a little Spitfire. You had all this energy. We were doing like the Elaine from Seinfeld within seconds. And I was thinking as you're telling me what you were doing, and you mentioned that you do a podcast. I said, oh, I bet that's a bad podcast, because your personality was just so effervescent and wonDerful. And I went, yes, this is going to be a fun one.

So I've been looking forward to it, too. I'm glad we're filing together.

Yeah. And you actually were on a podcast just after I had talked to you. You were on really know, really with Jason Alexander. And so know I've done my research on you, Dave. And I listened to the podcast the other day, and there's a big bar to jump to. So thanks for setting that nice and high for me.

I appreciate know, some of my training of being able to deal with celebrities just came know as a kid working for my heroes, all the Phillies players, and then getting to know them as people. And that's the big thing. No matter how geeked out I was that I was sitting in a room with Jason and Peter, I know Peter because he's from Philadelphia, was just to relax and know they're people. It's so difficult at times to get over your geekdom, but, yeah, that was a fun one for me. That's a member of one, but this one's going to be better.

Okay, challenge accepted. Let's talk about those early days. What were you a fan of early on? Right. What is something that you remember growing up in the Philadelphia area? Was it about sports? Was it about entertainment? Was it something else that you were a fan of early on?

Yeah, it was all about sports. I mean, I grew up in Newark, Delaware, and home of the Fighting Blue Hens, the University of Delaware. And my dad was a coach there for almost 50 years, and he was the head coach for 36 years. And all I wanted to do was to go play football for him. And then I wanted to be a coach like him. That's all. I didn't think about education. I didn't think about anything else.

I just wanted to be good in sports and be able to go there. And the end of my life would be playing football for Delaware. I had no idea where I was going after that. And it was just a beautiful existence. I know some of the viewers maybe won't understand this, but it was certainly a leave it to Beaver experience. And nothing could be more true than that analogy based on my young life up until My mid to late thirty s. And my dad was the one who said, look, you're not going to replicate this. You're not going to be at a school for 50 years.

It's just not part of the industry. Move your family around and you'll get fired once, it'll be your fault. You'll get fired again. It won't be your fault. So he said, let me help you get a job with the Phillies. And he knew ownership. The Phillies were invested in the University of Delaware football program, the Carpenter family, and they owned the Phillies. And so I got a summer job for a couple of years and then realized I didn't want to be a football coach.

I could meet my heroes and be friends with them and then build a career. But I had to go back to school on the third summer instead. They called me up at my paternity house and said, said, hey, do you want your job back? It was 1978, and I said, yeah, what do you want me to do? I figured, well, you got to go. Come to the office, do this. They said, you got to go to New York. You get fitted for the costume. And I'm, like, thoroughly confused, but my dad yelling at me, you do whatever they tell you to do. It'll prove your value.

And that was the beginning of the fanatic.

That's so fun that it literally was like college internship to first job. I didn't go that fast to the PGA Tour, but my college internship was actually with the Portland Trailblazers, where I did actually become good friends with the mascot's best friend at the time. And that was kind of my first real life, like, watching that every night, watching the mascot perform alongside literally the worst team in the NBA that season. There was definitely something about the levity that the mascot role brought, but you were actually one of the very first, if not like, the first mascot in baseball, and I was the first social media manager in professional golf. So we both built brand new positions that will become part of sports industry lore. You've ended up in your own hall of Fame for mascots I host.

Create your own hall of Fame because you'll be the first one.

Perfect. But tell me a little bit about the development of the character, the actual fanatic character, because, again, you were the first one. Did you have input on the costuming? Did you have input on the other things? Mascots don't really have a voice. So I'm curious, kind of how that all comes together, because you had to build something that was so recognizable. Where did you get your cues from?

Well, it's interesting. I'm a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell. So outliers, that whole book, I felt like it was talking about my experience. I had access. My dad knew the owners of the Phillies. The opportunity showed up, and I said yes. And then I had amazing, enlightened leadership, some of the best leadership you could ever imagine or hope to have at any time in your career. I got when I was 20 years old with a gentleman by the name of Frank Sullivan, who was director of promotions, and his boss, Bill Giles, who went on to own the Phillies, and he's president emeritus of the Phillies now.

So a revered leader, and his direction was simple, that I want you to show up and do what we've asked you to do and maybe exceed our expectations. But while you're doing it, in the early few months of your work here, tell me how I can make it better. How can I make it more fun and more engaging for you? And then his third edict was, if you hire people for us, then you got to give him the same three edicts. So simple stuff. That was brilliant. So when we started and he saw that, I was a little concerned because I went and got fitted to the costume. Costume was supposed to be delivered in a couple of months. It wasn't delivered until about three and a half months.

And it was the first morning of the day I'm supposed to go out and work in front of our fans, who have a tradition of being a little bit tough on Muppets. I mean, they threw snowballs at Santa. Santa didn't have a good day, okay? So I understood who the Phillies fans were, so I wasn't nervous about that. But once we got there, I'm like, wait. No one told me what to do. And Bill's direction, to me, when he saw me nervous, he said, look, just go out and have a good know. And I go running out of his office, a college student, thinking, I'm a professional idiot. I know how to have fun, right? And he yelled at me, editing G rated fun.

And that was a really important concept because he was giving me all of this freedom to create the personality that I ended up creating, but made sure I was in a box that would allow me to explore and have fun and enjoy myself. And then I was a Phillies fan, so my cues, Lauren was. I was a Phillies fan. I understood our insecurity. I understood how we would look at a Mets fan differently than a Yankees fan, and we would act differently to both of them. It wouldn't know with open arms, but eventually it would be, I do play them practical joke, then get them their hat back and hug them, give them their kids a kiss, take pictures. It was a way to take this Philadelphia Phillies insecurity and not have the output as being me. It was just having fun with them because they're an opposing fan.

And that's where I started. And I realized by accident at the end of my very first appearance, I thought I was in shape. A college football player. Double sessions. This is going to be nothing. I was in the costume for ten minutes, got all the way down to the field level, and when I realized I got to walk all the way back there to get to the elevator, to get down to my dressing room, I said, I'm going to just jump over the fence the end of this inning and run out behind home plate. And when I did that, people went nuts. Like, it was a streaker.

Oh, my gosh, look, he's on the field. And then I waved at one of the umpires. The umpires went like this to me. They laughed. One of the players high fived me as I ran behind home plate, and I went, oh, that's what I need to do. I need to break down this wall, this invisible wall between the fan and the players. And, hey, it was a bonus for me because I got to fool around with the visiting players more often than the Phillies players, but I got to know them all and became friendly with them. And after you established this relationship of fun, they would come to the ballpark.

The visiting players would come to a ballpark with telling me things. This rookie, make fun of him when he's introduced. Do this. Hey, when we get together, pregame, I want to do this with you. And they're bringing all the content in. And it was just Bill Giles who kept saying, hey, go try this. Go out with the grand crew, which turned into a fifth inning routine that continues today, 45 years later. So the enlightened leadership, I go back to that.

Bill allowed this to mature and develop, and he gave little dots of instruction and support. If I pushed a little bit past the box of G rated, he'd say, that was funny, but be careful. It was phenomenal and so lucky. And it wasn't until I got into business myself and saw how other organizations did not have enlightened leadership and what that felt like, that I realized how lucky I had been.

I know that feeling of being on the other side of that, where the leadership only sees it one way. And even though you're trying to push the bounds or do something completely different than anyone's really done before, that you still must do it within these invisible confines of the box. And there's not that. So how beautiful that Bill Giles was able to allow you to do that with just enough of the kind of the guardrails.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk over here. He had no fear. And I think that a lot of leadership that isn't as evolved is because they're fearful, because they don't want their legacy to be messed with, and they're worried about maybe telling somebody that they can do something when it's not a good idea. So they're fearful. Bill just had absolutely zero fear. And it's because the ownership, the Carpenters only cared about developing a great baseball team on the field and competitive and to win world championships, which they did. And they left everything up to Bill.

And no matter how wacky or crazy the idea Bill had was, the carpenter said, yeah, go ahead. This is why we hired you. Go do it. And if it was a failure, like Kite man, if anybody wants to Google Philly's Kite man, you'll see a very wonderful story about failure and how it became so much bigger because it failed. Bill was just fearless. And I think that's why the fanatic got a chance to be here 45 years later. He's going to be here 45 years from now, and on and on. When all of us had gone, he'll still be doing his thing.

You're listening to Brand to fan with Lauren Teague. More after this.

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Now back to Brand. To Fan, here's Lauren Teague.

We talk a lot on this, though, about how Fandom actually does start at the top. It starts with leadership and it starts, and that's, this is just a really nice reminder of the bravery, the courage, the acting, not from that place of fear that is required for anyone to kind of set that for the people that they work with and who work for them and empower them to create their own story, create their own experience and be willing to share that out into the just.

I just think there's some great legacies like the VEC name. Mike Vek is a friend of mine, has been a mentor of mine, and I just see what's coming out on Netflix is a story about the Vex. I can't wait to see that. He's got an amazing heart to his story with his daughter Rebecca, and A lot of things that really personally were enormous struggles for him and his family. But he was the guy. He's the guy that got fired by his father for disco demolition, and no one had less fear than his dad. And Mike grew up in that environment. And the legacy of these types of promotions that distract with entertainment create these memorable moments.

I think Bill Giles and Bill Beck and Mike Beck and Max Patkin and Al Shaq, all these folks that have played this big role in making sure people understood that you can be passionate for your team, you can want them to win, but you also can go there and have a great time. Because ultimately, truly, that's what brings fans back, the fandom back over and over again. You've created a family. Everybody wants to win, but when they don't stick in the Chicago Cubs, when you don't, they bond together as a family in their suffering. And that's a beautiful story about overcoming in life. Fandom is what you want with your family, with your community, with your church, with all of your outreaches. So as a brand, if you can build family, it solves everything that we're going through in this world. Lauren.

So I love showing a picture of the fanatic in front of a part of the stadium that's probably holding 1000 people. So there's 48,000 or 45,000 that's filled in. But he's in front of a section that's 1000 people. And it's a high resolution picture. So I can zoom in on a block of five or six people. You see different sexes, different race, different colors, different shapes. I'm assuming people that are identifying differently than you might expect. But they're all wearing the Phillies P except for that random Mets fan.

It's okay, they're allowed. And they're all a member of the Phillies, of the Fanatics family. It just completely wipes away any other concerns. And I think that in building a family, and that's what Bill Giles all said he was doing, he didn't want to build a business. He wanted to create a know. He lost his mother when he was seven years old and was at Crosley field waiting for his dad to get off work. He said, I used to ride the wicker wheelchairs down the ramp, and I realized how much fun I could have in this environment after the game was over. And I asked him the question just a number of months ago and said, do you think that's why you wanted to build a family, because you lost your mother? He goes, I don't know.

I don't think that much about it. He was simple in his focus, and truly, that's one of the reasons why just psychology would tell you that. But he's like, nah, he's just solely focused on building this family. And he did an amazing job with that. And I think that translates into the Philadelphia Phillies fan experience because of the Carpenter family and Bill Giles, the ownership after that and still continues today, although we've lost Dave Montgomery and some great leadership there. But it really is something that is sticky and it's going to stay there. And it's a roadmap for anybody else that wants to do it. Is that, is this going to make somebody feel good? Are we going to be kind by doing this? And then will it drive revenue and will it increase our ability to put a good product on the know? And I saw that in one of your interviews where you had Jay Bear on.

It was about helping. And I think that's the fanatic was this helper. He was a random, I like to call him a random act of kindness machine because he was like a foul ball. If he showed up, you'd get a picture. Oh, my gosh. We were at the Phillies game and this happened. A whole run, a walk off. But the fanatic visitor section, look at these pictures they show them.

They put it on the lock screen on their phones. And it's these moments of joy and kindness that if you can leverage that into your brand, you will win every single time over those who don't have that same ability to do so.

Exactly what you said about the family part. I was scrolling through your Instagram the other day and you had a post about as long as you're wearing the pinstripes, you're part of the family. We don't care about whO's in the pinstripes. Right. What you look know. But if you're in the pinstripes, if you've chosen to put this on, it means something to you and that means something to us.

Yeah. If you've ever walked into a Phillies crowd, you know, there are some strange looking folks because that's who we are. Right? We're this eclectic mix. And that's kind of the work that I'm doing daily, is that my goal is to smile first or say hello. And then I realized there was an aversion to people who my brain decided for me because it's going on behind the scenes. That person looks strange. Well, now what I'm doing is I'm seeking out the people that my brain tells me are strange to say hello to first. And it is amazing the response you get from the Goth couple in Lambertville.

Hey, how you doing? Hey, what's going on? Do you need any help? We live right around the corner. It's just so wonderful to fight your instincts that our brains are all doing to us know and say, no, do opposite George. Right. I'm a Seinfeld fan, as you can imagine, but just do opposite George in terms of how the inputs coming in about people would really also help and sports give you the opportunity to. I took my son to the first Eagles game. We happened to go to Washington to see them play a number of years ago and his fandom has really caught on fire. And so when the Eagles scored a touchdown, we were up in an area where all the Eagles fans were and I'm turning around, high five. And another guy hugs me, high fives, Dylan.

And then everything sat down and goes, Dylan. Dylan goes, we don't even know those people. I go, exactly the point. All of that goes away. It's like, give me a. It's. And sports has always done that. And if you're not looking at that, not paying attention to it, you might miss it.

But that's truly what I love about sports. It's been, my entire existence has been driven or had a backdrop of sports. I mean, my dad being a football coach, if he lost more than he won, we'd have to leave home. Fortunately, dad won 300 games all at the same schoOl. He's in the college football of fame. So we were lucky there. But people still hated him. They'd yell at him and skate, I'll be, what are you doing? So it's this emotion and passion and then mixed with family that really ends up being the driving force.

No matter what experience you're having as a fan.

You performed as the fanatic for 16 years, Dave. So where do you go from there? As someone who also got a dream job when I was quite young I learned very quickly. Even while being in the middle of it. You have to build some new dreams. So what transferable skills do you write on your resume as you are leaving the Phillies and you are out looking for the next thing? What are you looking for in that role?

It's so funny that you mentioned resume. Do you realize I've never ever had a resume in my life? Never. I've never put one together, never needed to one because of the wonderful accidental experience with the fanatics birth and Mead being a part of it. But when I left the Phillies, when I was just decided to leave the Phillies it was the reality of I don't own the rights to the character. There's case law. It was all the way back with the Lone Ranger and Clayton Moore trying to fight for the rights to the Lone Ranger and had a pretty good fight. All he was doing was wearing a mask, and the rest was up to him. But the company that did the production owned it, so that's case law.

So I knew there was no opportunity for me to own it. And I knew regardless of how much they loved me and how much I love my leadership, they were going to take me and put me back in the chart because I had grown out of the chart, because this was totally unexpected. So I wanted to have that on my own terms. I love the Phillies. I'm still very close with. There's some folks that still work for the Phillies. Dave Buck is the president, VP now interned a few years after the fanatic was born. And we've always been good friends, so they've always treated me well.

But I decided, you know what? I want to be an entrepreneur. So that's the reason why I didn't have to create a resume. And I got some angel investors to help me. And my concept was that I wanted to create my own character brand so we'd own the rights. And it was a journey that took about eight or nine years before I started Raymond Entertainment to really understand what we could be doing, which was, in essence, create fanatics for anybody who liked that type of brand asset. And then what is the messaging behind it? What's the process to follow? And I had my brother write a business plan. That's where we got some angel investing. I had to extricate myself from partners that I had and to absolve a non compete.

And in a way, we went in 2000 and Raymond Entertainment has been kind of this leader in what we call character branding. And what I did was just deconstruct what the Phillies did. Right. But the wonderful, serendipitous thing that happened, that's happened to me now is that same process that made the fanatic great from the enlightened leadership on down, developed this process that people can work on valuing fun and being happier in. That's the transfer from my career today is that I get to perform again. So I'm up on stage, working very hard on my stage craft, got great trainers at heroic public speaking. I love Michael and Amy port. They are phenomenal.

So anybody wants to be in this business and be great at your, they've got to be one of your coaches. And then on the other side, I understood business. So I was building this into a business. But all of this, I believe the fanatics. My work in sports, growing up with my family and the background of sports, working for the Phillies, creating that personality and now teaching people how to do that for their own brand. But now being able to say the bigger picture is, hey, how about if it could save your life? How about if it could build better communities? How about it could save these political and racial divides that are really neutralizing our ability to connect, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do with our brand. So that has been my real joy lately. And we're copresenters in this world.

And to be able to get paid to deliver a message that now my audience, you're in service of your audience if you truly do that. And then the audience come back and says, this is what it's doing for me. And when that becomes more than just positive, just like overwhelmingly personal, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is where I'm supposed to be.

Wow, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. I want to come back to that. I do want to talk about kind of the book and then that message. But you were talking about this character development piece. And obviously, mascots aren't limited to sports. In fact, when you started becoming a mascot, Mickey Mouse was already around and the Ronald McDonald was already around. And now we have some kind of newer mascots that brands continue to use to personify brands.

But I also was kind of looking back in the research on the most beloved or most popular character brands. These brands have mascots that have been around for 30 years, 50 years, 80 years, 100 years. So, Dave, I want to know, from your perspective, is there room for mascots in today's advertising world, or are they being replaced by influencers and quote unquote, creators? What do you think about how that evolved for brands?

Well, I used to say our bhag, our big, hairy, audacious goal was to create a character for a funeral director or a mortician and say, hey, we put the fun at funerals. Because I felt like any brand could have a great character brand. The only thing it needs to be done is you have to pull from your brand's history, your future customers, your current customers, who they are, where they live, what's their community like, what is their driving force? And you tell a story before you even think about what the character will be. And from that storytelling, it's so vital. And Disney is the first one to do this. I mean, truly a multi billion dollar brand that was built on the backs of a little black rat, because Mickey really know it was Mickey MOuse. But in the early drawings, he was really a rat. He wasn't a mouse.

So there's absolutely a place for this. And look, I think influencers have done an amazing job. But the one thing I don't think influencers can do as well as a character brand is that the character brand is a living, breathing extension of your brand, not just somebody who says that they love it. And here I use it, so you should use it. It's great. I love it. True or not, that works to a certain extent. But if you have something that goes out, like the way I used to tell people when they wanted to know if they thought they needed a character brand, I said, okay, well, let's forget about the character brand.

Let's forget about mascots and all the furriness. Let's put that aside. What if I could guarantee you a branding asset that could leave your environment completely? And wherever they show up immediately, people feel better because they showed up and they want to hug it, they want to take pictures of it, and they will share with look at who showed up in my house, in my community, at this store, and then they've absorbed your brand through this emotional connection and. Great. How do I get that? Well, we have to do this right, but we're going to build this living, breeding entity that is the embodiment of your brand. So if you can't hug your college, you can take your kids to see where you went to school, and you can hug the mascot that is the embodiment of that school. And you could place that little analogy into any brand. If you want your brand to be able to interact on emotional level, hug, embrace, and take photographs with your clients, potential clients, and with the people that you really want to make feel better.

I would submit that if anybody wants to create the best marketing and branding tool than a character, done correctly and done well, not all of them are. Some of them are just stand in a street corner and spin a sign. Or they're a parody on the NJM mascots where no jingles, no mascots, we just do great insurance. Well, thEy're leveraging jingles and mascots by saying they don't do them. So I think that's ironic. With that campaign, I'm not sure if you're familiar with it or if it's just over here in the. But you know, it's just the best tool and it needs to be done right. You've got to invest in it.

You have to care about it. Because the Phillies never let the fanatic appear in two places at the same time, even though on each and every day he could. Or if he's. If the fanatics make an appearance in Scranton. From one to two, the fanatic's nowhere else, including if he happens to be going down to Florida. He has enough time to get from Scranton to Florida, and then he appears in Florida. Even though it might be some best friend, you know, they've always taken care of him. They've left, I would guess, estimate millions of dollars on the table by not getting involved in deals that just didn't make sense, were part of his story, didn't fit his personality.

And then you imagine if your person has this wonderful idea, everybody in your environment says, this is a great idea, go pitch it to the Phillies. And they pitch it and the Phillies say, nah, I don't think so. It's not right for the fanatics brand. And they walk in and go, what are they, nuts? We just showed them all this money that they could make, which was true, but the, you know, we're still producing baseball games and we're still trying to produce world champions, and the fanatic is a strong part of who we are, but that just won't reflect well, it's a wonderful thing to care that much to leave money on the table, because the long play is what the Phillies have really earned by that 45 years of this character being considered the best mascot in sports, gritty notwithstanding.

Well, let's talk about that. Can we talk about gritty? Okay, because that was actually one of your clients. This is one of your creations that went through your process. You've developed two of Philly's most beloved mascots. And gritty is maybe one of the first mascots that my kids kind of learned and, and identified with. There's something about those big old eyes or the giant neck or that it's, know, it looks like probably what they were watching on TV at the same time when it came out. But I know that you have this checklist or process. Can you again summarize, you've been kind of talking through it, but can you summarize that checklist with, as you're talking about gritty and how that character came to life?

Yeah. And brain experts and brain managers will say, duh. I tell them what the process is because it makes so much sense in our world. Let's be clear. I was given the opportunity to create a personality on my own. They let me do that. And with some guidance, though, enlightened leadership. So what I tell people when they say what they're going to be, Dave, when we first meet, they go, I have no idea.

Then the CFO goes, why'd we hire you? Because you know what will be perfect for you. You just haven't been told how to follow this process. So I'm going to give you a process. Don't come back to me at each step and go, what do you think? I mean, I'll let you know if I think what you're doing will be difficult for us to build or will be a special effect that might break down a lot and it's not needed. I'll give you that advice, but I'm not going to edit what you come up with if you promise to follow this process. And the first one is tell a story. You need to have a story that reflects your history, your ownership, obviously, the city, your fans, the sport, free whiteboard creatives. Just come up with all of the concepts of your story and then tell a story with no thought about what the dimensional qualities of this thing may be.

There's no sex. There's no thought of it being of any type of a character. You're just going to tell this great story, and that story is supposed to become someone. And then the next step is when you design it, you get a designer who will be inspired by the story. So someone who has experience in taking a story and then doing some physical, three dimensional products or pieces that form this being. And then it should be a unique design. It shouldn't just be your colors. There needs to be a pop of an additional color.

That's why gritty has a belly button that's kind of greenish. It's not part of the color, the brand chart, or the guidebook. And then once you have this uniqueness, then what you do is find a great performer, and you have immersion with that story and that character. So everything about the character can be leveraged in some way, can be used, can tell another story. And if you start with caring, then tell this authentic story with no fear. No fear at all. And then whatever the visual pieces come up, you adopt those because it fits the story, and then you roll it out fearlessly and get ready for all the negative. So it's caring, it's storytelling, it's uniqueness of design.

It's a great performance, and then it's stewardship of that character. And believe in it and don't go, oh, we made a mistake because somebody booze, some troll comes out. So when I started to see where the designs were going, because we were submitting designs and they actually came to me and know your designs really aren't kind of rough or edgy enough for us. Do you mind if we bring in another designer? And I said, no, this isn't about me. I want you to get to yes. So they brought Brian Allen from Flyland Designs in, and he kind of was know the rat rod type of know artist. And after just two drawings, everybody was on board. And they came to me and I said, look, do you love? I said, and they said, what's your concern? I said, well, I think Stephen King is going to love this because it looks like it's going to eat kids.

And you said you wanted to track kids. And then Sean Tildzer, the boss, points his finger at me. He didn't do this. He pointed finger, you told us to do this process and that you. I go, you're right, Sean. I'm just telling you what maybe some other people will say, this is yours. And this is why I didn't create Gree, the collaboration of my process with great enlightened leadership at the flyers at the time. And they produced this with no fear.

They did everything that Bill Giles did. Naturally, they learned through this process and they were tapped in to do this. And so when the character was rolled out in front of 300 elementary school kids at the police Touch Museum, because their concept was this is for kids, by kids, it was their plausible deniability to the crazy. They had. Not a single kid jumped up in terror. I've been at the most benign character rollouts hundreds, thousands of times, and there's always one kid at the elementary school that gets up and runs away to go to the teacher and take me home. Never happened. And I'm like, that was my first, you know, Joe Heller, who was the CMO at the time, shoved the phone in my face.

And the tweet was, he sucks. I hate him. And I said, well, I told you this was going to be negative. He goes, I was just testing you. And then he brought around all of his brand managers, all of his team, a lot of young people, and they were all laughing and joking and then looking forward to what the trolls might have for them. And then when Sean Tilder, the boss, got done with doing a spot on local news, he came over, saw the tweet. He goes, don't share. That's not creative enough.

So he said, only share the ones that are created and appropriate. And my all time favorite was an Instagram post where it showed Yukon Cornelius and the Abomba Wolf Snowman. And they were on the top part. And then there was a full picture of gritty and with a slash through it that said use condoms was suggesting that gritty was a love child of Yukon Cornelius. And the impomable snowman. And that was a little bit inappropriate, but hysterically funny. And that started to drive what Wendy's captured by making fun of their competitors to see. Well, let's see how tough they are.

And once the penguin from Pittsburgh, our hated rival, did a dismissive tweet that said, showed the picture of his birth picture, and it says, here's gritty. And the penguin goes, lol. Okay. And then gritty quickly came back with, sleep with one eye open tonight, Bird. And that was in 48 hours. He went from zero followers on Instagram and Twitter to hundreds of thousands. And it's just grown ever since. So it was this fearlessness again.

And then I give him the process and like Bill, I stepped out of the way. Do it. And I'll say, oh, you know what? That's not a good idea. Because. But it had nothing to do because it was frightening or didn't look right to know. And then their answer was, well, he's a troll who lived underneath all the iterations of the Flyers arenas, and he was sick and tired of all the changes. He wanted to get back to the Flyers hockey and stop worrying about all the special VIP areas. And they caught him defacing some of the new things they were doing in the Wells Fargo Center.

And they caught him. And then he was this troll. So that's why his eyes look bad. And then he was unkempt. And then people would complain about that. And the Flyers management said, have you seen our players? Yeah. Tough sport, hard ice. The puck goes, a rock goes hundreds of miles an hour.

You got skate blades that can slice you open at any time. We're trying to beat the crap out of someone that's trying to get the puck. This is our sport. It's tough, it's nasty, it's unkept, it doesn't smell great, doesn't look great at that's. And that's the authentic storytelling. So I got out of the way. That's why the gritty was great, because I had it up to me. I probably would have picked one of our designs that looked a little softer and it wouldn't have worked.

You're listening to brand to fan with Lauren Teague. More after this.

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Now back to brand to fan. Here's Lauren Teague.

It's interesting because I was going to ask you about where do the resistances, like, what are the resistance points in your process and when can you tell, oh, this isn't going to work. And you actually started to answer that because of your own kind of thoughts as you went along the process with gritty. But can you share that? What's the Uhoh moment for you if you're going through this with a client and you're developing a character and you're like, it doesn't matter what, it's just not going to get there.

Well, how do you type? It's really easy. It's simple and it's economy based. If I give them my proposal and they say, we're not going to spend that much on a mast out. Okay, that was my first test. They have to care. And caring means budget, focus, time and belief that this is going to be bigger than any of their best corporate clients because they're going to own it. They're going to make it work. So that's my first test is you have to care.

Oh, yeah, we care. We want the best. And then they see my proposal and go, nah, I don't think we can do that. All right, good. That's not right for you. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just they're not the client that is going to truly believe that this is the most important thing you're going to do. The Flyers history was perfect for that because they had given up having a mascot.

Their former owner was a beloved guy, very bright, brilliant hockey guy, brought a couple of Stanley Cups to the Flyers and he hated mascot. He just didn't like. And so that wasn't going to happen. So the last push was the Super bowl parade, when the Eagles had won and had their Super bowl parade and every other sports brand in the city had a mascot except them. And they said, that's it. We're not giving up this opportunity anymore. It is a wonderful case from where I started in 1978 and going all the way up to 2018 and seeing that completely regenerated in the same city with almost the exact same results, but in 48 hours instead of a year.

Well, hence the speed of social media. At the time that that rolled out, I was still working with JBear and the convincing convert team, and our company logo was orange. And so I kind of adopted all of the gritty memes and gifts, and I would start dropping them into any Facebook chat, any text message chat, if it was meme appropriate. I was pulling a gritty one because I was like, kind of represents our company, too, a little bit. Right. So I think that there's something there when we talk about the fandom journey, and it gets to someone saying, this is actually inconsistent with how I show up and I am a fan. It's part of my identity, then the fans actually put themselves into the brand a little bit, too. Do you have any stories about that above? Like, you were the fanatic, like you defined it, yet did it come back to you in ways that were unexpected because other people had put themselves into the brand?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in today's world, and the fanatic really travels, it never continues to amaze me that I'll be some corner of the world, whether I'm in Mexico or England working with the Manchester City franchise, where people come up to me in a bar and somebody said, wait, you were the fanatic? You know about the fanatic. So it carries and it has weight and it travels. So what I like to see is when people come back to me and tell me about a moment, right, and that they have used that picture of the fanatic to tell a story. Many of them have become leadership. It's just like my dad's football players. I see them many years ago. I say, you know what your dad said to me? And this is what he did.

And I use that with my kids, and I use that with all my employees. That's what I see, just like what you were doing, that it means something bigger than the mascot of the Phillies. I mean, there's an argument that the fanatic united the city of Philadelphia and became a symbol of the city. So seeing those things is really what amazes me and how they used it. There was a woman who was leading this company that had me come in to speak, and she was just a huge fanatic fan. And as I was preparing for my speech, her internal team sent me a picture of her as a young girl standing next to the fanatic in a truck that was part of the parade. And her father had given her the job of being with the fanatic on that truck as it moved through the plate to make sure the fanatic had everything she wanted. So when I got introduced by her, I had that picture ready to go.

And that's just those types of moments where she had always kept that picture and always remembered her dad giving her the ability to be close to the fanatic. And she was like eight years old. That comes back over and over and over again, which continues to remind me that the fanatic is doing bigger things than just being at a Phillies game. He's really making changes in people's lives and creating moments of joy, which is part of being happier, is to reflect on the moments of joy that you've had, especially when things are tough. Just give yourself a moment to close your eyes and go back to something that was joyful, and it really helps you reset.

Yeah. To me, that is the most powerful part of the experience, is to hear that kind of reflected back and then to take that on and say, oh, my gosh, those moments of joy. Like you said, you defined the fanatic as the random act of kindness machine that actually meant something to someone and that you could take that as someone who enabled that or someone who's enabling that for others and know that those moments last. And that's such a powerful, powerful thing. And it's clear that through your career, that's resonated with you and that sat with you, and that's why you're out in the world today. Right. Helping people think through those moments and value the fun and just overall being happier. Very cool.

I love it. Dave, I could literally talk to you all afternoon, but we both know it's a Friday, and so I'm going to try to respect your time by asking you the last couple of questions that we ask everybody here on the brand fan show. The first being, is there a brand or a person or a mascot that you're a fan of right now that we haven't actually talked about?

Well, and I don't know how many people would know this brand, but they're phenomenal, is Wawa, and they're expanding up and down the East coast, but they are a Philadelphia company that started as a dairy farm getting milk. And so with the convenience store, they've just created one of the most amazing convenience stores that really, it's all about kindness and fun. My wife and I are not retired, but we're in a 55 and up community, so it's almost like a little date to go, hey, you want to go get coffee at Wawa? Because they have this amazing coffee bar, and it never has ceased to amaze me how they connected folks. And really, they're not serving. I mean, it's good food, but it's good bad food. And they unabashedly say, you probably shouldn't be eating here every day. And they've created salads and yogurts and all kinds of things to continue to try to up their game in that, you know, it's so comfortable. They built the superstores where you get gas now.

And it's funny how I'm connected to them. And when I travel somewhere where they're not there, it's a. And I'll go to Starbucks, I guess, but there's nothing like that experience. So I'm very proud of what they've built and how it's growing. And it's in a crowded field, too.

I think that's the first kind of supermarket convenience store brand that we've talked about on this show. I'm going to the East Coast a couple of times before the end of the year, so I will make sure I pop in and try the coffee and check out the wawa. And since I don't get to eat it every day, maybe have a little bit of the.

And I have a sizzly, there'll be some sort of a deal where you get a cup of coffee and a sizzling or something off and, yeah, look, It's a nice little bit of a guilty pleasure, but they just came out with their pumpkin spice. It's always a week or two earlier every year.

Yeah, it sure is. The last question that we ask everybody here on the brand of fan show, and I cannot wait for your answer because with 45 years in sports, I know you've got something good for me. What is the favorite piece of fan wear that's either still in your closet or you wish was still there?

Well, it was given to me by my kids, so it's special right then and there. But you can customize. This is what I love about our business. You can take your home jersey. So in the Phillies pinstripes, you can take that and you can customize whatever you want on the back. So my kid built one for me. It says fanatic on the back, and it has 78 for the year that he was born. And it's so cool.

And my children have become such gigantic sports fans and specifically Phillies fans, and they grew up. So my son, who's 18, and my daughters, who are 23 and 25, my son Kyle, who's out in Colorado, is 33. So he grew up when I was the fanatic, my three kids with Sandy and I didn't know me as the fanatic, they just knew that that's what I did. So they got to go to the games and the fanatic would pull them up on the dugout and dance when they were little kids. So I got to watch what a brand fanatic is and how it can turn young children into huge fans. So it was fun to witness that outside of being his best friend and just being a fan. So there's no question that's my favorite. I've got a lot of Phillies gear as you can imagine, but that's my favorite.

Go to.

Love it. Let's get a picture of that for the website so it can go with the show notes and everybody can see.

I got a great one with my son and I with our arms around each other as we were at one of the great games we went to this year where the Phillies won in home run fashion.

Perfect. Well, we should have put that up on the Brandofan show website when this episode is live. Well, we have now reached the TLDL too long didn't listen minute if you've been on two X Speed this whole time, first, I'm sorry because I think we both had a lot of Wawa coffee this morning. And also this is the part where you stop where you get your minute recap of what an incredible conversation with Dave Raymond, the original Philly Fanatic. Dave, you were a sports fan your whole life and through your dad had access to getting an internship with the Phillies and you literally went from college to mascot. And when we were talking about that whole process, a couple of things stood out to me. The enlightened leadership direction that you got from your strong leadership, especially from Bill Giles, you said that he told you, tell me how I can make it better for you. As you were figuring it all out, which I think is one of the coolest things that we could tell anyone who we're working with to empower them with guidelines to create and explore, even if you need to be G rated in that time.

But because you had grown up as a Philly fan, you actually really enabled and personified and embodied that fan experience from the get go. Whether you are messing with a Yankees fan or a certain manager on the field, you were able to break down that invisible wall with both the fans and the players. We talked about how any brand can have a great character, and that character brands are just branded assets that can actually leave your store, your environment completely. And wherever it shows up, people actually want to see it. They want to hug it. They want to take a picture. Your brand is actually absorbed through that emotional connection that's built by having a character. Dave, you detailed your four step process for us, actually maybe five steps on how to create this character brand.

And without giving away all of your secret sauce. Right? It starts with the storytelling that it has to reflect everything about the brand. And only from a complete story can a character actually be born. Can a designer come in and actually put some 3D shape and imaging to that. Can the right performer actually come in and be the best friend and bring that story to life. And then the leadership and the organization must have the right stewardship of the character to follow through with it, even if they're expecting some backlash there. We talked a little bit, Dave, about where you're at today in life and that your focus from stage and through your books and showing up on podcasts like mine is to help people value fun and be happier in life. The thing that I heard from you that I'm going to put into practice immediately is that you want to leverage joy and kindness wherever you go, which means you're going to be the first to say hello and the first to share a smile.

What's beautiful about that is that outside of the costume, you have this great voice, and we're all better off for it. Thank you for being here on the brand of fan show.

Thank you, Lauren. I appreciate including me. This was a blast.

Yeah, it sure was. Where can people find you and learn more about you?

Go to daveramonspeaks.com. The thing that I'm really building is a really wonderful close following of my newsletter. Wow. What a surprise. Somebody else has a newsletter. But this one comes once a month. 530 the last Friday of every month. That's against all people that tell you how to write newsletters.

That's just one month. So it's to bump up your weekend. And I think I've gained a strong following because of that. And if you sign up for it, that's of course for free. We'll give you a chapter of the Power Fund book, which you can get the power Fund book if you want it. If you read that chapter and want to read more, it's right there on that website. Jeff Bezos to get no more money. He doesn't need more money from me.

So the book is not on Amazon. It's just@daveramispeaks.com okay.

I'll be sure to grab a couple copies and be giving them out along the way. Like I said, it was a pleasure to have you very excited. And hopefully when I get back to the Philadelphia Delaware area, I'm going to look you up and we're going to go do whatever two sports legends do.

Yeah, we'll go to Oahua, grab some coffee, then go to a Phillies game, and then if the season's right, we'll run over to the link and see an Eagles game. And then you can just pass on to the great beyond because you've just done it all.

I have, and I've already checked off the Flyers game. I actually have been to a Flyers game when I was in a row of public speaking and we were meeting in Philly. That was one of our fun activities to do.

That's great. Yeah.

So I'm Lauren Teague. This was Dave Raymond, and this is always the brand of Fan show. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next week. Thanks again for tuning into this episode of the brand of Fan show. I'm your host, Lauren Teague, marketing speaker, strategist, and the founder of Fanwagon. You know, it means a lot to me to spend this time with you, so if you like what you're hearing, I'd love if you could drop me a note at brandtofan@teaguefc.com or message me on Instagram where I'm also TeaguEFC. If these Brandofan conversations resonate with you and you'd like to share this message with your audience, go to laurentiguegue.com to find out how I guide businesses and associations to stop chasing shiny objects and instead build for lasting affinity.

The brand fan show is produced by Teague FC and supported by Fanwagon. Audio production is done by Brian Griggs and video editing done by Garrett Teague. Our producers are Kimberly Voorhees, Ashley Ruiz, and Carrie Hobush. You can catch up on past episodes and guests and access bonus content by visiting Brandtofan Show.