Tag: marketing

So many easy jokes about the Mariners repping Nintendo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

LL: Seattle Mariners agree to wear Nintendo Switch 2 patch for the 2025 MLB season

I don’t care enough to dig deep into the finer details, but Nintendo doesn’t own the Mariners like they once did, but they have enough pull with the baseball organization to ensure that throughout the 2025 baseball season, the Mariners will have a sponsorship patch on their away uniforms for the Nintendo Switch 2.  Their home whites will have a regular old Nintendo word mark logo on those alternatively.

Regardless, the jokes write themselves about a company like Nintendo being the uniform sponsor for a baseball organization like the Mariners, because in more ways than one, they operate in similar manners.  Now such could be as the result of the once ownership and the influence Nintendo clearly still has within the Seattle Mariners organization, or maybe they really are two peas in a pod in how their business philosophies are concerned, but the fact of the matter is that there really is a lot in common between both companies.

Nintendo is notoriously Japanese, as in that they are more than happy to operate in a completely risk-averse, efficient manner that prioritizes a zero-waste mentality.  For example, despite the fact that a billion people on the planet wanted the Wii when it first came out, they were all like ehhhh, let’s make just 20 million units, can’t possibly risk there being some false demand and us being stuck with extra units and being forced to sell at a discount.  And for the next several years, nobody could get their hands on one, and they were selling on the resale market at insane markups, and by the time demand was truly fulfilled, the Wii 2 was knocking on the door, and the process kind of repeated itself. The point is, Nintendo prioritizes efficiency and avoiding all risk over possibly making consumers happy and meeting demand a lot closer in which they operate to this day. 

And the Mariners are kind of the same way, because they just, always kind of suck as an MLB franchise, and no matter how much the market changes, how much talent they luck into from their system, and the availability of free agents throughout the years, the organization just somehow manages to always suck at winning baseball games, and much like Nintendo, letting consumers down by taking no risks, avoiding any possibility of dead money by signing no free agents, and routinely letting their fans down on a yearly basis.

It’s funny, because I actually wrote about the Mariners not too long ago and how it’s pretty incredible how much they’ve sucked historically.  Because this is an organization that has had the likes of Ken Griffey, Jr., Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez and a prime Robinson Cano, and in some cases, an overlap of some of these talents. Yet they never won anything, beyond the magical 2001 season where they won 116 games, before crashing out unceremoniously in the playoffs to the Yankees.  They rarely saw the playoffs, didn’t do much once they got there, and no matter the talent that has been on the squad, they just, well suck.

Just recently, the Mariners successfully signed their catcher Cal Raleigh, to an insanely team-friendly deal, six years at just $105M.  The guy is an average 4 WAR player, not even hitting his prime, and could easily have been worth double of this, in just a few years.  But he clearly likes something in Seattle and has agreed to stay there, but the real question is if the Nintendo Mariners will actually do something with this centerpiece, or if it will just be more of the same, operating like Nintendo, where they will only produce the absolute bare minimum in order to be relevant, but absolutely nothing more in order to even attempt to be anything but afloat.

It’s really a chicken and egg situation on whether the Seattle Mariners are operating like Nintendo, or if Nintendo is operating like the Seattle Mariners; but if I’m a betting man, I’d say the former, but either way, neither is a particularly enviable position to be in, because jaded video gamers all resent Nintendo for their Nintendo-ey business practices, and Mariners fans all resent the Mariners for simply never really trying, so ultimately, this sponsorship marriage seems to be a very fitting fit for both parties involved.

Imagine being so insecure of your masculinity that you need to get a MANLY BAND

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what it says about my browsing habits and the conversations that big brother is listening to, but I got this ad for some company called MANLY BANDS and it’s apparent that they’re in the business of making MANLY rings for the MANLIEST of MEN to wear to physically indicate their marital status.

They appear to be available in names like THE COWBOY, and based on the one photo they have, they appear to have wood as one of the materials in which they’re made, looking like a squashed barrel that Donkey Kong sat on instead of throwing at Mario.  Apparently instead of some pussy jeweler’s ring box, they’re packaged in TACTICAL BOXES, because nothing is MANLIER than presenting shit inside of a tactical box instead of something made of lesser, more pussier material.

I love how their logo is crisscrossed fire axes, a campfire and a tree, to hit that this is what a MANLY BAND is made out of, and of course their choice of font is IMPACT, because this whole thing is just so absurdly ridiculous, it may as well be a meme.

Oh, and I’m definitely not going to ignore the very obvious MANLY BAND customer looking like how he’s got his bride in a chokehold in order to kiss her, because he probably sees her as property after saying ‘I do’ and is wasting no time at imposing his will and possession over her.

And come on, bro can’t even take off his fucking Apple watch for his wedding?  I like the convenience of being able to check the time at any given moment, but even I took my fitness tracker off when I got married.

I remember when I was looking for a wedding band before I got married.  I initially thought I wanted something different than a traditional sterling or gold or white gold band, and I imagined myself getting something like a carbon fiber band or something different, not necessarily to be MANLY, but just for a change of things.

I tried on some carbon fiber rings and things that weren’t so traditional, but frankly they all looked too dark and ridiculous for my taste.  Ultimately, I went with a tantalum band that definitely leaned more traditional, but at the same time was slightly darker than a shiny band, and I like the general indestructible nature of it in order to get a degree of uniqueness that I’m satisfied with.

But never did it once cross my mind that there would be the possibility of giving off the perception of becoming less MANLY if I picked a questionable wedding band.  So going back to the title of this post, imagine being so insecure with your masculinity that you feel the need to acquire a MANLY BAND as a wedding ring.  Maybe the aesthetics are more these bros’ style, but for me, anything with wood is a no-go.  Last thing I’d want from my ring is for it to get beat up like mine sometimes does, and then it starts to rot because that’s what wood tends to do.

Either way, chalk MANLY BANDS as one of the dumber things to have come into existence in recent years.  I think I’d put them up with drinking cups made out of baseball bats, but unlike those, I wouldn’t wager a sacrificial bet in order to get the Braves to win a World Series for a MANLY BAND.

Wrestlemania XL brought to you by, MAGAlcohol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally I had intended on this post being a part of the post I had made about how Wrestlemania basically sold out as hard as a NASCAR event with how many sponsorships they’ve piled into the production of their grandest event of the year™, but I felt that it had some legs of its own and I had lots of jokes and puns that I thought were the best things ever, cementing my obvious status as the dad who makes dad jokes that are only hilarious to myself.

Among the numerous sponsors that the WWE allowed to dump money into ‘Mania this year, this particular one stood out leaps and bounds above the others for me, one because of just how uncomfortably white-wing it comes off, but also finding out that they’ve basically bought Cody Rhodes and plastered their branding all over his American Nightmare™ bus, but we’ll circle back to that part later in the post.

On purpose, I’m not going to use mention their name because fuck them for being some creepy dog whistle white-wing racist undertone company, but as if that doesn’t set the stage enough, that’s basically the gist of what their commercial and branding seems to exude.

It starts with a catch-phrase that does rhyme but doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue so easily, and I want to play the Stewie Griffin game with their name, because of the “wh” in it, and that serves to ramp up the difficulty in saying their name or mocking their jingle.

But as the commercial continues to unfold, it’s as if they’re continuously doubling and tripling down on their pride of being whiter than, well, a right-wing gathering, because as the scenes change to larger and larger groups of what appears to be solely white people, it’s apparent that this is a company that really gives no flying fucks about DEI and they want viewers to know that.

They even have a ridiculous line where they ponder why Moscow gets the mule, and while looking up the YouTube video to take a screen grab from, they’ve already posted a recipe for “American Mule” which is basically the exact same thing as a Moscow Mule except not Russian; which in itself is laughable considering so many orange guy disciples love Russia as much as he does.

As the commercial ends, only one word or phrase popped into my head: MAGAlcohol, because that’s precisely what the fuck this shit actually is. 

I’m not much of a vodka drinker, other than the sparse times where I like a cranberry vodka, but I kind of feel bad for the spirit itself.  MAGAlcohol makes me not want to have any vodka in general, because it’s murdering the entire category for me as if it were a white cop pressing his knee on a defenseless black man’s neck on asphalt.

Getting back to Cody Rhodes, I was abhorred when footage of him arriving to the Linc was shown, and Corey Graves was being a good soldier, by not failing to mention that his entire bus was also co-sponsored by MAGAlcohol, and I could feel my eyes widen at the disgusting sight of it.  Just when I was beginning to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and beginning to turn face on my opinion of him, he has to go and associate with MAGAlcohol, and I’m pumping the brakes at how much I want to support him. 

In some regards, I get it, he’s the American Nightmare, his ring attire is basically a Homelander from The Boys skin, and he’s a white guy from Georgia.  There’s few guys at his stature in the business that would be as worth co-sponsoring as Cody Rhodes.

But he’s also a pretty sensible, intelligent human being, from what I can surmise from interviews and the way he conducts himself in and out of the business.  I would’ve assumed that he would’ve been a little more cerebral than to associate himself with a company that clearly has no hidden agenda on whom they want their demographic to be.

Oh and his wife is also black.  I know that Brandi Runnels seems to be as white-washed as perhaps I am, but when push comes to shove, white folks wouldn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if there was an incident that needed a minority scapegoat and she was within eyesight.

Perhaps it was out of his control, and it was the bigwigs at the E that forced it onto him.  But I would’ve also figured Cody, by now, and at his position within the company, would have the ability to veto this if he really wanted to.  But as so many legends in the business have so often said, the business is all about as making as much money as you can, because there will come a day when you can do it anymore.

Not that I think Cody was starving before his associate with MAGAlcohol, but accepting more money when you’re already rich is among the whitest things a white guy can do, so unfortunately, as much as The Story has been compelling, there is a little turd in the celebratory punch bowl, that most definitely does not make it go down so sweetly.

Re: the literal selling out of Wrestlemania

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I’d wait until both nights of Wrestlemania had passed before passing on any sort of judgment, but this is fresh on my mind, and I’ve got this small window of time to write where it’s not enough to take a nap or do anything other than knock out a quick brog post.

The title of this post is not indicative to what I thought the quality of the show, at least Night 1 was for Wrestlemania, but it’s to refer to the fact that this show, and probably going forward future shows, had more sponsorships than a NASCAR race.  Prime energy drink, Snickers, Dude Wipes, Credit One, some Insurance company, and some super creepy right-wing sounding vodka company that I’ll circle back to later, but it was evident that every match had a sponsor, commercials were being aired in between every match for non-premium Peacock subscribers.

Very literally, Wrestlemania sold the fuck out.  They’re probably making millions of dollars in doing so, and I don’t judge that, but for a company that used to have zero in-ring sponsorship and usually relying on a singular chief sponsor per show, it is a stark contrast of the yesteryears, the generations of wrestling fans are hell-bent on creating a rift from then and now.

Prime had the top turnbuckle, and their logo emblazoned in the center of the ring, and it made Cody Rhodes look like he was kissing the Prime logo during his entrance.  Dude Wipes appeared to sponsor more matches than anyone else, and there’s something to be said the demographic when company that manufactures basically baby wipes for grown men has such sponsorship flex during a professional wrestling event, especially the magnitude of Wrestlemania.

My brother was the one who pointed it out, but he brought up the query on if it was fucked up or not, that the match that had a team of three black women, was the only match of the night to have been sponsored by WingStop.  I didn’t notice it at first, but once it was pointed out to me, I couldn’t not see the giant-ass WingStop logo lighting up the LED apron board and on the ring barrier throughout the match, and it definitely falls into the category of that’s fucked up.

Like seriously, surely there are marketing people at the E, and at some point, they’re milling among themselves, or coordinating with their sponsors, namely the WingStop people, and somewhere at some point, while divvying up the on-screen advertising, made the conscious decision that the match featuring Naomi, Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill, was the appropriate time to advertise WingStop.  Not that I was trying to be an eagle eye, but I don’t recall seeing them advertise again after that match.

I haven’t paid that much attention to the card for Night 2, but I do know that there is a match featuring Bobby Lashley and the Street Profits, and I have this sneaking suspicion that WingStop might be the chief sponsor for that match too now.

Everyone else can get Dude Wipes for the colossal amounts of shit that much be swirling around the city of Philadelphia’s sewer systems from 150,000 neckbeard wrestling fans converging in a single location.  Too bad most of them will believe their claim that they’re flushable, because there’s no such thing as a flushable wipe, and the streets of Philly are destined to be overflown by sewage at some point sooner rather than later.  But I guess such wouldn’t really be that far off from daily life up there.

Someone is clearly a Shinsuke Nakamura fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Credit goes to mythical wife for turning me onto this story, but out of the blue she asks me if I’d seen these baseball uniforms.  Obviously the answer is no, because I’m so buried in either work or parenting that I see practically nothing that isn’t spoon fed to me through social media, and I’m disappointed in the algorithms that didn’t feed me this one, because it’s basically tailor made for my general interests.

But the Nippon Ham Fighters of NPB debuted some brand-new alternate uniforms, and naturally my first reaction is wtf, but very closely followed with the very obvious parallel that these look basically like one of Shinsuke Nakamura’s signature ring attires.  I mean come on, the two-tone red and black everything, the plunging V neckline with the weird collars on it, it’s straight up Shinsuke Nakamura all over it.

It turns out that these uniforms were “designed” by manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who’s a pretty flamboyant guy in his own right, but I think it’s safe to assume that he’s probably a Shinsuke Nakamura fan, because there’s absolutely no reason at all for a design like this to ever manifest from a baseball brand whose colors are primarily blues and golds.

Either way, upon seeing these horrible uniforms, it was inevitable that I couldn’t avoid brogging about it, as well as photoshopping Shinsuke Nakamura onto pictures of the team in these hideous kits.  But apparently, new uniform luck still applies to these as well; from what I understand, the starting pitcher for the debut game ended up throwing a complete game shutout.  Perhaps the Lotte Giants hitters were confused about stepping into a batters box against a professional wrestler, and by the time they realized they were up against a pitcher, they were already behind in the count.

Maybe Shinjo can go ahead and get started with designing the kits for the 2027 World Baseball Classic, because nothing would be a bigger power move than seeing Japan’s best players winning another WBC, all while cosplaying as Shinsuke Nakamura.  Imagine Mike Trout and Bryce Harper striking out to Shohei Ohtani wearing this get up. 

Legend status.

I don’t think many people realize the ownage here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously after winning a second national championship, there’s been a lot of rhetoric thrown around about the legend of Stetson Bennett the Fourth, about how he’s basically bigger than god in the state, he’ll never have to pay for a meal or a drink in Georgia for the rest of his life, etc, etc.

And honestly, good on his part, because after living here for 20 years now, I never thought I’d see the day when Georgia would actually reach the top of the mountain much less win two in a row, after the years on top of years I’ve passively witnessed the Dawgs come close but choke, mostly to Alabama.  As a Georgia resident, I am happy to see the hometown team reach the pinnacle of college football not just once, but twice in a row is pretty sweet.

I recently saw this ad come across my theFacebook feed, and was pretty surprised to see the God of Athens going so all-in as the poster boy for Raising Cane’s chicken.  To my understanding, Cane’s has a pretty big, almost cult following in the markets they exist in, but down in Georgia, is Zaxby’s country, their carbon copy franchise.  No seriously, their menus are nearly identical, and I remember the first time I ever came across a Cane’s, it was in Las Vegas, and their menu looked surreptitiously familiar, and my close friend I was with, when ordering her usual Zaxby’s equivalent, I implored her to get the “Cane’s Sauce” and sure as shit, it was the same thing as Zaxby’s Zax Sauce.

I have no qualms with Cane’s, but as someone who discovered Zaxby’s first, between my friends and I, I usually just refer to Cane’s as “Zaxby’s Red” for obvious branding reasons.

The thing is, Zaxby’s is not only based out of Georgia, their headquarters is in Athens, right near the University of Georgia.  I actually interviewed with their corporate offices, but the flaky response to whether or not I’d need to make periodic visits to the office in Athens, which is nearly 90 minutes away from me made me not pursue it, but the point is the fact that Zaxby’s allowed Raising Cane’s to somehow swoop beneath them and sign the kid in their very own backyard, and make Stetson Bennett their poster child is a pretty devastating blow.

Then again, Cane’s apparently has that killer instinct about their company, because while I was interviewing with Zaxby’s, it was brought to my attention that there’s actually one solitary Raising Cane’s location in Georgia; and it happens to be in Athens.  Very cut-throat and guerilla of them to do such, but it was clearly enough for a guy like Stetson Bennett to probably have tried them at one point and have enough of a positive association to the brand to when they came knocking with some NIL money, he signed on.

Although I said I have no beef with Cane’s, I’m still a Zaxby’s first person, because they’re here and available.  When I travel to places that have Cane’s, I enjoy them all the same.  But I have to give some respect to Cane’s for landing such a critical hit to a chief competitor, because as I said, I don’t think a lot of people are going to understand or realize just how much of a big deal it is that Cane’s got a hold of Stetson Bennett and not Zaxby’s.

David Chang has apparently gone full Gusteau

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last week or so, I’ve been getting inundated with ads for David Chang’s (endorsed) air-dried noodles, which effectively has taken David Chang from being a well-known restauranteur and into the arena of an actual home cooking brand. 

I have this love-hate opinion of David Chang, because when I first heard of him, I thought he was this weeb that sold out his Korean heritage by opening a restaurant called Momofuku.  But then I learned that not only did he grow up in the same area I did in Virginia, one of my cousins has classes with him in high school, adding to the parallels I felt I had with him in this self-loathing manner.  But then I really did enjoy his first Netflix series, Ugly Delicious, because it was a well-produced series that had a lot of heart and soul in it.  But then anything he did afterward turned into this cringey star-fucking humblebrag, because of his increasing celebrity, so I’m mostly at this 60/40 scale of thinking he’s uncool, because anonymous people on the internet’s opinions totally matter.

Never mind that the product is about the whitest alternative to instant ramen there possibly could be, and their marketing pitch strategy that seems to think people are choosing to eat these 17¢ pucks of freeze dried noodles in pure salt water because they have a financial choice, and that “at ~$4 a meal” buying Momofuckyou air-dried noodles are a superior alternative.  Or that we’re supposed to believe that Chang himself was actually involved in “ten years of flavor research” when the guy is a few years older than I am, which would imply that he actually had any time at all in his early 30s to give a fuck about how to make a more white people friendly version of instant ramen.

It’s that by entering the world of producing DIY home cooking products, David Chang has basically turned into Gusteau from Ratatouille, spring-boarding his restaurant brand and celebrity status into a cheesy food brand.  Sure, it will in all likelihood make him richer beyond my capable dreams, but on the less-significant and internet coolness side of things, make him kind of a lame sell-out. 

Obviously I’m of the belief that such is always the goal of those who achieve fame, because securing the financial freedom for your family and possibly the generation(s) beyond you is always more important than what strangers think of you.  But I really wanted to make the comparison of David Chang to Gusteau, because it’s what I think he’s on the cusp of doing. 

Sure, Gusteau is dead [spoiler-alert] and it’s his crooked sous chef selling him out, but if Chang decides to go beyond noodles, and starts trying to sell DIY Indian food or soul food or Caribbean food, then he’s basically a real-life Korean Gusteau, worthy of having a series of tasteless cardboard cutouts of him wearing stereotypical garb of various nationalities.

Either way, I’m sure the internet and their endless parade of algorithms will know that I’ve got any opinion of David Chang at all, and when he inevitably releases Momofuckyou’s DIY chicken tikka masala, I’ll be ready and waiting to photoshop his head on Dhalsim’s body for an I-told-you-motherfuckers-so brog post.