"Are You Ready For Some Football?"
We’ve seen this MNF anthem take hold as a preseason theme for football in general. Indeed high school football is in gear, and college and professional teams are in final stages of regular season prep.
In 1984, when the Colts came to town, we remember an incredible excitement surrounding this town’s first professional football experience. And CVR had the inside scoop somewhat in advance. Caldwell VanRiper, as we were known at the time, handled the national Mayflower Moving and Storage account, plus we were integrated into the amateur sports renaissance occurring at the time. Our account, The Indianapolis Project, had us busy creating communication programs for all the new facilities in the city, including the Hoosier Dome, the IUPUI Natatorium, and The Major Taylor Velodrome.
This connective combination to “inside stuff” afforded us the opportunity to create one of the most successful direct response ads in Indianapolis advertising history—the first ad to sell Colts season tickets. And it was very secretive. While the Colts were loading up Mayflower vans in the middle of the night, we were busy creating a full-page, four-color ad to run in the Indianapolis Star announcing that season tickets for the new INDIANAPOLIS COLTS were on sale. We actually bought the ad space without an accompanying client name, and we personally delivered the ad to the production department at the Star at the last extended-deadline minute—around midnight in fact.
The ad ran only once, and requests for season tickets were over-the-top. We got to build a great case study around this new client of ours, and CVR was eventually provided with a number of season tickets for our staff to enjoy.
Go Colts!
Co-authored by Kirk Stahl and Jan Amonette