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December 4, 2008

Bright Spot: Need a job? New Jersey Nets might be able to help

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Guess news travels slowly to the nether reaches of New York State; while it appears to be all bad news for the Nets and their dream of relocation today, the folks in Rochester are just learning about the team's faux-largesse.

There is generosity of spirit. There is business savvy. And when the two collide, there is marketing genius. Not since Macy's touted Gimbels in the film Miracle on 34th Street has a business enterprise, real or imagined, proposed a plan more capable of winning the hearts and minds of the public than the Employment Program recently established by the New Jersey Nets basketball team.
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Just like that, the Nets changed me from a geographic sports fan who left basketball behind when Michael Jordon retired to a Nets fanatic. Just like that, they pushed aside my cynicism about high ticket prices and ill-behaved athletes and infused me with a loyalty for a team I had never watched. A brilliant marketing ploy? A true attempt to help fans? I suspect the plan is a bit of both.

Additional Nets plans include a career fair to be held at an upcoming game — an act that, for me, moves their actions out of the stunt realm and provides a welcome example of a sports organization that truly views its fans as necessary members of its team.

As CEO Brett Yormark explained on the Nets' Web site, "unemployment is on the rise in the metropolitan area, so we want to offer our fans that are between jobs some help in finding a job, as well as a chance to relieve some stress by coming to a Nets game.... We are committed to investing in our fans now, and hopefully they will invest in us when times are better."

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NoLandGrab: It's nice that the Nets are still garnering free publicity from their effort to fill seats at the perpetually half-empty Izod Center while the team's majority owner is laying off workers from the Atlantic Yards project and trying to blame it on community-based lawsuits. We do hope the Nets will let us know exactly how many people actually find jobs through their "marketing genius."

Posted by eric at December 4, 2008 12:43 PM