Class Blog: Bill Veeck

After researching the great Bill Veeck, it is very apparent that he was a promotional genius. The biggest thing that Bill Veeck did to make him great at promoting his teams and products was how innovative he was and how amazing he was at thinking outside the box. Bill thought up promotions that were anywhere from being offensive, to fun, to just plain weird.

Of all the great promotions Bill Veeck created during his major league career with the White Sox and Indians, I think his best and most creative promotion was with his minor league team, the Charleston Riverdogs. The promotion he created in July of 2002 was called "Nobody Night." This promotion sounds completely silly because at first thought it is obviously a loss taken by his organization if no one attends the game. What made this a great promotion was that just by announcing he was doing this gave his team a ton of publicity. Minor league teams do not get publicity on a regular basis. With this promotion Veeck successfully got his Riverdogs in papers and magazines everywhere. This was simply FREE advertising that he created through this promotion. Another important aspect of this promotion was that he actually created a great buzz outside the stadium. He simply locked out the fans until the game was official after the 6th inning and let everyone in after that. The article said he had tons of people outside the stadium that he sold tons of concessions to as well as letting them watch on big screens outside the stadium. Despite all of this he even got his team into the Guinness Book of World Records for lowest attendance. All of these worked great for a minor league team and had to be considered a huge success for his team.