Written By Sam Ekstrom
If you’ve boycotted Twins games for the past three days, or if you’ve taken a wilderness trip to one of the remote, wireless corners of the state, or if you’re one of the nation’s few Twitter holdouts, maybe you’ve been able to avoid the ubiquity of the #VoteDozier campaign. Largely, however, for those not wearing blinders, it’s been virtually impossible to ignore the infectious hashtag being posted in every imaginable medium since second baseman Brian Dozier was nominated for the American League Final Vote to make the All-Star Game.
Tom Schreier wrote on Tuesday for Cold Omaha how Dozier, while deserving of a spot, will have other chances to make an impact if the vote doesn’t go his way. He’s in his prime, he’s talented; he’ll be fine. But one certainly can’t say the Twins aren’t pulling out all the stops to send the slugging 28 year old to Cincinnati.
It’s the first time since Delmon Young in 2010 the Twins have had a Final Vote candidate. But it’s the first time the team has had been able to campaign in its home ballpark for a player since 2004 when Lew Ford was the team’s first-ever Final Vote representative. For the most part, teams get one full series during which to campaign for their finalist. The list comes out Monday; the vote ends Friday. So being on the road during that week severely hampers what marketing teams can accomplish. The last four times Minnesota had a player in the Final Vote – 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010 – they played on the road, and none of those candidates won.
This year is different with home games every single day of the campaign. On Monday, Dozier and the Twins learned of his nomination for the Final Vote and rolled out the #VoteDozier mantra. Dozier responded with a walk-off home run in extra innings to get the ball rolling – not a bad opening statement. By Tuesday, the marketing and promotions teams had fully activated the “No Bull. #VoteDozier” campaign, complete with banners, buttons and scoreboard graphics, not to mention a 23,000-pound bulldozer sitting outside Gate 29 that the Twins were loaned by sponsor Case IH.
The rapidity with which the team jumped to action seemed remarkable. Slogans, logos, merchandise; that stuff takes time. Twins Vice President (Brand Marketing) Nancy O’Brien spoke to Cold Omaha during Wednesday afternoon’s game and explained that the wheels were set in motion before Dozier even cracked the list. “Every club kind of goes through this where we think, ‘Maybe we have someone,’ so we thought we might have a shot, so we thought maybe Dozier would be the most likely candidate.
“About a week leading into it we got a group together and said, ‘OK, if we do have a Final Vote candidate and if it is Dozier, let’s kind of build a campaign around them,’ so that’s really where it started. We have a lot of things in place, sitting, waiting for a green light, and then once we got that, that’s when everything went into action.”
The “No Bull. #VoteDozier” motto, which originated in the promotions department, has taken over Target Field’s in-game presentation. A banner hangs for all to see near the left field foul pole. “Brian Dozier” has been replaced by “#VoteDozier” on the jumbotron’s lineup listing. National anthem performers are all adorned with circular buttons pinned to their shirts that display the motto and have a bulldozer silhouette as a backdrop, and they’re not the only ones wearing them; 7,500 buttons have been given away to fans per game. Mascot “TC Bear” also carries around a life-sized cutout of Dozier during between-inning events.
While the ballpark experience has been valuable, reaching nearly 80,000 people the last three days, perhaps the most vital promotional tool is Twitter, a marketing function that didn’t even exist during O’Brien’s first foray into Final Vote candidacies back in 2004. The Twins have changed their Twitter name to #VoteDozier and use the familiar hashtag in the majority of their tweets. Twitter presence is important since fans can place their votes on the social media site during the final six hours of the voting period. “That gives us such a great tool to push out the message and get those folks to push out, so it has such an exponential effect that no other medium has, so it’s absolutely critical,” said O’Brien, “We’ve aligned a partnership, like a lot of clubs do, with an N.L. team, so we’re aligned with the Mets, and there hopefully will be some fun things that get pushed out here in a very short stead as voting ends 3 o’clock on Friday.”
The Mets partnership hasn’t worked well yet for New York candidate Jeurys Familia, who sat in last place on Wednesday, essentially the halfway mark of the voting. Dozier, however, was positioned in second place, behind Kansas City’s Mike Moustakas but ahead of big-market candidates like Boston’s Xander Bogaerts and New York’s Brett Gardner.
Dozier has been propelled by unique tactics within the clubhouse. Pitchers Kyle Gibson and Trevor May are holding ticket giveaways, while May – Dozier’s self-appointed campaign manager – has taken it a step further and conducted a Brian Dozier-themed “Ask Me Anything” on the popular forum website Reddit. The Twins have also enlisted outside help. Twins President Dave St. Peter reached out to fellow Mississippian, Southern Miss alum and former Vikings QB Brett Favre to shoot a Vote For Dozier video, which played on the big screen Wednesday afternoon. Minnesota Timberwolves rookie Karl-Anthony Towns and second-year player Zach LaVine also shot a video with a similar message. “It’s pretty cool the Twins doing all this stuff, the ‘Bull-Dozier’ and all the campaigning,” Dozier said. “To make the fans involved and have a little fun with it up until Friday, seeing all that stuff is pretty neat.”
“He’s very humbled by it,” O’Brien told Cold Omaha during the fourth inning of Wednesday’s game. “He’s very appreciative, but he’s not a self-promoter.” One could argue, though, that Dozier has done as much self-promoting as any candidate with his performance this week. Two innings after O’Brien’s remark, Dozier smacked a two-out, two-run, go-ahead homer to help the Twins sweep the Orioles. The second baseman finished the series with two home runs, five RBIs and two stolen bases. He leads all MLB second basemen in home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage and extra-base hits.
According to O’Brien, the campaign won’t be slowing down. The Twins have one more game Thursday night against Detroit to remind fans to #VoteDozier, and then they’ll be gearing up for the final Twitter push Friday morning and afternoon. Mum on the details, O’Brien hinted that the team is still waiting to unveil more gimmicks. And she left fans with an important message. “If they voted 30, we need them to vote 60 times,” she said. “And if they voted 60, we need them to vote 100.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-11 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.