We had launched a cereal with Wayne Gretzky on the box in 1984. It was a front page success in Canada. This was unusual because cereals are rarely launched in Canada alone. Usually we relaunched cereals that already had been successes in the United States, our huge test market to the south.
Things had gone smoothly and we had a good relationship with the Gretzky team.
Then one day, a few years later in 1988, I got a call from Mike Barnett, Wayne Gretzky’s manager. He told me he had expanded his business, added a heavy weight boxer, Willie deWit. He had also signed a Canadian downhill skier, Rob Boyd, and was looking for a Corporate sponsor for Boyd. Mike was running out of time because the alpine skiing season was about to start in Europe.
At the time, the downhill Canadian team, known as the Crazy Canucks, was regularly on the downhill podium. Steve Podborski, Ken Read, Dave Irwin, and Dave Murray were already fairly well known Canadian heroes.
I thought Boyd might be a good match for our new client, Fuji Photo Film, as downhill skiing was all about outdoor excitement which matched up with the brand positioning for Fuji. Competitor Kodak stood for warmth and interiors.
We orchestrated the introduction and Fuji agreed to sponsor Boyd and an agreement was signed.
That’s when we learned Boyd had an extra large head, not in the normal helmet size range. Much of the corporate identification for skiers is what is seen on their helmet. We had to get a new fiberglass helmet made from scratch rather than simply paint an off the shelf one.
The first few races in Europe, Boyd wore an improvised helmet before we could get him the newly designed and built Fuji helmet. Boyd did well in these races and it encouraged our client to promote their support.
He got the newly made helmet in time for the 1989 World Cup race scheduled at Whistler Mountain, the only World Cup event to be run in Canada. Fuji management was excited and invited key customers and many Japanese Fuji senior managers to come to the event. My friend, Jacques Burelle, ran the event for Molson who were the name sponsor for the event.
Boyd ran the race of his life, on the edge of crashing all the way down and became the first Canadian alpine skier ever to win a World Cup downhill race on home soil. A Gold Medal!
The Japanese visiting higher ups were thrilled with their local Fuji management’s ability to identify a winner.
We actually used some of the CBC Sports live footage of Boyd’s championship run in our TV commercial to introduce Fuji’s new generation of 35 mm photo film. We tried to reshoot the run, but the TV coverage was so “on the edge” that we couldn’t replicate it. The excitement of the run brought believable excitement to the product launch.
It was a serendipitous moment in getting a credible, relevant celebrity sponsorship – bringing excitement and pride to a product that can help users relive important, exciting events in their lives and the coup de grâce came for our clients right in front of their bosses. Win-win-win.
We also did a follow up TV commercial with Boyd for a Fuji scratch and win promotion that summer. It was a studio shoot where we had Boyd walking around a studio with his extra long downhill skis on. That shoot was a torture for poor Boyd, but he endured it like a trooper proving that endorsement work isn’t just glamour.
Rob Boyd is now coaching the next generation of Canadian skiers in Whistler.