Posted: Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 12:44 PM | 9 comments |
 

Irving Rudd would have been proud of new Sixers owners
options
 
Sixers fans can choose Big Ben (left), Phil E. Moose (center), or B. Franklin Dogg (right) to be the next mascot.

The story is now part of marketing folklore. Back in 1958 the late, great famed press agent Irving Rudd went to work for Yonkers Raceway, a New York horse track that had fallen into disrepair and was closed for refurbishing. Rudd's job was to create a buzz for its reopening, a task he found daunting until one day a masterful idea sprung inside his fertile head. Rudd told painters to purposefully misspell the sign outside of the track "Yonkers Racewya". Phone calls came into the track and more importantly to the city's newspapers, radio stations and television networks mocking the mistake. Photographers from the city's numerous newspapers rushed out to snap a picture of the sign before it could be corrected (haha) and put it on their front pages. Radio stations reported it, there was even television video shot. According to his 2000 obituary in the New York Times, Rudd's public relations masterpiece "generated clippings around the world".

I got to know Irving when I covered boxing in the '80s and early 90s and he worked as a press agent for Sugar Ray Leonard. My dad had worked briefly for UPI back in the '50s, and Rudd actually recognized my name and asked if I was his son. He also invented bat day, camera day and music unappreciation day while working for the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Pretty amazing dude.

Anyway, I can't help but think there's a sharp mind among the new Sixers group that conjured up his spirit in this whole mascot debacle. Imagine if they had launched a contest before presenting us with the three hilariously bad cartoons that have appeared everywhere over the last three days. Would that moose have been on the front page of the Daily News today? Would we have dedicated more than three pages to improving upon their candidates? I think not.

Irving, I believe, coined the phrase "There's no such thing as bad publicity". So I hope he is up there in heaven with both thumbs under his lapels, looking down proudly.

And thank you, Sixers brass, for putting a smile on my face this week as I remember an old and dear friend.
Posted by Sam Donnellon @ 12:44 PM  Permalink | 9 comments
9
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:40 PM, 12/07/2011
    I sincerely hope that those were indeed, a brilliant PR move and not serious candidates for a mascot. Phil E. Moose roomed with Hip Hop at Temple. I heard it from a good source.
    — brianmcwilliams
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 2:55 PM, 12/07/2011
    The last ten years have been the basketball equivalent of "Yonkers Racewya"
    — ghostofozark
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:27 PM, 12/07/2011
    I had been thinking the same thing Sam, good call. We can only hope the new owners are this clever.
    — sla6yer
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:54 PM, 12/07/2011
    Why don't they just have AI walk the stands with his cup out asking for spare change?

    I'd pay to see that.
    — Sackbutt
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 5:10 PM, 12/07/2011
    forget these mascot options. andy reid will soon be out of a job. hire him to entertain sixers fans at halftime. no theme or persona will need to be involved. just dress him up in a one-piece black leotard and rabbit ears and let him bounce off the trampoline and dunk until the second half begins.
    — zwarte piet
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:41 PM, 12/07/2011
    Mascot? Deal with that after the team returns to respectability. There is bigger fish to fry right now.
    — rbecker1963
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:04 AM, 12/08/2011
    awful
    — brownrice
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:31 AM, 12/09/2011
    What do I think of the mascot's? Bad, bad, and I wish I were blind.
    — Atomic Fury
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:07 PM, 03/18/2012
    I AM IRV RUDD'S DAUGHTER. HE WAS A GENIUS AND YOU ARE EVER SO RIGHT..HE WOULD HAVE LOVED ALL OF THIS PUBLICITY, MASCOTS ETC!!! SO MANY TIMES I THINK IF ONLY DAD WERE HERE TO HANDLE THAT PR DISASTER IN THE MAKING!! THANKS FOR MAKING ME SMILE!
    — SUZI RUDD COHEN


9 comments
About Sam Donnellon
Donnellon's career began in Biddeford, Me., in 1981, and has included stops in Wilkes-Barre, Norfolk, and New York, where he worked as a national writer for the short-lived but highly acclaimed National Sports Daily. He has received state and national awards at each stop and since joining the Daily News in 1992 has been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors, the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Associated Press Managing Editors of Pennsylvania and the Keystone Awards. He and his wife of 26 years have raised three fine children, none of whom are even the least bit impressed with the above. E-mail Sam at donnels@phillynews.com
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