Wheat Kings, Wolves strike bobblehead deal

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2022 (1505 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A shipping mixup that prompted some initial consternation for the Brandon Wheat Kings and a minor league American basketball team resulted in some social media chuckles on Friday.

Alexander Global Promotions, which makes bobbleheads, mistakenly shipped a pallet of the Western Hockey League team’s Marty Murray bobbleheads to the Iowa Wolves of the NBA G League, while the Wheat Kings received a pallet of the Wolves mascot, Alpha.

Brandon wasn’t ready to announce the bobbleheads yet a week ago when they arrived, so the Twitter fun was saved for Friday.

“It’s a real, real important piece for the marketing strategies for junior programs or pro teams,” Murray said of the social media hijinks. “They hire those creative people and they understand that it probably wasn’t ideal having their bobbleheads sitting in another market but it was an opportunity to make light of it and garner some more attention for your respective organizations.

“It was brilliantly played by both organizations and everyone can sit back and have a little fun.”

The Wolves, who are based in Des Moines, Iowa, are affiliated with the National Basketball Association’s Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Twitter exchange started around noon when Iowa posted a picture of the Murray bobblehead.

“Look, we love Brandon Wheat Kings legend Marty Murray as much as the next guy … but there may have been a mixup at the bobblehead factory,” the initial Tweet read.

Brandon responded by opening a case and showing an Alpha bobblehead box.

Iowa was next with a classic ransom note — written in different fonts like it was cut out of magazines — saying “If you want your precious Marty Murrays back in one piece, give us our Alphas.” Brandon replied with a video of Alpha sitting on a shelf with all the other Wheat Kings bobbleheads that have been produced through the years.

That started a back and forth through the afternoon, with Iowa ultimately throwing in breakfast pizza only available at Casey’s General Store in the state and Ruthies, a specialty IPA beer from a brewery in Des Moines, for Smarties and ketchup chips.

The WHL came in at the end with video of a seal, declaring the league’s seal of approval for the trade.

Branden Crowe, who serves as Brandon’s broadcaster and director of strategic marketing, shares the Wheat Kings Twitter account with Chris Falko, the team’s director of game day operations.

Crowe said three pallets arrived last week, with 25 cases filled with 18 boxed bobbleheads in each. The pair opened a case, and found Murray bobbleheads, so they presumed everything was fine.

After they did a reveal to Murray on Zoom, the former Wheat Kings star asked if they could send him a case down to Sioux Falls, where he is currently coaching in the USHL.

Crowe grabbed a case off another pallet and walked up to the team store, where retail merchandise co-ordinator Shanny Foster urged him to double-check the contents.

“When I opened the box up, all of a sudden I saw all of these bobbleheads that aren’t ours,” Crowe said. “I panicked a little bit and ran down to check the pallet, and one entire pallet was the Iowa Wolves bobbleheads, so we had two Marty Murrays and one Iowa Wolves.”

Crowe called down to the Wolves, and explained what happened. The woman he was speaking to asked what their boxes were supposed to look like, and Crowe mentioned the Wheat Kings cases had “Marty Murray” stamped on them.

“She said ‘Actually, yes. Last week I walked into the warehouse and said ‘I wonder who Marty Murray is?’ and kept walking,” Crowe said with a chuckle. “She just thought it was the name on the box.”

That’s when the teams started communicating, but the social media fun was held back until Manitoba’s COVID-related indoor capacity limits were loosened and Brandon had a better idea when they might potentially hand them out.

It gave both clubs some time to plan, with Falko taking the lead for Brandon.

“It created something of its own,” Crowe said. “It had its own life. What started as something that we thought would be a neat little thing turned into this whole big day of back and forth and comedy and growing two separate brands.”

Crowe noted the normal approach would be to put out a press release announcing the bobbleheads, but this felt like a unique opportunity. They chose to try something wildly different.

“We thought ‘How are we going to unveil this to the fans but have some fun too?’” Crowe said. “Chris and I batted the idea around of maybe getting Iowa to unveil Marty Murray instead of us, and we’ll play it off as ‘Thanks for ruining the surprise.’ Then we got going back and forth and that’s where things got started with the ransom note and that sort of thing.”

The teams co-ordinated the launch with direct messages on Twitter, with Falko eventually calling down to do the final planning.

Ben Swanson is the social media co-ordinator for the Wolves.

“Operationally, it’s not ideal, but any time you get a chance to have a little bit of fun with people and really go crazy, it’s just a good time and I think that’s what people hope for and expect from their minor league sports teams,” Swanson said. “It should be about fun and having a good time and coming out for a beer on the town and getting a hoot out of something. We should carry that over into how we present ourselves online.”

Murray was on the ice with the Stampede at practice on Friday afternoon, and his Apple watch was going off repeatedly as the events on Twitter unfolded. After practice ended, he logged onto Twitter to see what was going on.

“I got a chuckle out of it,” Murray said. “I saw the ransom note and thought that was pretty clever, and then the trade offers for the Krispy Kremes and the ketchup chips. My wife is American and I’m Canadian so this is a topic of conversation we’ve had plenty of times in our house, and among friends. It made a nice chuckle out of it for sure. It’s all in good fun, and it’s kind of crazy how a mishap led to good PR for both organizations.”

The two pallets are now in transit to their correct locations, with their arrival expected in the next week. Both teams have some breathing room, since they won’t be handing them out until April.

Crowe said Alexander Global Promotions, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., has been terrific to deal with through the process, and took care of the shipping details for both clubs.

Certainly, all’s well that ends well.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Swanson said of his day. “For us, anytime you see a little bit of that traction, wherever it’s coming from … I don’t know how it is for Brandon, but a lot of our guys are here one year, gone the next. It’s not often that you get those personalties to build on. So whenever you find an avenue where you get a reaction from people, or you get a reaction from their fanbase, you just ride that until you can’t ride it anymore.”

The Twitter exchange has prompted requests from elsewhere in the WHL for Iowa bobbleheads, which Brandon has been able to accommodate because the two teams each kept a handful of the wrong ones.

Brandon is also sending a custom Wheat Kings jersey for Alpha.

Ultimately, the bobblehead was designed to honour a Wheat Kings legend, and Murray was touched by the gesture. The Lyleton product played four seasons with Brandon between 1991 and 1995 and went on to skate in 270 National Hockey League games.

“It was a special privilege to play for the Wheat Kings for four years, especially in my home province,” Murray said. “I met some tremendous people along the way. It couldn’t have worked out even better. Even with the bobblehead, it’s just nice to be honoured.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson