![]() It’s not like we’re trying to rope in all these disparate departments.”Īdditionally, the Heat have their own NBA-licensed apparel line, Court Culture, whose creative team designs the uniforms as well as merchandise that accompanies the jersey. “Everything you need to drive a campaign sits in marketing. Unlike many teams, the Heat’s retail, creative and business communications groups all “sit with marketing,” McCullough said. McCullough believes the franchise’s organizational structure gives the Heat a leg up when driving a campaign like Vice. The Heat have also sold more than 400,000 additional Vice-related merchandise items, including more than $5 million in revenue generated from Florida state license plates (a portion of which went to charity). The team has sold 245,000 jerseys at brick-and-mortar and online team stores over the past four seasons, more than it sold during the four seasons when LeBron James and Dwyane Wade won two championships. You can’t have a cool uniform on your core court that doesn’t even match!” And now all the teams are starting to catch on. “Who does that? Who cares about a court? Well, we made people care. “People were fired up to take a picture with a basketball court,” McCullough said. “You don’t have to feel bad and go, ‘Oh, that was two years ago, why would I want to wear that to a game?’”īefore the second year of Vice, the Heat hosted Midnight Madness, an event to sell Vice-related merchandise. “When the blue uniform comes out, the black stuff is still relevant, because it’s all the same,” McCullough said. They also give fans more time to invest in a concept. ![]() Multi-year programs allow us the opportunity to kind of catch our breath.” It would be impossible to always hit a home run. “It’s just really hard to come up with killer jerseys, and to do a completely fresh, completely novel idea year after year. “We always want a multi-year campaign,” Alvarez said. They started with white, fearing the black jerseys were so cool that everything after would struggle. Back in 2017, the team had already mapped out four variations of the Vice jersey to release over multiple seasons: white, black, pink and blue. The Vice Versa uniform wasn’t part of the initial plan, but Vice was never just going to be a single year. But we had a beginning and an end for Vice, and we’re going out with a bang.” ![]() “Could we keep going and think of something else? Yeah, probably. “We knew it was going to end from the very start,” McCullough said. Vice will not return next season, though, as the Heat wore the Vice Versa jersey for the final time last night. The success has continued with this season’s “cotton candy uniform,” as described by Miami’s chief marketing officer Michael McCullough, which accounted for a third of league-wide jersey sales revenue in December 2020. In the campaign’s first year, more Vice jerseys were sold than the other 29 teams’ City Editions combined. Miami’s alternates were special, however. According to the league, 50% of global jersey sales, which have doubled since Nike came on as the league’s official outfitter in 2017, are alternate editions (not Association or Icon). Each team had the option of wearing up to six uniform editions this season: Association (the traditional “home” uniforms), Icon (traditional “road” uniforms), City, Classic, Statement and Earned (for 2020 playoff teams). Miami, which designed its Floridians jerseys in-house back in 2005, has been playing the uniform game for a long time. It hit our boldness, our flavor, our vivid colors.” ![]() It screamed Miami in ways that other uniforms didn’t quite. “We knew we had just an embarrassment of riches, because at that first design meeting, I’m looking at like 80 killer uniforms, and then one just stood out as instantly wearable,” Alvarez said. By the time Nike reached out, the Heat already knew what their colorway was going to be. The team’s designers had noticed a consistent pink and blue scheme popping up in fan concept art on the internet ( laser fuchsia and blue gale, to be exact ), inspired by the TV show Miami Vice.
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