Bridging a legacy between generations: NY Giants leveraging nostalgia, success this season
EAST RUTHERFORD - The business of the NFL can be a multi-layered process, and the New York Giants are heading into this season with an overarching goal that blends football of the present with the tradition of the past.
Big Blue has four Vince Lombardi trophies representing each one of their Super Bowl victories on display in the lobby of the organization's training facility at 1925 Giants Drive in the shadow of MetLife Stadium, across the parking lot from where the old Giants Stadium once stood, too.
Fans of all ages embrace that success, of course, but sometimes those who lived through Super Bowl XXI and XXV see the game - and the team for whom they root - a lot differently than those who were introduced to the winning in Super Bowl XLII and Super Bowl XLVI.
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With Brian Daboll as head coach and Joe Schoen as general manager, the Giants believe they are on a path that could eventually lead back to the sport's biggest game and an opportunity at a fifth Lombardi.
Part of that journey is figuring out ways to bridge the legacies of the four champions, connecting them with the present and what the Giants embrace as the promise of the future.
"Bringing the generations together is so important," Giants chief business officer Pete Guelli told NorthJersey.com. "We're fortunate to have built up a massive group of more mature Giants fans, and now we've got to find ways to introduce the success we've had in the past to the younger demographic of fans, and to tie all of that together. If we can do that, we've got a much better chance of creating that frenetic environment in the stadium and around the team that everybody wants."
The pleas from a fan base desperate to reconnect with a franchise's history began flooding into Guelli’s email inbox from the moment he was hired by the Giants four years ago.
When Guelli first heard the requests from those he is tasked to reach and know best: Bring back the blue uniforms made proud in the 1980s and early 1990s by the likes of Lawrence Taylor, Phil Simms, Mark Bavaro, Harry Carson and the rest of the Giants’ first two Super Bowl championship teams.
Legacy became reality last season, and now the challenge is taking that to another level, beginning with Sunday night's regular season opener against the Dallas Cowboys.
"We're all about doing what we can to have an old school meets new school mentality," Giants senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy Nilay Shah told NorthJersey.com. "We launched the BE GIANT campaign, which is really a build on the foundational elements set by Joe and Dabs last year. We had the Our Way campaign [for the playoffs] that really set the tone. Smart, tough and dependable, that’s their core mantra, but there’s all these historical elements within the team that we wanted to level up into BE GIANT."
At the game Sunday, the Giants are calling for a "BLUE OUT" by giving out blue rally towels. They're also be distributing BE GIANT t-shirts to the first 25,000 fans.
"Ultimately it’s a call to everyone to get in early and make it a real home field advantage for the players and coaches on the field," Shah said.
Giants' Legacy Games are back
The Legacy Games (Sunday, Oct. 22 vs. Washington; Monday, Dec. 11 vs. Green Bay) will include throwback end zones from the old Giants Stadium - Giants in red block lettering outlined in white with a blue background - in addition to wall wraps, giveaways and exclusive content.
The plan is to also have a classic Giants helmet logo at midfield.
Eli Manning: Super Bowl champion, superhero
The Giants are also bringing back their collaboration with Marvel, and that includes a special project the team has been working on with two-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback Eli Manning, who has continued to work with the franchise as an ambassador for the entire organization.
"We're actually turning Eli into a superhero," Shah said with a laugh.
And that's not a joke: the adaptation of Manning with a suit of blue armor - perhaps a nod to his own Iron Man streak in the NFL - will be captured on posters and distributed to fans on Oct. 29 against the Jets.
"The reality is that it's a big building and we share it," Guelli said. "So we're always trying to find ways to make it feel like a Giants' home game, and with some of the things we did around the Legacy Games, the feedback from people is that they felt like they were being transported back to old Giants Stadium, so that's something we wanted to look at and see if we could find a way to make that more consistent. Little things like the midfield logo, some of the graphics we're doing and then launching the Be GIANT campaign, just making people feel more like they were used to, and to leverage the nostalgia from what the team has accomplished in the past."
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NY Giants: Bridging the legacies of generations by leveraging success
