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A slam-dunk victory for Canadian print

July 29, 2019  By Victoria Gaitskell


Photos: Entripy Custom Clothing, ICON and Motive Media

The Toronto Raptors’ success in the National Basketball Association (NBA) June Finals over two-time defending champions, the Golden State Warriors, marked the team’s first NBA championship as well as the first time the series was won outside the United States. The Raptors’ historic playoff run and ensuing championship parade became national front-page news, as Canadians from coast to coast united in support of their country’s sole NBA team.

But those wins were not just triumphs in the world of sports; they also amounted to a victory for Canadian print. The PR and omnichannel marketing genius of the team’s corporate owner Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. (MLSE) was instrumental in arousing widespread interest in the Raptors brand, and print was a major driving force in MLSE’s strategies.

So effective were these strategies that even Canadians who do not typically follow the sport found themselves tracking the Raptors’ progress. Even the July free-agency decision of Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard to leave the Raptors in favour of a four-year US$142-million deal with the Los Angeles Clippers captured the general public’s attention. Using social media as a measure of marketing success, sports management firm Deportes & Finanzas reported the Raptors became the world’s most popular basketball team after its NBA victory — garnering a world-leading 28.9 million Instagram interactions in the month of June. Data from Internet analytics platform SEMrush found the number of Raptors-related tweets grew by a staggering 4,400 percent in Canada after its Game 6 championship victory against the Warriors on June 13, while Raptors web searches grew in Canada by 2,490 percent in the days following the win.

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MLSE is jointly owned by Bell Canada Enterprises, Rogers Communications, and Kilmer Sports. In addition to the Toronto Raptors, MLSE also owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Marlies hockey teams, the Toronto Argonauts football team and the Toronto FC soccer team, as well as all the venues its teams play and train in, and three specialty sports TV channels. This article brings you a behind-the-scenes look at three diverse print suppliers that produced a select portion of the spectacular media MLSE used in recent months to promote the Raptors brand and its journey to a historic championship win.


Planning and experience
ICON of Markham, Ont., is MLSE’s official supplier of graphics and signage. For the NBA playoffs, ICON printed banners with the Raptors’ slogan, “We The North,” which festooned the CN Tower, the Princes’ Gates at Exhibition Place, the Toronto Eaton Centre, and other Toronto landmarks. ICON also produced signage to decorate the Maple Leaf Square, the public square adjoining Scotiabank Arena where the games are played and the street running into it, Bremner Boulevard. This area, nicknamed “Jurassic Park,” transformed into a lively, outdoor game-viewing venue and was the site of tailgate events organized by MLSE.

For the championship parade on June 17, ICON produced float graphics, banners, mesh scrims and flags for barricades along the parade route, and much of the gigantic signage for the stage, media tower and surrounding area at the parade’s end point, Nathan Phillips Square, which also served as the site of the celebration rally. The company printed all Raptors-related graphics on its five-metre-wide Durst RHO 500 and three-metre-wide Durst 312R UV inkjet printers, and Mimaki dye-sublimation fabric printer.


Within one week, ICON produced hundreds of fence graphics, tens of thousands of large and handheld flags, and vinyl murals as Toronto hosted the largest championship parade in North American sports history.

“The Raptors panorama was an unprecedented experience for us in its scope and magnitude, but we were able to execute it through careful planning in close collaboration with MLSE,” ICON President and CEO Juan Lau says. “Our 18-year business relationship with MLSE and experiences with other sports event management clients have taught us the mechanics of sitting down with organizers in advance to map out a detailed strategy.”

Past sporting events that ICON has been a supplier for include the NBA All-Star Game, the World Cup of Hockey, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Junior Championship, the Major League Soccer (MLS) Cup, the RBC Canadian Open, and the Honda Indy.

In planning the Raptors’ victory celebration, Lau says graphic files were ready several weeks before the outcome of the playoff run had played out, and plans included several different scenarios and parade dates, dependent on whether the Raptors won in Game 5, 6 or 7. ICON also contacted suppliers in advance to make sure enough of the various substrates would be available to complete the necessary printing, if required.

Co-founded by Lau with two partners in 1995, ICON has grown to occupy a 120,000-square-foot production facility in Markham with additional offices in Toronto and New York. It employs a staff of 240 and serves clients through four divisions: ICON Visual for large-format and display graphics; ICON Media for customized digital signage; ICON Motion for content creation, video production and event management; and ICON Print for offset and commercial printing, including marketing collateral and direct mail.

Lau says one of the biggest challenges of its recent Raptors work was co-ordinating multiple projects and production schedules, not only for MLSE but also for MLSE’s 50-some corporate partners, while also completing other client jobs already in progress. The company relied on its seasoned project managers to perform site checks and deliver precise specs and graphic files to the production team as quickly and efficiently as possible. “Our experience in event marketing really pulled us through,” Lau says.

An extra special challenge arose when ICON received notice at 5 p.m. on the Friday before the parade, when much of the staff were preparing to go home, that Drake – rapper and Raptors global ambassador – had decided to enter a float in the parade set for Monday morning. The staff waited until late Friday evening to receive the files and specs needed to produce all the graphics for the float, and a team of installers worked around the clock to mount the parade and street graphics in time for the parade’s scheduled 10 a.m. start. Until then, all the floats were hidden in the OVO Athletic Centre, the team’s practice facility.


Creative flair and flexibility
Based in Bolton, Ont., Motive Media was responsible for wrapping a number of vehicles in the championship parade, including five double-decker buses, 19 Ford vehicles, a 54-foot merchandising trailer, and a vintage Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) bus and trolley, all used to transport the players and their families, team management and dignitaries. The company produced the graphics on both an HP Latex 370 and an HP Latex 570 printer on 3M IJ180MC-10UR (Ultra Removable) substrate. Once printed, the vehicle graphics were laminated with 3M 8519 Lustre Overlaminate using a 65-inch Kala 1650. As well, Motive supplied banners for the Toronto City Hall stage which were printed by a longtime trade partner.

Motive started preparing design files and ordering materials after the Game 3 win on June 5. With MLSE having been a client for over six years, this helped expedite preparations as Motive already had MLSE’s colour profiles saved, but production did not start until more than a week later.

“We got the go-ahead from MLSE on the night of June 13, the minute Game 6 stopped in Oakland, California,” Kate Glassow, National Account Manager, says. “I was nervous because there was so much at stake for us. We had all hands on deck and people working in production around the clock.”

Over the course of 72 hours, the Motive team printed and installed 8,000 square feet of vinyl, completing the job just before 1 a.m. on parade day. By 6 a.m., the vehicles they had wrapped in Bolton were on the road to Toronto.


Vehicle wraps produced by Motive Media for the championship parade on June 17.

Because the double-decker buses were in regular use for Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tours by Toronto City Sightseeing, Motive could only begin wrapping them Saturday night. The wraps also required taking lots of meticulous measurements in advance to pinpoint the locations of windows, doors and vents, so that during the installation, no important parts of the graphics would be cut off. Additionally, the buses had to be wrapped in the Toronto tour company’s bus bay instead of Motive’s much larger bay in Bolton.

“When we use our own facilities, if the need arises, you can just go inside and have the graphics reprinted,” Glassow says. “But luckily, the bus installations were fairly trouble-free. We sent our best team, led by Installation Manager Randy Shepherd, to work on them, and none of the graphics needed to be reprinted because they all fit. You can have the best printing equipment and best graphics in the world, but if you don’t have a highly skilled installation team backing you up, it doesn’t matter. They’re the ones who actually bring the job to life.”


The wrapped double-decker buses all lined up and ready for the historic parade.

Glassow says a further complication was maintaining secrecy because the Toronto bay could only hold 2.5 buses at a time, so during installation, at least half of a bus was always sticking out in plain sight. When passersby started noticing, Glassow called MLSE to report the possibility that someone might leak cellphone photos of the buses before the parade. Although numerous members of the public, and even at one point a CityTV news crew, showed up, Glassow was impressed by how respectful they all were of her request to keep the bus graphics a surprise for fans and parade spectators on Monday.

Founded in 2003 by President and Creative Director Kathy Cartan (who is Glassow’s mother), Motive Media is a boutique creative solutions agency that helps clients promote their brand, usually through large-format digital graphics. It employs 11 staff in its 10,000-square-foot production facility. The company began as a specialist in the design, manufacture, and installation of transportation graphics, but after a close call in 2008, when the closure of a major client almost drove the company under, it downsized to a smaller location and started using its equipment to produce more diverse products, including wall murals and wayfinding system for interior decor.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but what we went through actually saved us by forcing us to expand our market,” Cartan recounts. “Now we’ll often do a fleet of trucks for a client, and then they’ll ask us to decorate their lobby with a mural.”

Cartan began her career as a graphic artist, painting signs and scenery manually for Canada’s Wonderland. Although she has since moved into computer-aided design, her company’s products are still distinguished by a high degree of artistic creativity. Canada’s Wonderland remains a client and hired her nearly eight years ago to wrap the Leviathan – the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the country – which posed a unique challenge because of its peculiar shape and the fact that it could not be taken off the track during the wrapping process.

About the Raptors’ parade vehicles, Glassow says: “We have wrapped fleets of 50 trailers before, but not on such a tight timeline. This is definitely the biggest, quickest, most high-profile job we’ve ever done. It was only once I saw the actual players on the buses, and the crowds on the streets [estimated as large as 2 million], and heard the media saying how cool the buses were that I realized, ‘This is huge.’ Before that time, I had been so busy getting the job done that I didn’t realize how immense it was.”

“We are small, but we have a can-do attitude and the flexibility to pivot when needed,” Cartan adds. “We are so proud to have been a part of that special moment for the Raptors and for Canada. We feel grateful for the opportunity to be part of something so big and to have our work on display for millions of people across the country.”


Control and agility
For each Raptors Finals home game, Entripy Custom Clothing, MLSE’s preferred custom apparel and promotional products partner, printed 23,000 custom t-shirts as a free giveaway to each attendee, which was placed on every seat in Scotiabank Arena.

“The shirts are a fantastic part of the fan experience. There’s always a sense of anticipation because people want to know what the next design will look like,” Jas Brar, Founder and CEO of Oakville, Ontario-based Entripy, says. MLSE’s creative team generates a unique design for each shirt which is kept secret until game time. The shirts add to the fans’ experience and provide each person with a coveted collectible souvenir and conversation piece that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

Brar says his company’s ability to control all aspects of production, from sourcing blank garments to production, packaging and delivery without outsourcing any part of the process was critical to producing the t-shirts on time. “Tons of other people sell the same thing I do, but their operations are very fragmented. For MLSE, we need to control service times and lead times, and you can’t rely on third parties to do that,” he explains. “The playoffs are intense because turnaround times are very short and there is a lot of uncertainty. We have to make sure we have enough staff and material to get through the entire playoffs, yet we also have to take things game by game where we can’t predict the outcomes.”

For instance, until the end of Game 6 in Oakland, the team didn’t know whether there would be a Game 7 in Toronto. Under these conditions, the time available for Entripy to produce and deliver an entire run of 23,000 t-shirts would amount to less than 48 hours.

“Fortunately, we are used to staying agile because our business is seasonal,” Brar continues, explaining that in the summer, they sell more t-shirts and in the fall and winter, more jackets, sweatshirts and hoodies. “One way we stay agile is to add a third eight-hour rotating shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. when we need it, and eliminate the third shift when we don’t. For the Raptors Finals, we also worked weekends – even long weekends if necessary – and called in our office staff and management team for extra help.”


Production of the different championship t-shirts printed by Entripy Custom Clothing.

Brar started the company in 1999 while he was still a student at the University of Toronto. After identifying a gap in the market for custom t-shirts for campus events and organizations, he started buying t-shirts wholesale, embellishing them through a third party, and selling them back to other students. When he found the third party was unreliable at meeting tight deadlines, Brar purchased a manual press and started screen printing custom clothing himself out of his parents’ basement. From day one, he set up his company to transact Internet business only and now has the technological solutions in place to satisfy online orders as small as one to as large as 100,000 pieces.

Over time he hired more people, and added software and equipment for screen and digital printing and embroidery to the business. Today, Entripy employs 170 people and occupies 60,000 square feet in an industrial park. The company printed the Raptors t-shirts on their entire arsenal of seven screen printers, including the M&R Sportsman and Roq International Roqprint autoformated presses. The screens were prepared with the latest M&R i-image STE Computer-To-Screen Imaging and Exposure System, which can burn the screens in seconds flat.

Touted as the biggest party in Toronto’s history, the Raptors’ dramatic playoff run and monumental win is an unforgettable moment in Canada’s printing history.

This article was originally published in the July/August 2019 issue of PrintAction, now available online.


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