• by Steve Ellwanger , December 29, 2021

The goal of a new global campaign for Bauer Hockey is to make the game of hockey more inclusive.

The hockey gear marketer’s new brand icon for the campaign is titled “The Barn,” a place on the Bauer website where diverse professional and amateur players relate how hockey has influenced their lives.

As explained in this 60-second spot from Chicago-based agency The Times, the core of the initiative is Bauer’s belief that “Hockey is at a crossroads. Too few get the chance to feel its greatness. Too many are led to look the other way.”

The word “barn” stems from the semantical roots of hockey, according to The Times CEO Jason Peterson. “The notion of calling the rink where you play the barn is kind of like inside hockey vocabulary,” Peterson tells Marketing Daily.

“When you first played hockey, you’d say ‘I’m going to the barn to play.’”

The idea for the Bauer campaign was “How do you get back to the roots of hockey?”

One stereotype the campaign seeks to challenge is that “hockey is for white dudes,” adds Peterson.

Featured in the spot are campaign “role models” Abby Roque, a U.S. National Team forward and member of the Wahnapitae First Nation; Black NCAA Division I athlete Reggie Millette; and amateur Latino player Kevin Lopez.

People with disabilities also also part of the inclusiveness initiative.

The commercial debuted on television during the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship last week.

According to Storyblocks, which maintains a library of video and photo assets, Bauer’s inclusive ad message is part of a larger trend. Storyblocks reports that diversity-related searches and downloads by its members and visitors soared between January of 2019 and September of this year.

The company’s analysis of more than 250 million searches and 45 million downloads showed a 104% increase in diversity searches involving race, ethnicity, ability, age, body and LGBTQIA+.

Storyblocksreports "a global cultural awakening" toward inclusivity "that led to a ripple effect on different facets of media and business.”