Dan Harbison resides in Portland, dreams of Scotland and lives here.

Roy for ROY Leatherman Tool

Wednesday, March 28, 2007


A couple of months ago we brainstormed to come up with an idea to help promote Brandon Roy for the Rookie of the Year in the NBA. We wanted to send a fun press kit to the voting members of the media. We tossed around several ideas, but one stood out, using a local Portland based company product that embodied Brandon Roy's game. The idea was to send a Brandon Roy Leatherman tool to the members of the media. Leatherman Tools (founded in 1983) are known for their versatility. Brandon's game is very similar. He isn't a one dimensional player. Leading the rookie class in points per game 16.3, assists per game 4.0, and 5th in rebounds per game 4.4, Brandon consistently has filled the boxscore with stats that usually have a number in each of the columns (sometimes 0's for turnovers).

We've been getting some good press about the tool (check out this MP3 from Jim Rome, courtesy of 1080 The FAN) and momentum for Brandon's bid for Rookie Of the Year. It will be a tough case for anyone else to make an argument for the award. Bargnani is sidelined the rest of the season with an appendectomy, Garbajosa has to have surgery on his leg, Rudy Gay isn't on a team that has won more games than Portland AND he doesn't have as good as numbers in any of the categories.

Brandon's stiffest competition might come from his teammate LaMarcus Aldridge. Aldridge has been putting up really good numbers since All-Stars. Especially since Joel Przybilla went down with a knee injury and LaMarcus became the starter.

The Leatherman tool promotion was great to see people here at the Trail Blazers collaborate in making this happen (thanks to Todd Bosma for the originator of the Leatherman tool idea) and for Leatherman to team up with us in creating these one of a kind collectors peices. We did a limited over-run, so you can buy them for $45 in our online store. Seriously, these are going fast. We've sold 1/4 of the inventory in 3 hours. Damn, that's hot.

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posted by DanHarbison at 11:57 AM 0 Comments

Solid Ticket Offer for Detroit Pistons

Tuesday, March 6, 2007


Ok, friends, family and people coming to my blog. I was able to get a friends and family discount for people from SEMpdx and of course, friends and family for the Detroit Pistons game on March 14th. We want to sell this game out for when 'Sheed comes back into town. To get this deal that gives you 1/2 off prices in a couple of the price categories, click here.


You will get the following discounts:

Yellow Seats: $24.50 (normally $49 for lower level)

Purple Seats: $12.00 (normally $24)

Red Seats: $10.00 (normally $17)




Top see some views where those seats are, check out the sweet 3-D seating chart that we recently added to trailblazers.com. Click here.


I will be sitting on a panel at SEMpdx tomorrow around 9:15am. Hopefully I'll see you guys there!

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posted by DanHarbison at 6:16 PM 0 Comments

AMA Luncheon

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Thanks so much to everyone that came to the American Marketing Association's February luncheon today. I really enjoyed a lot of the questions that people asked and it always inspires me when you get a room full of people in the conversations you can have.

One of the questions had to do with culture. This is something that we continue to work on. Your company's culture can A) Help or hinder productivity B) Help or hinder creativity C) Help dictate on how you are perceived (in other words, shape your brand). Some of the people we have had talk or I have seen speak recently include:
Patrick Lencioni, phenomenal speaker about building team and creating a healthy working environment.
Doug Mendenhall, who help build teamwork from the inside out.

I will be blogging often about this topic as I think this is one of the most important aspects of a business. For example, if you manufacture toilet plungers (and my apologizing for singling out manufacturers of toilet plungers) and your work environment is fun, engaging and rewarding. Your employees will rave these are the best "damn toilet plungers in the world". Your turnover will be low and you will continue to be efficient and productive. If you have a crappy work environment and people are always looking for a way out... your business will fail due to turn-over and lack of passion.

For the presentation I did today, you can click here.

To get a sweetheart of a deal on tickets go to:
http:tickets.trailblazers.com/deals
promocode: danismyfriend
Or, click here

Once again, thank you Tara and the rest of the crew at the American Marketing Associationama.ppt

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posted by DanHarbison at 2:48 PM 1 Comments

I Am A Trail Blazers Fan LAUNCHED!

That's right... after many many months... 8 months to be exact, we have finally gone public with IAmATrailBlazersFan.com. This is the first social networking site for a single sports team.

The NHL launched NHL Connect in late October. It is one social network for the full league. One reason I don't like it is it each team's brand is watered down to be more generic. I applaud them though for the feature set they rolled out with and being the first.

Our social network was developed by the guys at Affinity Circles in Mountain View, California. They had done social networks for university alumni associations (I found out about them when they did the "Duck Pond" for University of Oregon). We will continue to partner with them to help build this network into something really special for the fans. By no means is the site a finished product. When people become complacent on the web, their site will fail. You must always be evolving your site to make it more usable and more relevant.

Feel free to give IAmATrailBlazersFan.com a spin, even if you're not a Trail Blazers Fan. You will see the passion of the fans there, a pretty solid design (thanks to opus:creative and a unique website for the Portland Trail Blazers.

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posted by DanHarbison at 8:34 AM 0 Comments