Like most professionals sports teams, the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes have emblazoned very imaginable product with their logo.
An individually numbered lithograph of Bugs Bunny skating at the Cellular One Ice Den, for instance, is available at $395 (plus shipping & handling). But the team has now taken its brand further into new media territory than any other.
The "Official Browser of the Phoenix Coyotes", was first distributed to fans on CD-Rom at last week's game against the Dallas Stars. With the browser installed, fans have direct access to special ticket discounts and quick links to Coyote and NHL content.
The software's interface can also be customized with different "skins". Thanks to the skins, buttons can be made to look like hockey pucks, alerts become familiar sounds from hockey games and the team's colors dominate.
The browser was developed as part of a collaboration with Tempe, AZ-based NeoPlanet. "There are a lot of Coyotes fans here," explains company spokesman Sean Conway. Unlike its better-known competitors, NeoPlanet's browser was designed from the ground up with advertising and e-commerce opportunities in mind. The company derives its revenues from traffic-referral fees and advertising integrated within the browser, of which the skins are the most obvious part.
"The skins have proven wildly popular," said company spokesman Sean Conway. "The browser and skin we developed with New Line Cinemas and Lot21 for Austin Powers was downloaded by over 250,000 users in the space of three months."
One fan, however, is likely to be less than impressed by the Coyote's efforts to reach out to its fans electronically. Seattle-based Todd Miller designed his own team skin, subsequently downloaded by nearly 1,000 other fans. Now, his work seems destined to be overlooked.
Curiously, Mr. Miller (www.homestead.com/toddzilla/todd.html) who has designed over 70 other skins with themes as diverse as GI Joe and Thanksgiving, is a Microsoft software engineer, working on none other than Internet Explorer 5 and 6.
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