#DoDamage a hit with social Sox
Popular hashtag coined by Cora before season
The Red Sox’ magical season will end with a glittering trophy and a rolling party through Boston’s streets today, but the team’s rallying cry of #DoDamage was set in motion by manager Alex Cora before Opening Day.
“At his opening press conference, he was talking about how we’re going to do damage,” said Adam Grossman, chief marketing officer for the Red Sox. “He used it throughout the year.”
In July, when it became clear an October run was likely, the team began planning for a postseason slogan and quickly landed on #DoDamage. But shortly before it was set to be unveiled, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman unknowingly gave it a whole new meaning.
“When we go head-to-head, we do some damage against them and it doesn’t seem like anybody else is capable,” Cashman told reporters at the end of July. About a week later, the hashtag made its first appearance on the Red Sox’ Twitter account after a 10-5 win over the Blue Jays.
“Certainly one of the apex moments of the regular season was in August when we played the Yankees,” Grossman said. “As so many things did this year, things fell into place.”
Once the Sox entered the play- offs, #DoDamage took on a life of its own, added to 750,000 posts on Twitter and Instagram since the beginning of the playoffs, and 130,000 #DoDamage posts on Twitter on Oct. 28, the day the Sox won the Series, according to social media analytics company Crimson Hexagon.
David Gerzof Richard, a social media and marketing professor at Emerson College, said taglines and hashtags in sports can quickly gain momentum when they are based on a real event, especially one from a rival.
“We tend to latch on to these things as a city and team getting behind it, it’s hard to know what’s going to catch on and what’s not,” Richard said. “Certainly when it’s something disparaging from another team that can be turned around and used against them, that’s what tends to get momentum behind it.”
Throughout the World Series, the slogan and references to it have been put on merchandise, official and unofficial, used as a warning of what not to do from Mayor Martin J. Walsh and used as a postgame taunt by the Dodgers following the team’s sole win. In early October, the Red Sox trademarked the phrase.
Now that the series is over, #DamageDone has taken its place, including on the label of a limited edition IPA from Sam Adams. Still, even the best hashtag is tied to the team’s success on the field.
“It’s certainly been fun to watch grow over the last several months,” Grossman said. “When we win, things seem to just work.”
With as many miles of pavement as duck boat parades have covered in Boston in the past 17 years, you could probably almost pave a path all the way to Los Angeles.
Well, maybe not. But it feels like it.
And no, it never gets old. The reason so many Boston fans celebrate so vociferously, really, is because so many here don’t know when they’ll see another run like this. Anyone in this region with any working knowledge of its sports culture (or anyone born before 1995) knows that championships don’t grow on trees — neither apple nor orange — and often are more elusive than Halley’s Comet.
In 2001, the Patriots won their first Super Bowl since forming in 1960. In 2004, the Red Sox broke an 86-year drought. The Celtics snapped a 22-year drought in 2008, and the Bruins got off the schneid in 2011 after 29 seasons.
So while the city has needed to add a new section to its trophy case in the past 17 years, it first had to thoroughly dust off the old hardware and shelving.
The way the Red Sox won the latest championship for the city was an embodiment of the city itself: A combination of raw skill, hard work, determination, grit — and a little of that Irish luck. You’d have thought maybe some of that would have rubbed off on Dave Roberts after he was so critically responsible for the Red Sox’ first title during this run.
But alas, it appears, Roberts brought with him to L.A. another link to the Red Sox’ past: The phrase, “Wait ’til next year.”
In the meantime, Los Angelenos, good luck, and may we meet again this time next year!