The story of Gritty to fame

PHILADELPHIA – He came in like a wrecking ball.

No, really, the biggest addition to off-season hockey – the Gritty mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers, not John Tavares – swayed like a fist, hanging from the rafters while he was entering his regular season debut at Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday night.

It was a monstrous night for Broad Street Beast, born on September 24th to so ugly critics that it was somehow the most adorable hair ball of the Internet in 12 hours.

Gritty was not only Google's most-watched term in North America for the first day of his life, but he also needed a four-person security officer with headphones in the first game Flyers to manage Philadelphia's unconscious Gritizens.

An entire line of stoical scouts from the NHL took out their phone to take pictures of Gritty as he was crossing the box press before the game.

He was undoubtedly the Flyers' most valuable player after being beaten 8-1 by the San Jose Sharks in their worst loss early in the season in franchise history.

"A game is attributable to Grit", goalkeeper Brian Elliott correctly said postgame.

The grain is coming

But how did all this happen? Is the popularity of Gritty a case of accidental marketing glamor or is it part of the Flyers plan? Maybe a little of both.

Tuesday night marked the 16th day of the weekend, or "After Gritty", as it is now called in Philadelphia. Here is an overview of the first 24 hours of Gritty in the world:

SARAH SCHWAB, Flyers Marketing Director: "We were delighted that he was in the world, but we were nervous. The first appearance of Gritty took place in a museum with 600 children. We were all sitting in the back and waiting a bit: we'll see how it goes … "

JOE HELLER: Vice President of Flyers Marketing: "There was a bit of nerves. We knew the reaction was going to be mixed. "

SHAWN TILGER, Chief Operating Officer of the Flyers: "It was a risk."

HELLER: "The reaction was not good. We checked our phones, tweets flocked. "What is that thing?" We watched it in real time. "

KEITH JONES, Analyst, Flyers / NBC TV Channel: "My first thought was that this thing is oddly Philadelphian. It's a mascot at the forefront. "

WAYNE SIMMONDS, Flyers looking at his first picture of Gritty just an hour after he was born: "She's not my mascot. I have never seen this thing before in my life. "

OSKAR LINDBLOM, Flyers winger: "We'll see how gritty it is."

SCHWAB: "The rest of the afternoon has passed, it was like: START THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT! The fans wanted to attach blocks to our shoes and throw us into Delaware [River]. "

CLAUDE GIROUX, captain of the Flyers: "The first days are tough, but it's better."

HELLER: "It was part of the tradition. We do not have a mascot, so why do we need it now? The truth is that we were talking about a mascot since the 2016 All-Star Game. We made over 100 different designs. We thought that no animal can represent who we are. We did not want to go to aviation. A human type character only works if you are a university. We needed a monster type creature.

"It's at that point that we said we needed something you would see from Monsters Inc."

SCHWAB: "Let's just say he has a unique look. He is more endearing in person.

HELLER: "He came across sure or crazy. We took a look around the league and said, "Let's go crazy."

SCHWAB: "We had a mixed reaction. Our mascot consultant said that it would take two weeks to two months for a mixed response time and that we needed to be ready with a plan to integrate it further. "

HELLER: "The Penguins did this for us. The reaction was not good until the Penguins sent out a tweet that said "lol ok" in response to Gritty's first tweet. "

GRAVELLY: [inaudible grumbling]

Gritty replied, "Sleep with an open eye tonight, bird."

HELLER: "Suddenly, our fans started spinning, like," Okay, Gritty is going to stick with the Penguins, I agree with that. "

Tilger: "Gritty has become like a little brother. You know, I can attack him, but you can not. I think that's when people really got on board. "

HELLER: "Twitter started to light up with his antics on the ice that night for his first game. Gritty was on the back for a few seconds in her first act of skating. I will never forget, I was up there and I turned to a Flyers colleague and thought, "Was this look for you?" He said "No, he just fell on his back". back with a T-shirt gun. "

SCHWAB: "By the time I went back to the office, which takes about five or six minutes, he posted a tweet that said," Nobody told me that the ice was slippery. "Barstool noted it . After about 10 minutes, Good Morning America called and said, "We are obsessed with Gritty." It was late at night. It was really the first time I heard someone say that.

HELLER"The icing on the cake was Kim Kardashian's tweet."

SCHWAB: "It was all Gritty. He is hilarious; he walks with his phone in his back pocket. He sent this tweet at 10:30 or 10:45 am

HELLER: "I remember walking in my door, sitting on my step and seeing the likes on Twitter – it was about 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 – it only went up, up to 58,000 tastes, it exploded, it was like "Saint [bleep]. 'I think that's when Gritty started winning everyone.

"You understand, he made his debut at 11am and before 11pm. he was totally loved. I mean, there were a few people hanging up, but we had some stuff for the enemies, like tweets and bad stuff, but we did not even need that. People have already changed their minds. It was a combination of him in the suit, his antics on the ice and social media. It was like the perfect storm. "

Like a newborn mother, Schwab said that she had barely slept that first night.

SCHWAB: "I do not think anyone slept that night. I know I've been sleeping maybe two hours. I had to be back at the rink at 4 am for Gritty's appearance at Good Morning America. I walked in and Gritty was having coffee. I'm like, did you sleep?

GRAVELLY: [shakes head no]

SCHWAB: "Jimmy Fallon put the rest in motion. We had a game that night. I knew we were going to take him to the Fallon show, but we were not going to get him out of Midtown Manhattan and come back in time for the game. "

HELLER: "At that moment, everyone was anticipating his next match. We needed to have it there. "

Tilger: "I said, let's take a helicopter. We had to recover it. You can not let him miss the match that makes his appearance – so he would be a sold-out. "

SCHWAB: "I would never have imagined that we would need a helicopter to transport our mascot because of the demand."

HELLER: "We knew that Gritty had succeeded when Conan [O’Brien] and John Oliver used replicas of him. I do not know how they created a costume in four days, which took us four months. "

SCHWAB: "He had a lodge next to Ricky Gervais. A trainee brought an autograph book. I was going through the page, the autographs were Steven Tyler, Hillary Clinton, Ethan Hawke, John Cena – all those big names and Gritty had his own page. He even followed Jimmy Fallon. He wrote: "James, he loved you in Fever Pitch – Gritty."

"What a trip." He wore his helmet in the helicopter and, 20 minutes later, we were back in Philly, he even had his own police escort to return to the arena. Police escorts for famous acts like Bono and U2, but our construction operations were more nervous to bring Gritty back inside for our prep match.

HELLER: "The popularity, we would never have guessed in a million years, there was a plan, we wanted to go to carpet, we wanted to make waves, but the scale exceeds our imagination.

GIROUX, to Gritty: "Thank you for taking the time for the little people."

SCHWAB: "Every day has just become more and more wild."

Tilger: "We knew that like any Philadelphia icon, he would have to earn his respect. Gritty is like Philadelphia. We can fight each other, but when someone else tries to get involved, we defend each other. "

Contact Frank Seravalli on Twitter: @frank_seravalli