The Thunder Play Mascot Pranks on Employees...

Are you looking to create original video board vignettes? Are you looking for new ways to integrate team employees and mascots in-game?

The Oklahoma City Thunder recently featured an excellent video board vignette during one of their home games that involved their mascot, Rumble, waking up the team's employees as they headed into work during the early morning hours. The clip does a great job providing fans a humorous, behind-the-scenes look at some of the mascot's antics outside outside of the arena and enables team employees to enjoy some humor of their own.

What's unique about this piece is that the team finds a way to incorporate its employees in the fan entertainment, something that is not too common in the sports landscape. The vignette serves as a nice way to reward/humor all of the individuals behind the scenes who are working long hours to maximize the team's ticket sales, sponsorship revenue, community relations efforts, fan entertainment, etc.

Check out the creative vignette piece, entitled "Wake Up with Rumble the Bison" here.

A special thanks to David Yu of the University of Oregon Warsaw Sports Marketing Center for his insights and contributions to this column!