Cashing in on your company’s burst of brilliance

The Chicago Blackhawks traveled a two-lane road back to prominence

Do you ever feel like the media doesn’t know your company exists? You send them press releases and Twitter messages, only to receive a consistent cold shoulder from the reporters assigned to cover your industry.

Welcome to the world of the Chicago Blackhawks—in 2006.

They were so bad—and so ignored by most of Chicago—that the Windy City’s biggest newspaper, the Tribune, didn’t send a beat reporter on the road with the team, ESPN reported.

“Watching the Hawks organization now is sort of like seeing Mae West, sagging badly and caked with more mascara than Tammy Faye Bakker, oogling all the beefcake late in her life,” George Johnson wrote for ESPN.com in 2006.

Today the team is the toast of Chicago, having won its first Stanley Cup championship in nearly 50 years. On June 11, nearly 2 million people filled the streets of downtown Chicago to celebrate the team with a ticker-tape parade and rally.

Part of what has changed in terms of fan support is that the team itself is once again allowing its home games to be televised, a reversal—believe it or not—of a longstanding policy.