-He's not the mascot Philadelphia wanted,
but he's the mascot Philadelphia deserves.
-It is time to get nitty Gritty. -Words like "pure nightmare"
and "horrifying" -- the Flyers new mascot
is certainly drawing mixed reactions
from fans here in Philadelphia and across the country.
-Can you give me a high-five? High-ten?
-I only had this one question, which was --
which was, "Why?" -Gritty.
Gritty mania!
Aah!
-We saw what was going on at the All-Star games
when you have 27 other mascots together,
and so collectively we determined it was time,
basically, to look to introduce this mascot.
Just the sheer number of events we weren't present at.
One of the ones that stuck out to us
was when the Eagles won the Super Bowl,
and here comes the bus,
the Eagles coming back from Minnesota,
and the Phanatic, Franklin -- the Sixers mascot --
and Swoop are all leading the bus back in.
And we didn't have any representation.
One of the first calls we made was to Dave Raymond.
-I was, as my son says, the OG Phillie Phanatic.
As the Phillies would say, I was the original best friend
of the Phanatic for 17 years.
And then I left to become an entrepreneur
and have been delivering character branding, so sports,
marketing, entertainment with a character/mascot.
And so I've been in the business of professional idiocy
for 40 years.
-Really, it was just that meeting to accept the fact
that we're absolutely going to move forward with this.
But really, at the end of the day,
it was to give us confidence that we could introduce this
and we could sort of do this project.
-The first thing I said was, "Everybody in this room
knows we're gonna get killed, right?
I mean, we could roll out the Phanatic, the next Phanatic,
we could roll him out,
and we are going to get hammered."
-We came up with this rule of thumb.
It was going to be anywhere from two weeks to two months
that it was going to take fans to embrace and adopt him.
From there, it was basically, okay,
we need to develop a cast of characters,
evaluate who should represent the Flyers,
you know, how we develop a backstory for him.
-We wanted something that created its own identity
and one that was something we could brand
that would match the blue-collar,
the nature of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia fan base.
-We had everything from balls to flying animals
and all kinds of dogs and that kind of stuff.
Basically, at the end of the day, we were like,
"This isn't working for us."
We really need, like, a monster-type creature.
At the time, it was called "Monster D,"
and we sort of shaped him to be what you see today as Gritty.
-The first game was a mix of boos and cheers.
But I think the real turning point
came when the fan base leaned in and Philadelphians
leaned in to protect one of their own.
-Where Philadelphia completely adopted Gritty
was when the Penguin from Pittsburgh wrote,
as a dismissive tweet, "lol ok," you know, responding to Gritty.
And Gritty said, "Sleep with one eye open tonight, bird."
Went right to murder, apparently.
That's what Philadelphia's all about, you know?
It's us.
You know, we may not be pretty, we may not smell good,
we may not look good, but guess what.
We're gonna kick your ass.
-At first, I was, like, a little horrified,
but when everyone else outside of Philly
started attacking Gritty, I was like, "No, no, he is ours.
Don't talk down on him that way."
-When I first saw Gritty, I thought
it was the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life.
The pictures they put it, it was, like,
this really weird angle and,
like, lighting, and he looks, like, terrifying.
But it was hilarious.
In true Philadelphia fashion,
once the national media got a hold of it
and everybody was kind of, like, "What is Philly doing?
This is crazy."
And then, of course, Philadelphians are,
"You're not talking about our guy like that."
And then it's just -- now he's a national treasure.
-All along, we talked about
having something that was going to be --
you didn't want to high-five him.
You didn't really want to hug him.
For me personally, yeah, there's a lot of days where I'm like,
"I don't know how this is gonna go,"
because our fans are passionate, loyal,
but they're also very rigid.
It was always about proving it to them, right?
Like, proving that, yeah, he's one of our own
and accept him as one of our own.
And we were so lucky that that happened
in such a short a timeframe, that that whole two weeks
or two months thing out of the window.
It took 12 hours, so...
-We made a conscious effort to lean in,
and I think all the credit goes to our social-media team.
-He is not just going to be what the Internet makes him.
Although that is part of Gritty, that is not who Gritty is,
and that's what we're tasked with.
-Some of his strongest pros are situational.
Like, something happened, and we came up with a reaction to it.
The Kim Kardashian post was just a follow-up
to the full day of memes and postings
from everyone on the 24th when he first launched.
Philly fans and just fans across the US are just,
like, breathing life into him every day
that sometimes we don't even know about.
-But it's great about Philadelphia is that,
once he went to bat for the city and the rest of the country
and the world started to pick apart Gritty
in those first 24 hours,
it gave the city something to rally behind and defend.
And I think that's what cemented the bond for us.
Gritty is the best part of my day.
-It's sort of comical to see,
like, people's roller coaster of emotions when it came to,
"We don't like him, we like him, we don't like him,
now we really like him, now we love him,
now we'll take a bullet for him."
Like, just a bizarre set of reactions from fans.
He's not afraid to go there.
He's not afraid to take shots.
He's not afraid to conduct antics
that sort of get him in trouble a little bit.
Like, that's his personality, and, you know,
I think that it reflects a lot from us
who are from Philly, right?
So it's, like, natural for us to go like,
"Yeah, a crazy mascot should do these things."
-I just want people -- It's not the silly,
wacky character standing on the sidelines.
There's really some important work that goes on with them,
and if you have a good steward,
like the Flyers are going to be for Gritty
and like the Phillies have been for the Phanatic,
they exploit that power,
and they're doing fabulous things in the community
that none of us really see.
-Gritty, I think, is something that's been a reoccurring theme
that carries the positivity scale multiple days at a time.
-He's a troublemaker we all love,
I guess is the best way to put it.
-Go Flyers!