by Samantha Sage
Our hometown of Portland, Oregon is notorious for keeping things weird as often as possible. So it shouldn't be a surprise that our most iconic local sports team mascot is not only for a small collegiate baseball team, but also happens to be a 7 foot tall anthropomorphic pickle.
The Portland Pickles West Coast League collegiate summer baseball team have found a way to create serious noise on a national stage while developing a loyal, mobilized fan base here in Portland. Even though they play during an off season at a small field in a public park, they regularly pack games full and sell through dozens of custom merch designs each baseball season. This small but mighty team, and their briny embodiment Dillon (shown at right), know how to boost their local marketing campaigns to maximize their reach.
Sometimes it can seem impossible to cut through the marketing noise as one of the little guys. How do you get folks to buy into your brand as a small, local team or business? How can you boost your own local marketing efforts to build a community that drives your sales organically?
The Portland Pickles make for a great case study on successful tactics for how to do local marketing that you can utilize to drive your business's sales and create a sense of community around your brand. By using creative marketing and promotional swag items your fans will want & love to show off, like the Portland Pickles do so well, you can hit your own marketing home runs!
Highlight Your Brand's Character - The Dillon T. Pickle Cult of Personality
While a great logo design and cohesive brand guidelines can give your business a clear brand identity, sometimes the best way to truly connect your brand with your audience is by choosing a fun and recognizable mascot or avatar for your business. A business or brand mascot will allow you to embody your brand's character and values in a physical form that your fans will come to connect with and love more readily than a logo alone.
How to choose a mascot for your business comes down to isolating a few key traits you want your business to be synonymous with, and deciding what animal, character, or even inanimate object best encapsulates those traits. The Portland Pickles have done this to tremendous effect with their humanized pickle mascot "Dillon T. Pickle", or just Dill for short.
With his friendly personality and cool guy attitude on display as he walks around the grandstands, Dillon has become a true fan favorite by personifying the laid-back fun atmosphere of Walker Stadium on game night. That appeal can be directly translated into custom merchandising sales driven by the mascot's imagery, as Dillon and his signature grin can be found featured on nearly every type of custom merch available in the stadium's merch tent and the online merch shop.
The Portland Pickles make their games extra fun for attendees with different "Theme nights" throughout their home game schedule at Lents Park. From music-themed events like Dolly Parton night and their collab with fellow local Portland legends Portugal. the Man, to dog-friendly Woof Wednesday games, to the always-popular "Keep Portland Weird" night, the Pickles know how to get fans intrigued enough to attend games.
Theme nights are accompanied by special limited edition merch with stylized logos and art for the theme, often featuring Dillon in costume as he is on game night (like the "Dilly Parton" bolo ties the team made for Dolly Parton night in 2023 - shown above, photo credit to the Portland Pickles). These limited edition themed merch drops give attending fans a memento with "I was there" appeal, similar to a concert t-shirt with tour dates printed on it. 
Portlanders know and love Dillon so much, the team even rents him out for private events and sends him to local Portland events as an ambassador, like a recent Portland Metro Chamber business networking party our team attended with Dillon (shown at right, photo credit to Portland Metro Chamber)!
That kind of celebrity leads to increased sales of custom Dillon T. Pickle merch including custom stuffed animals and bobbleheads, t-shirts and baseball caps, woven socks and scarves, all with Dillon's grinning mug prominently displayed.
So strong is the love for Dillon and the Portland Pickles, the team often hosts Tattoo Tuesday nights with local Portland-area tattoo artists, where loyal fans get tattoos of Portland Pickles-themed flash designs like Dillon, the Portland Pickles "P" Logo, and the iconic "raise the chairs" design (If you don't know, you'll have to come to a Pickles game and find out!).
While you may not have anyone inking your brand mascot on their body soon, your brand can still design all manner of desirable swag and effective marketing collateral around your mascot - such as business cards with your mascot's image, custom stuffed animals in your own mascot's likeness, and even direct mail from your mascot for added fun, as the Pickles have done with their email marketing campaigns. Their weekly eBlasts come addressed from the big Dill himself.
And speaking of emails...
How the Pickles Use Email & Exclusive Merch Drops to Drive Sales and Promote Attendance
The Portland Pickles email blast regularly features news about unique and desirable merch exclusives that are designed to get fans called to action and packed into Walker Stadium. Their cheeky subject lines, as shown as right, drive higher email open rates (Dillon did make national news a few years back for getting a little frisky on Instagram, after all...), and the deals on exclusive merch offers to fans help drive email click-throughs and sales profits for the team.
Not only do the email offers drive merch sales directly, but the Pickles make great use of merch packages and ultra-exclusive limited releases to push for additional ticket sales and season ticket purchases.
Ahead of the 2025 season, the Pickles offered a free exclusive blanket to promote a reduced-price ticket package for their lowest cost "berm" seating section (as shown at right, photo credit to the Portland Pickles email blasts). This ensured that fans, who were now more motivated to buy this ticket package for a section where they will bring their own folding chairs to sit beyond the outfield, will be wrapped up in their exclusive merch on game nights. Other fans who see the merch may ask how the owner got it, giving them an opportunity to market for the team's season ticket sales organically for the following year with powerful word of mouth advertising!
As previously mentioned, theme night game-specific editions of popular merch in limited runs always sell out fast. For multi-game spans with rival teams in the region, the Pickles will produce specially imprinted merch with branding for both teams to promote the fun rivalry, as shown on their can coolers for their series against the Walla Walla Sweets.
Early bird game arrivals often get exclusive prizes like free art prints, free scarves, and more for being among the first group of fans in the gates - encouraging higher game attendance, and giving attendees more time in the ballpark to spend money on things like concessions and merch that support the club activities.
But their fun email blasts aren't the Pickles' only local marketing strategy. Other local Portland-area Business sponsors and advertisers are proudly displayed on custom signage throughout the stadium, which is an effective local marketing strategy for small businesses to get in front of potential customers while also building good will with the team for reciprocal marketing campaigns. The Pickles also know how to do local marketing on social media - often collabing with local vendors like Nico's Ice Cream on content (and food creations) that create local buzz in Portland.
Proof of Concept - Pickles Pub & Pickle Jar Locations in Portland, OR
The Portland Pickles' core marketing offering (beyond baseball, of course) comes down to the strength of the like-minded community of fun-loving baseball fans to be found at their events. This is evident on the Portland Pickles homepage - the main banner greets the visiting "Pickle Nation" and the site navigation features a "community" tab for all their various community building and engagement opportunities.
The team has grown into such local legends that they were able to open a pop-up pub in the Boise neighborhood of north-central Portland in March of 2024, encouraging more viewership of their games (which can translate to more in-person ticket sales in future seasons). The Pickles Pub also gave another outlet for in-person merch sales beyond game days with their fun "merch vending machine" on site, as well as pop-up merch specials and community building events.
The Pickles Pub was originally intended only as a 3-month long pop-up to end in the summer, but grew so popular that the Pickles extended their commercial lease on the Mississippi bar until the end of 2024. Though the Pickles Pub closed its original Mississippi Ave location at the end of 2024, they've teased exciting news for the New Year, so stay tuned to local Portland news outlets for more.
Speaking of new ways to maximize merch sales beyond game days, the Pickles also recently opened a standalone merch store in downtown Portland called The Pickle Jar. While it obviously gives the team another avenue for local merch sales beyond games, the team also specifies that they chose to open their store in that neighborhood to help with the ongoing rejuvenation of Portland's downtown, which is still struggling to recover from COVID closures and business traffic slowdown.
This joint growth for the brand and the local economy shows how community building can help your business and your community become stronger all at once.
Most importantly for the team, the Portland Pickles brick and mortar storefronts encourage fans to mingle and strengthen the community they've built around the brand specifically, giving Pickles fans more friends they can attend Pickles games with in the future. The success of the Pickles Pub and the Pickle Jar shows why local marketing is important - if you build it, local fans will come!
Final Thoughts
We hope that this review of how the Portland Pickles leverage their mascot's popularity and their successful community building tactics to generate ticket and merch sales as helped you come up with ways to boost your own local marketing efforts. The Portland Pickles' continued growth season over season shows why local marketing is so important - investing in your community and celebrating what makes your region unique is a geat way to connect with your immediate audience and strengthen your local sales channels.
If you need specialized help finding the right swag ideas to create a memorable marketing campaign unique to your brand, contact the swag experts at MARCO Ideas Unlimited! We've been creating impactful marketing collateral right here in Oregon since 1959.
Samantha Sage is the Marketing Coordinator & Sales Assistant for MARCO Ideas Unlimited. Sam leverages her 10+ years of multi-industry marketing experience to help businesses grow their brands with quality promotional products. When Sam isn't researching new & unique swag options, you can find her on the berm at Portland Pickles games, or in the Oregon woods with her husband & senior rescue dog.