SAN FRANCISCO — Kim Trinidad’s previous jobs include hyping up ice cream for Dreyer’s and pushing music for Pandora, so she’s accustomed to peddling sunshine for a living.
But no “work” shift for Trinidad is ever more fun than when the Golden State Warriors marketing team meets to brainstorm ideas for the next Klay Thompson bobblehead.
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Things can get weird. Previous ideas include Kayak Klay, Surfer Klay and Captain Klay.
“Klay has more moods than I can count, and at this point, we have barely touched the surface of that,’’ Trinidad, the Warriors’ vice president of marketing and operations, said with a laugh. “He’s the gift that keeps on giving as far as how are able to shape ideas around him season after season.”
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Trinidad brought props to this interview. Leaning across a conference room table inside Chase Center last week, she showed off this season’s eclectic offering: Paper Plane Klay will be distributed to the first 10,000 fans before the Warriors’ Oct. 20 preseason game against the San Antonio Spurs.
The statuette features the five-time All-Star guard wearing Aviator shades and looking like a “Top Gun” extra while poised to launch a paper airplane. It’s a nod to Thompson’s news conference ritual in which he turns the postgame stats sheet into an origami jetliner and sends it skyward as his parting shot.
“The first time that he threw a paper plane, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s it!’” Trinidad said. “The media couldn’t stop talking about it. Fans couldn’t stop talking about it. And I was like, ‘Knowing Klay, this is not going to be the last time that he does this, so let’s put it on the docket.’”
Trinidad, an East Bay native (Hercules, Calif.), joined the Warriors in 2018 and gets the final say on all the team’s bobblehead concepts. The Warriors players, however, still have veto power as to whether a product based on their likeness gets the green light.
For that last step of the process, Raymond Ridder, the team’s senior vice president of communications, finds time (usually during the offseason) to show a sketch of the proposed design to Thompson, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Andrew Wiggins and company. From there, the player will vote yay or nay.
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It’s always been “yay” to the idea, Ridder said, although players sometimes chime in on the little details. The players get to see their brewing bobblehead, created by a company called Clones, at each step. Subsequent sketches and molds require an OK — and that’s where players might get picky.
“They might say, ‘My arms need a little more definition,’ or, ‘My face looks too big,’” Ridder said.
The only player who skips this part of the bobblehead assembly line is Thompson. It’s not a personal thing; it’s just that his offseason persona could serve as a bobblehead idea for next year: Ghost Klay.
“I’d have an easier time getting ahold of Joe Biden in the summer than Klay Thompson,” Ridder cracked. “Klay is just really difficult, just getting him.”
Instead, the Warriors get their bobblehead blessing from Thompson’s agent, Greg Lawrence, who has the glorious good sense to approve the goofy ideas inspired by the All-Star’s joie de vivre.
Because Thompson loves his canine companion, Rocco, so much, there’s a bobblehead featuring the bulldog by his side. Kayak Klay, which comes with a detachable oar, traces roots to the time Thompson paddled across the Bay in his kayak to get to practice at Chase Center.
In a total Klay Thompson move, he’s kayaking to practice! 🤣
(via @KlayThompson | IG) pic.twitter.com/DnWazZt4bM
— Ball Don’t Lie (@Balldontlie) March 20, 2021
Whatever the adventure, it’s a boon to a marketing department that needs ideas for how to market core players who have been around for more than a decade. Who needs another bobblehead of Curry shooting a jump shot?
“Steph and Klay are the consistent ones,” Trinidad said. “They are the (ideas) consistently coming to the table, season after season, with new hobbies, new ventures, new activities that they’re pursuing in their personal lives.”
With that in mind, this year’s bobblehead giveaways — aside from Paper Plane Klay on Oct. 20 — are:
- Curry College Grad (Oct. 18, preseason): Commemorating him returning to Davidson College and completing his coursework to earn a degree in sociology.
- Draymond Green Broadcaster (date to be announced, expected for early December): In honor of his podcast, the “Draymond Green Show.”
- Andrew Wiggins, Jedi (Jan. 2, 2024): Just because it’s fun, presumably, unless that Tatooine portion of his life was left out of the media guide.
- Curry and Thompson Golf Bros. (Jan. 4, 2024): A shout-out to their participation in “The Match” against Kansas City Chiefs stars Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes.
Goofy as that list is, it’s serious to the Warriors and their fans. Trinidad said the annual process begins with a Google doc that serves as a master list of bobblehead ideas.
Trinidad then puts her UC Davis managerial economics degree to use by culling the list for the ones best suited to drive fan interest in engagement. From there, a smaller group will meet for a bobblehead battle royale until they have anointed the chosen ones.
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Does it ever get heated?
“Yes,” Trinidad said, smiling wide. “Where it gets contentious is when the question is, ‘What do we think fans will want the most?’ Because that’s where it’s all subjective. My love for Paper Plane Klay might not be someone else’s love. So, we have to sort of meet in the middle on a lot of those. I do my best to try to win those cases.”
Once the final cuts are made for the bobblehead squad, the Warriors’ standard order for fans is 10,000. The team orders additional items for their G League affiliate in Santa Cruz and for the Warriors team store at Chase Center.
The players get a stockpile too. Trinidad did not name names, but she recalled one Warriors player requesting a personal stash of 700.
Whoever that player was has much in common with fans, whose hunger for bobbleheads remains insatiable. Davis Fields, who grew up in Mountain View and describes himself as a Warriors fan “since the bad old days,’’ is among those who have learned to get to the arena hours early on bobblehead night.
But he wound up conflicted in October 2014, when the Warriors offered an Andre Iguodala bobblehead at a preseason game the same night as a Giants World Series game against the Kansas City Royals.
He was struggling with his decision when his girlfriend, Kira, volunteered for Iguodala. She took the transit to Oracle Arena, stood in line for two hours, got the bobblehead at the entrance — then turned around and went home.
“There are many reasons she’s fantastic,” Fields said, “but I remember thinking, ‘Wow, what a great partner.’”
They are now married with two children, not including all the little ones in their display case.
Stories like this are like manna for Trinidad, who has overseen the creation of more than two dozen bobbleheads since February 2018. She said people misunderstand marketing in her case; after all, the Warriors have a 477-game sellout streak.
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Whenever Trinidad hears that there’s a long line for one of her treasures, or sees fans struggling with whether to immediately rip open the box or keep the prize tucked away like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” she feels connected to all the Warriors fans now, as well as to all those she grew up with.
“Even my daughters are like the proud kids at school who are like, ‘Our mom works for the Warriors,’” she said. “It’s being able to think about the positive moments that these items bring every season. It’s fun to see how much these giveaways light up people up.”
Now all she needs is for Thompson to sign a lifetime contract.
(Top photo: Courtesy of the Golden State Warriors)
