The NHL season is in full swing, and while HBO Max’s “Heated Rivalry” series (IYKYK) is giving hockey a major pop-culture boost, PNC Bank got ahead of the game by activating its official partnership with the Dallas Stars in an unconventional way, particularly for the brand and the banking industry. Enter: Hockey hair.
Hockey hair is big in the sport, with many players flaunting mullets and long hair under their helmets, and PNC’s Mane St. Branch pre-game experience capitalized on the “good flow” trend by helping fans get their own hockey hairstyles. The pop-up, orange-bricked barbershop on the PNC Plaza outside the Dallas Stars’ home arena, American Airlines Center, was adorned with classic barber poles and topped with a giant, perfectly coifed mullet made out of approximately 700 sections of synthetic ginger hair, weighing about 1,600 pounds and styled with 350 bottles of hair spray.
Inside, the brand outfitted the barbershop with penny-tile floors, authentic barber chairs and mirrors for each station. Attendees received a free, limited-edition Dallas Stars Hockey Hair Hat, which was a “Never Stop Growing”-branded cap with an attached piece of hair, in a variety of cuts and colors, to give wearers an instant mullet. Participants could sit in the chairs and get their new hair styled by brand ambassador barbers.
PNC gave away 20,000 hats to fans over two days, and the distribution created a lot of brand visibility in the arena on the featured game nights, with jumbotron spotlights, the Zamboni driver wearing a hat and the Dallas Stars Ice Girls sporting them.
“We relaunched the PNC brand under the ‘Brilliantly Boring Since 1865’ banner [in 2024], and as part of that, we thought about different ways to manifest that storytelling, so we came up this concept of what’s an unboring branch look like?” says PNC cmo Jenn Garbach. “Then, the play on words started with a main street branch that’s the quintessential bank on the main street of every town, and then this riff started with the Mane St. Branch, an ode to hockey hair and the commitment that players put into those flowing locks.”
The themed branch experience ultimately came together as a metaphor for long-term financial plans, as “both require time, patience and commitment.” And according to Garbach, it was a trust-the-process moment to get leadership buy-in for the experience. The campaign took nearly a year of development, and the team built the barbershop structure over six weeks.
“We could do the traditional marketing approach, or we could take a step out of our own comfort zone… And you can imagine what that might have been like internally of trying to pitch the idea of dressing up a branch to make it look like a barbershop with hair,” she says. “Something like this very easily could have been shut down early on because it sounded like such a crazy idea. That’s one of the organizational learnings for us—the willingness to continue to say ‘yes’ to new ideas and to try them out, as we continue to rally folks and help them see the possibilities of how our brand can show up in really fun, distinctive ways.”
PNC Bank partnered with the National Hockey League Players’ Association and Dallas Stars players Matt Duchene, Wyatt Johnston, Jake Oettinger and Jason Robertson to amplify the hair-themed “long-term growth” campaign, which zeroes in on the brand’s investments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including expanding branch locations, community contributions and, of course, its longstanding sponsorship of the Dallas Stars. Earlier this week, the team and American Airlines Center announced a multiyear renewal of their agreement with PNC.
“Dallas has been a priority growth market for us for quite some time, and we’ve been in partnership with the Stars for over five years now. [The sponsorship] has been more traditional, but this Mane St. Branch activation was truly a first for PNC of really stepping boldly into that experiential realm and doing something differently,” Garbach says. “The stars really aligned in this one.” Agency Partners: Arnold, lead agency; Havas CX; Havas AMP’d, p.r.; M ss ng P eces, activation production; Halo Branded Solutions, hat production.
More Scenes from the Barbershop Pop-up:
Photos: Courtesy of PNC Bank
