Quote bramleyrhino="bramleyrhino"I agree that the branding and style needs to be consistent, but I wouldn't necessarily want to see all club marketing become centrally controlled. The clubs should know their audiences and markets better than the RFL (and remember that the clubs have recently fought to have more control over the marketing in general), and clubs will have different priorities for their marketing. Leeds at the moment seem to be putting their efforts into the corporate and premium market, which makes sense for them - they'll have a lot of corporate and premium capacity to sell very soon. But does that work for Huddersfield - a club that is still selling season tickets at less than a tenner a game?
I don't necessarily agree that what we're asking for here is beyond the financial reach of clubs. I have seen small marketing teams with relatively small budgets produce a hell of a lot more than some of the stuff descibed there, but it does require those marketing operations to think carefully about their strategies and work smarter. How many clubs, for example, are using relatively cheap tools like CRM and marketing automation as best they can? Probably not many. Too many clubs have fallen into lazy habits like cheap tickets, and haven't thought about how they actually contribute to long-term growth. I know people think that cheap tickets are a good way to get people into the grounds, but they way they have generally been used has meant that we've basically given discounts to people who would have paid full price anyway.
We've got a hell of a lot of content that we could share with the wider world, and it doesn't take masses of resources (either time or budget) to do that. It just needs clubs to think smarter about how they do that. How much resource goes on producing matchday programmes in this day and age, and for what impact, when we have free and 24 hour access to content?'"
Just for clarity - I'm not suggesting that *all* clubs marketing should be centrally controlled; I'm saying that the overarching style, branding and content should be - but that clubs should still be responsible for doing their own work in their local market - within prescribed style and branding guidelines.
It makes sense to me to invest in one really talented team to handle the bigger picture stuff related to the whole game that, quite frankly, is too serious and important to leave in the hands of any single club. And that by extension, that team could also support and train their counterparts at club level to do local marketing campaigns that tie in with the bigger picture strategy - and maybe achieve some economies of scale both in financial and knowledge terms, around things like CRM, materials, video content, advertising etc.
For me, we're missing so many tricks, and having 12 - 14 hard-pressed individuals, with little reach or network outside their own locality, doing pretty much the same things to try to flog ST's, corporate boxes and shirts, *and* giving them stewardship of the promotion of the entire sport, is not just unrealistic, but irresponsible.
