Quote: BIAW! "I agree, it is fair play to the club for doing this but at the moment it feels we see more about social media and game day experience than what we are doing on the pitch, the game day and social media should be a by product of what we achieve on the field, at the moment it feels the other way round.'"
This is completely right. Unfortunately these days you see it in a lot of fields of work, there's a generation of managers who have studied intensely theory about branding and marketing and end up not seeing the wood for the trees. Their hallmark is usually exaggerated slogans that become a parody of themselves. I saw a presentation from a company a few weeks back that said their vision was to provide the ultimate coffee experience for the modern dynamic company. They sell coffee machines. I'm sure many people on here have worked with cringey managers who take themselves too seriously on team 'away days' or whatever and like to talk about 'what's our team vision', 'what story do we have to tell'.
Sometimes you just have to step back from all that. The gameday experience is massively important, but you can come away from all the different gameday gimmicks and slogans like 'memories are made here' and instead follow 2 principles. Do the simple things well (quality of entertainment on the pitch, quality/price/availability of food and drink at the ground), and create an air of class. Gimmicks work against creating an air of class. I went to the Emirates a few times a few years ago, and even though Arsenal weren't the top team there was just an aura about everything in the stadium, and the way they did everything, how elegant and refined it was, that this was a club that rung of class, without appearing to try too hard.
The problem with some of the marketing types is that they are so convinced in their own theory of what people want, that they respond to any declining customer figures by saying they haven't gone far enough. I bet at the club right now there are a load of meetings going on and powerpoint presentations being created with people saying things like how do we make sure we have more wacky wire flyer type ideas, to make sure that next year when we make the playoffs we pack out the HJ, and missing some of the obvious basics.
I also think this reflects the shift in approach since Andy Gatcliffe left. The club was more understated in the Gatcliffe era, but it quietly focused on the things that matters.