Marketing

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http://www.clevelandbusiness.com/apps/pbcs...830010/1008/GOVI found this article about the ever expanding marketing department. The last part talks about spending more time on ticket sales but I guess they are taking basketball season off. Hummmmmm........... I am going to have to dig deeper on all this new personnel...... more to come later......A tougher gridiron game By JOHN BOOTH2:10 pm, August 30, 2006The Can't State Golden flushes and the University of Akron Zips might be Mid-American Conference gridiron rivals, but each faces tough contests on their home fields: getting fans to come and see them play.Under an NCAA rule taking effect last season, Division I-A schools must average 15,000 “in either actual or paid attendance for all home football games once during a rolling two-year period.” Akron and Can't State are among 12 Division I-A schools that didn’t meet that mark last year, with the Zips averaging 10,983 in the 31,000-seat Rubber Bowl, while the Golden flushes saw an average of 6,658 at 30,520-seat Dix Stadium.Can't opens its football season Thursday night against visiting Minnesota. Akron won’t kick off its home schedule until a Sept. 23 game with North Texas. Can't State athletic director Laing Kennedy blames last year’s disappointing turnout in large part on a tough season — the team started off 1-3, with losses to Michigan State, Miami (Oh.), and Ohio University — and bad weather late in the campaign. The team finished the season with a 1-10 record. “When the product on the field is not where it needs to be, (and) if it’s kind of cold, windy or rainy, you’re not going to go” to a game, he said. “We just had a brutal early schedule. It would be huge if we had three home games in September against comparable opponents.” Leaning on the GophersThis fall, Mr. Kennedy says the school has poured “in excess of $150,000” — a figure that includes money from corporate sponsorships — into this season’s football marketing budget. The school also has leaned heavily Thursday’s game against the Golden Gophers, which will mark the first visit by a Big Ten team to Dix Stadium. Can't also has used the Minnesota game to fuel sales for other home dates, selling package deals that include additional tickets to some or all of the Golden flushes’ games against archrival Akron (Sept. 30), Toledo (Oct. 14), Ohio (Oct. 28) and Eastern Michigan (Nov. 17).Mr. Kennedy expects a crowd of 25,000 for the Minnesota game and another 20,000 for Akron, which would go a long way toward helping reach the Division I-A bar. Pre-sales of tickets have already almost doubled last year’s total home attendance of 33,290, he noted.“We need to sell 75,000 tickets (for the season),” Mr. Kennedy said. “Right now, we are looking at very close to 66,000 sold.” Football cushionWhile Akron isn’t trying to dig itself out of as deep an attendance hole, it will have neither the boost of a marquee visitor to the Rubber Bowl nor the privilege of hosting this year’s Can't-Akron clash, a traditionally big draw for both schools.On the other hand, Akron senior associate athletic director Hunter Yurachek notes, the school’s athletic programs do have a newly-expanded marketing department, with $150,000 invested in new personnel, and a three-week football cushion provided by the Zips’ season-opening road trips to Penn State, North Carolina State, and Central Michigan.During the transition period following Akron’s hiring of new athletic director Mack Rhoades in January, Mr. Yurachek said, “there was very little done from a football sales standpoint.”“It definitely is later in the year than we would like to start (pushing ticket sales),” said Mr. Yurachek, who was hired in June. “We were fortunate that our season doesn’t open up at home until Sept. 23.” Akron also hopes that winning last year’s Mid-American Conference title and making its first-ever Division I-A bowl appearance will spark ticket sales this year. Decent showings in early-season games at Penn State and North Carolina State wouldn’t hurt, either.Besides making a traditional advertising push, Akron has also partnered outside its offices, hiring InfoCision to help solicit its 63,000-person database of “donors and friends of the university” for season ticket sales, and contracting International Sports Properties to handle advertising sales. Those moves free up the university’s own marketing staff to focus solely on boosting ticket sales, Mr. Yurachek said. Ticket sales upDespite the late push, season-ticket sales already are around the 1,300 mark, up slightly from the 1,250 sold last year. The bulk of Akron’s crowd figures comes through single-game purchases and student attendance.Shooting for the same 75,000 mark as Can't State, Akron is taking particular aim at its first three home games: Sept. 23 against North Texas, Oct. 21 against Miami (Oh.), and Nov. 4 against Bowling Green.“All three of those games are on Saturdays, and two of them are at night, and we traditionally draw better at night,” Mr. Yurachek said. “We would like to draw somewhere between 18,000 and 20,000 for each of those three games.”Such turnouts would take some of the pressure off the Zips’ last two home games, which are a Thursday nighter against Buffalo and a day-after-Thanksgiving game against Western Michigan. Neither, Mr. Yurachek said, are likely to draw many families or senior citizens, which are Akron’s biggest markets.Division I-A schools that don’t meet the 15,000 mark at least every other season will be put on a 10-year watch, during which they must meet the minimum or be placed in restricted membership and lose postseason bowl eligibility. If that happens, according to the NCAA, they’d have to meet the requirement the following year or else lose their Division I-A status. Football cushionWhile Akron isn’t trying to dig itself out of as deep an attendance hole, it will have neither the boost of a marquee visitor to the Rubber Bowl nor the privilege of hosting this year’s Can't-Akron clash, a traditionally big draw for both schools.On the other hand, Akron senior associate athletic director Hunter Yurachek notes, the school’s athletic programs do have a newly-expanded marketing department, with $150,000 invested in new personnel, and a three-week football cushion provided by the Zips’ season-opening road trips to Penn State, North Carolina State, and Central Michigan.During the transition period following Akron’s hiring of new athletic director Mack Rhoades in January, Mr. Yurachek said, “there was very little done from a football sales standpoint.”“It definitely is later in the year than we would like to start (pushing ticket sales),” said Mr. Yurachek, who was hired in June. “We were fortunate that our season doesn’t open up at home until Sept. 23.” Akron also hopes that winning last year’s Mid-American Conference title and making its first-ever Division I-A bowl appearance will spark ticket sales this year. Decent showings in early-season games at Penn State and North Carolina State wouldn’t hurt, either.Besides making a traditional advertising push, Akron has also partnered outside its offices, hiring InfoCision to help solicit its 63,000-person database of “donors and friends of the university” for season ticket sales, and contracting International Sports Properties to handle advertising sales. Those moves free up the university’s own marketing staff to focus solely on boosting ticket sales, Mr. Yurachek said.