Blog Prompt:
Details: As we have heard in this lecture, live events are a significant part of the appeal and success of sport organizations, as well as a real challenge in a crowded entertainment space where consumers face myriad options for their entertainment dollars, in a time of budget challenges for everyone. For this assignment, you will use your knowledge of the penpal and their organization to plan an event – and please interpret the word event as broadly as possibly. It could be a promotion connected to a live game. Or a fund-raising appeal. Or a charitable campaign. The tricky part of this assignment is it is meant to be a realistic, “real” event that your penpal’s organization could plausibly do.
In The Quest – the final project of the Sport Professional Penpal assignment – you will leverage your connection to produce a proposal for this event. The Quest can be anything, but ideally it will leverage the skills and competencies you have developed in this class. It should include the idea itself, along with a plan for leveraging publicity about it in media spheres.
The Quest will be put together in an attractive, interactive presentation that students will post to their Sport Journal. It should also include a narrative element to describe how you came up with the idea and what steps you took to bring it to life. When reading your proposals, I should be able to picture the thing you are envisioning
“The Quest”
For this blog, as depicted in the blog prompt pop-down window, I am going to propose a potential event that my Pen-Pal can implement for his organization. As showcased in my previous blogs titled; “Making the connection” and “Don’t be the weakest linked”, my pen-pal is no other than the Chief Marketing Officer for the New York Mets Andy Goldberg. Being the CMO for any organization is a time consuming job that requires a ton of planning and staying ahead. Andy makes essentially all final decisions for marketing campaigns, including content on social media, and in game content shown at the stadium. So, this event would be not only plausible, but super realistic to something Andy and his team would actually do as one of their marketing campaigns or events to meet or exceed their revenue goals.
“Home Run Harvest: Score Signed City Connect Jerseys!”
For my event, I am proposing a jersey giveaway extravaganza. If you are a fan of the Mets or keep up with baseball, teams get an optional jersey called their city connect jersey. Recently, the Mets just released their city connect jersey and it’s receiving great reviews on their social media accounts.
City Connect Jerseys
Introduced in the 2021 season, the City Connect series’ alternate uniforms feature different colors, fonts and graphics than a team’s home and away uniforms, and seek to celebrate each city’s history and culture.
So, I propose a campaign that would be run for the Mets next up-comming home series during the games, where for every home run a Mets player hits during those games, 3 signed city connect jerseys will be given out to random fans. This event would not only add an extra element to these games for the fans and players, but also create an atomic atmosphere as the fans are waiting for that pop sound of a ball coming off the bat, and seeing that big apple pop up from its burrow.
This event would have massive potential for boosting:
- ticket sales
- fan involvement
- stadium atmosphere
- social media traffic
Ticket sales would increase due to social media marketing that would set the stage for the event. Using their social media accounts, Andy and his team could develop a series of posts a few weeks in advance, where they would bring attention to the event, and provide links and information for the event to help make it easier for fans to understand and participate. This would also generate more ticket sales for the home game series, not only so fans can see the newly debuted city connect jerseys, but also for a chance to win a signed city connect jersey.
The atmosphere for these games would be electric. Fans would want to attend not to just watch their team win, but they would have stakes on the game with no room for loss. Every sports fan in the world would go to a game if home runs meant you had the chance to win something unique, rare, and valuable. Overall, if executed right, Andy and his team could generate an extremely profitable series for their organization, where sales increase, social media interaction increases, fan turnout increases, and energy increases. I am in no way a professional marketer, but this plan seems like a grand-slam of an idea to me.
Details For The Event:
This event would have a small social media campaign prior to the event in order to get the word out since it would only be fully beneficial if a ton of fans are involved. So, a series of posts highlighting how to participate in the event, which would be to register your name into the drawing on a social media interactive sign-up post, then simply purchase a ticket for any or all of the games in the home series for this event, and attend the entire game or games. Once a player hits a home run, 3 random fan names will be announced(only ones that registered through social media)over the intercom at the end of the inning when the home run was hit. The winning fans would then recieve an email(which would be gathered during registration) sent by the organization where shipping information can be exchanged along with sizing and which player’s jersey they would want. Fans are already extatic when their team hits a home run, so imagine how the stadium would be if a home run happened and they had to wait and see which names get announced, people would be on the edge of their seat the ENTIRE GAME. This event would have that stadium rocking, and as a life-long Mets fan, I can assure you I would attend this event and would be going absolutely nuts whenever the Mets are up to bat. If that isn’t an event worth putting on for your fans, players, and organization as a whole, I don’t know what is.