I think there's plenty to say about what needs to be improved on the field, but here's an off-the-field thing we can improve on:
Our target audience. With the new Fox deal, we've had a lot of Saturday night games instead of Sunday afternoons. As we all know, the Phoenix brand them self as an extremely family-friendly club and most of their marketing seems to target specifically family's and kids. Unfortunately its easier to take kids to afternoon games, instead of the abundance of night time games we've had this season.
What if the Phoenix marketing staff turned their focus to more teenagers/young adults? They could really focus on the Yellow Fever experience, the chanting, drumming, drinking etc. Right now to a lot of my friends (who are around 19-21 years old) they think the Phoenix are quite 'lame' and 'cheesy'. This could be down to both how the club performs on the field and how the club markets itself.
You can see the effects on the Wellington Sevens attendances before and after it was advertised as one big party. Perhaps the opposite could be true for us? Or would this alienate the family/kids we have been targeting for awhile?
Agreed it doesn't have to be one or another. However there's a lot more than a 'lame ad' the marketing team can look to do to try and bring more of that particular demographic through the turnstiles. For example:
- Higher presence of advertisement/giveaways/player appearances in university's such as Vic
- 10 dollar tickets for university students
- Discounted booze (Could be made slightly more plausible with the Garage Project partnership) with student ID
- Heck, players can bring spare tickets with them when they go out grocery shopping etc. so if anyone recognises them and stops them, they could offer a free ticket after a selfie/autograph etc.
- Free 3-game memberships to those participating in university football/U21s and below.
- And of-course highlighting the shenanigans of the Yellow Fever as a selling point as mentioned earlier.
I'm not saying that they should fully focus on getting young people to the game, but the whole point of a marketing team is to get people through the gates and be creative with fan engagement. Of course some of these ideas may not be plausible with the budget at hand, but there are different options than a lame ad. Yes a lame ad won't change people's minds, hence why my OP was calling for a change of how they could market to a different demographic. (While of course not forgetting about the families/kids etc)
If the statement that '19-21 years olds think the Phoenix are cheesy' is true, then instead of the club resoponding with 'eh we can't change their mind' they could ask themselves 'What can we do to improve' Hence why I participated in this thread