Wolfe wrote:
If you want to find out why Freo and Eagles have such high memberships go over to the west
Been over in Perth for 3 days and all i heard on the mainstream Radio FM stations about the upcoming derby .. Mid Strength Sponsership of player sighnings meet the players .. get photograhed ect ... Lots of promoting of both Freo and WC and options of meeting the players ... ect and this was constant on the main FM radio stations..
We could learn a trick or 2 if we could get out sponsers to actually promote themselves and the blues at same time .... could help in getting more members on board..
Would be good to know the people in the west if these promos / marketing of Freo and Westcoast are done frequently ..no wonder they have record membership.
The relationship the WC’s have with the Perth media (particularly channel 7) is almost incestuous. After a WC win, the plonker doing the C7 sports news is akin to a jeering masturbating idiot. WC’s get a heap of marketing mileage from the commercial TV stations, and work their supporters up into a frenzy with the media’s bias to West Coast. The fact that most of their supporters have limited knowledge of football probably makes it even easier for WC to rev up there propaganda war machine.
WC get a really easy run in the media as well. Even after the Cousins/Gardiner incidents you would have football media people defending them on the radio/TV. The same commentators that a year ago where calling for Jeff Farmers delisting because of his off-field incident were saying to ‘leave Ben Cousins alone…what happens off the field is his business’. Similarly, after the Michael Gardiner incident, rather then calling him an idiot, most Perth commentators were saying ‘he obviously needs help’. The Daniel Kerr valium prescription thing, despite being a serious enough offence, was barely reported in Perth.
WC’s Trevor Nisbett apparently cuts off access to journalist who are negative to WC. If a sports journalist is to survive in Perth they must have access to WC (given their supporter base) what results is an extremely managed stream of media which for all purposes is advertising for WC.
Freo for about one year have been very anti Perth media, maybe frustrated by the continual West Coast bias. I feel that part of the WC plan is to ensure that Freo gets as much negative press as possible, and WC’s power over the WA sports media ensures that this happens. Chris Connelly gives one interview per week and he is usually deadpan in his delivery as if he is contracted to do the interview and that is the only reason he is doing it.
This is not to say that Freo’s marketing is ineffective. There membership and crowd figures are approaching that of WC. The demographic of Freo supporters are much younger then WC and they are more likely to attend both AFL and WAFL games. The membership advertising of Freo is certainly aimed toward a younger segment of the AFL supporter market, but also leverages on the history of the Fremantle WAFL teams.
Freo are also attempting to identify themselves as being from Fremantle and not a 2nd Perth team. This was something they didn’t do initially. For anyone who has been to Fremantle you will understand that it is one of Australia’s most vibrant communities, full of ethnic diversity and most importantly with a long football history. The Dockers presence is now much more obvious in Fremantle. Pavlich and Hasleby own a Pub in Fremantle – the dockers regularly have kids/family days in Fremantle, heaps of dockers players attend the Fremantle food festival – all little things but combined are making the Dockers a part of Fremantle.
For what it is worth, and I will declare my loathing of WC up front, I feel the Dockers are poised to leave WC choking in their dust as the biggest sporting team in Perth, providing they win a premiership in the next 2-3 years. As the young dockers supporters get older and have more disposable income I feel that the Dockers membership will eclipse WC. WC’s marketing, whilst effective, seems partially like self preservation, compared with Freo’s which is all about being positive.
What can Carlton learn about all this ?
The WC approach of manipulating the media isn’t going to work in Melbourne where a journalist can simply go down the road to Collingwood / Essendon* if he/she doesn’t get what they want at Carlton.
The Freo approach seemed to be a contemplation of what their competitive advantage was – ie that they have a definitive culture in Fremantle. What is our competitive advantage ? - I’m not entirely sure….however despite our current mess we still remain one of the most supported football clubs in Australia (I remember reading that there are an approximate 700,000 supporters Australia wide) – I feel our marketing efforts need to leverage on this supporter base.
Freo always seem to be doing something. Once a week they have community training days where the community can participate (albeit to a limited extent) at training. Regardless of the level of community involvement, the training days seem to reduce the distance between the supporter and the club.
Do we do anything like this ? I don’t live in Melbourne so I don’t know. Freo’s activeness within the community seems to make it an exciting place to be….I am convinced that the reason we struggled to attract a player in the PSD last year was not because we finished last, but because Carlton seems like a drab place at the moment and without a marketing plan that positions ourselves as an exciting place the same thing will happen again.
Longer then I thought it would be…..bit of a pet subject of mine as I am as much concerned with our lack of marketing at the moment as I am with our lack of on-field performance. I am concerned that our poor on-field record, combined with inactive marketing may hurt us in 10 years as much as the draft penalties are hurting us now.
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