: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:21 am  

stormingbronco wrote:

NO......never and you damm well should know it.

I'm RL thru & thru and have little or no time for any fan who supports our game as a second choice & sometimes third choice over football, chricket or such minor sports as ice and field hockey.

However, consider we are in serious management trouble without a CEO etc. Unless this is resolved soon and the Board expanded we will be in trouble before to many months have passed.

Perhaps this is another topic that needs a seperate discussion heading.

It's a sin to support more than one sport? If the club had 10k football fans as secondary fans, 10k RU fans as secondary fans, 10k cricket fans, 10k hockey fans....should I go on?

If these fans came to 4 home games per season....see where I'm going?
What an incredibly narrow minded view.

I've supported soccer in the north, AFL in Sydney, cricket in the carribean, NFL in New York, Kabaddi in Mumbai, darts at Frimley.....please

RL is a summer sport, where are the conflicts?

And didn't you try to get a CEO thread going before...?

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:44 am  

Hockey is in the right demographic for Rugby support.
Amazingly hockey is one of the top 5 PARTICIPATION sports in the UK every weekend.

West London has the highest %age of players in the right demographic.
Sunbury/Teddington/Surbiton/Chiswick/PHC Chiswick/Richmond/Spencer/Barnes/Hounslow/Ealing/Raynes Park/Wimbledon each have +20 teams - thats 2860 people doing NOTHING in the summer months.

If people like Storming Bronco wont even entertain the fact that these people could to the weekly attendance figure, then maybe thats the problem.

I will openly admit that Hockey is my No1 sport and i play it and love it.
But RL is my spectator sport, and im not alone in hockey players watching RL.

Dont ostracise us - we may be a lifeline!

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:56 am  

I can't remember if it was Bradford, Sarries or Warrington....but didn't that genius of the sports marketing world, Peter Deakin (RIP) once have his pro rugby club sponsoring the local cricket club....?
It's a complicated world of synergies we live in! A world of abundance in choice, supposedly without the prejudices of yesteryear. Reach out QuinsRL, reach out.

Today this could be....the greatest.... blah.
hic.

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:58 am  

EFH I understand where you are coming from linking sports and the players, sadly though Hockey is middle England sport akin to Golf, cricket and RU.

We have a reputation rightly or wrongly of being a northern working class sport. Maybe we have to change that perception some way.

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:02 pm  

WIRE

Wrong wrong wrong!
Hockey may be perceived as having that background - but in West London, you have a lot of Saffas/Kiwis/Aussies, mingled in with ordinary state school boys like myself, to OxBridge grads.

I played hockey for Richmond at Dukes Meadows on Chiswick Bridge, 1 evening we wanted to go out on the mickey but didnt want to start at 3pm..............so...........we said we'd go watch a Quins RL game.
Some guys from the 2nd team decided to come along, then some ladies from the 1s, then housemates.

next thing we know, we're a group of 50+ HOCKEY players drinking at a slow(ish) pace whilst watching some RL.

Match over, train to Richmond, on the smash.

People loved it - some of us have even been back!

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:10 pm  

Interestingly I have a friend who is leaving the Army in the next few months and he is a hockey player. We were discussing options for future employment/networking when we got onto just this subject-Hockey/middle England etc and he agreed that the "type" of people who played the sport were just that. Paddock dont take offence!!

Its also intersting you mention Aussies etc, in the posts before the Manly game there were stats that suggested the Aussies that come to UK are "middle Australia" and likely to wear a Wallabies top.

Im not knocking this just questioning is this the right audience, do we need to change what we are as a sport etc to make the link

EFH you mention in a earlier post you know why companies dont sponsor Quins RL- What is that reason? Im not into marketing but am just interested

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:19 pm  

Its all relative to the sector your in.

Its the perceived success and the benfits derived.

I'll list the Marketing Black Marks against Quins

Youre in Rugby League.
- You are detached from the main audience (M62 corridoor) which doesnt appeal.

- You have no local roots and fan base in an area of London, which means no immediate audeince

- Compared to the competition you dont get equivalent audiences, as a sponsor you wonder why you only get 5k when your competition get 15k.

- As a sponsor you want to be known in London (which isnt happening)

- As a London sponsor, could you get better coverage from another team (Wasps, Saracens, Brentford, Charlton,etc etc)

- You dont offer a commercially sound and succesful sporting platform to attribute a brand/company to. (Sky sponsoring British Cycling for example)

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:20 pm  

WIRE

With regards to your friend, maybe thats his circle of friends.

But im from Hull, went to a rough state school, went to Uni in Birmingham and couldnt be any further from your middle class RU fan.
Yes there are people in Hockey from that sector of society, but they are not the norm or the majority!

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:21 pm  

poorlytoe wrote:

absolutely no idea what point you're making re portacabins - if it's that they're now in a smart office and that should make all the difference to the quality of their work, then i have to disagree. A lot of amazing businesses have grown from people's garages.....

And have you considered why the club appears to have never held onto a marketing team for more than a year or two at a time?
And when you say 'dropped the ball' - who exactly? As far as I can see, it's a different set of people every five minutes.

Also - It ceased to be a sponsorship thread a long time ago and became a conversation...people reacting to each others postings in a logical (sometimes!) fashion. If you want it to be a sponsorship thread - sticky it as such. Anyhow, sponsorship is a subset of marketing, so let's not get overly anal.

Some of you on here definitely damage the club with the things you post. You're entitled to post them, but I suspect if you thought long and hard about it, you might realise that you're not engendering anyone wandering through the internet ether to come watch games with the constant negativity and blame. This site in itself is in danger of becoming negative PR for the club!

Porta-Cabin ref was to highlight the conditions the club were operating under. This is not a cottage industry, it is professional sport.
I have no idea why the club have never managed to hang on to marketing staff. I know they don't pay a lot, but still, it is a bit of a mystery. To have "grew crowds from 4k to 10k in 3 years" would look good on anyones CV.
As for damaging the club.....anything but. The club will launch a new scheme this year that I introduced them to. For this introduction, I would normally receive commission.....but I have declined the comms on this occassion. I sat with the RFL and discussed ways in which to promote the game. Taking no credit for the great turn out, but £500 a day is my going rate for consultancy which I would never dream of charging the club. Opinions regarding where things go wrong are just that, Opinions. As for casual visitors.....I think you overstate the importance of this site and this forum.
Negative PR.......GET FRIGGIN REAL. If we got some press coverage regarding this site it would be more coverage than the club normally get.
I happen to be in Sales and Marketing and as such, if I can help the club in any way, I will. If I was an accountant, I'd probably do their books for nothing.

: Fri Feb 27, 2009 1:01 pm  

gutterfax wrote:

Porta-Cabin ref was to highlight the conditions the club were operating under. This is not a cottage industry, it is professional sport.
I have no idea why the club have never managed to hang on to marketing staff. I know they don't pay a lot, but still, it is a bit of a mystery. To have "grew crowds from 4k to 10k in 3 years" would look good on anyones CV.
As for damaging the club.....anything but. The club will launch a new scheme this year that I introduced them to. For this introduction, I would normally receive commission.....but I have declined the comms on this occassion. I sat with the RFL and discussed ways in which to promote the game. Taking no credit for the great turn out, but £500 a day is my going rate for consultancy which I would never dream of charging the club. Opinions regarding where things go wrong are just that, Opinions. As for casual visitors.....I think you overstate the importance of this site and this forum.
Negative PR.......GET FRIGGIN REAL. If we got some press coverage regarding this site it would be more coverage than the club normally get.
I happen to be in Sales and Marketing and as such, if I can help the club in any way, I will. If I was an accountant, I'd probably do their books for nothing.

Still no idea what the portacabins have to do with anything. It seems to me that the QuinsRU link up hasn't worked yet, so they may as well still be in the car park....
I suspect you probably do know why nobody has stayed in marketing - you're evidently bright and seems fairly obvious to me. 20% of your consultancy fee prob wouldn't be obtainable. And no matter how much you pretend it is, history suggests it isn't an easy task and that luck plays a major part - ask the team who put together the popular basketball side in Newcastle, but the same team, doing the same things, can't make the Falcons work....

I think it's great that you help out - but why not do so with humility and selflessness, or why bother?

I like your postings - they're witty and you clearly don't always take yourself too seriousy....however you sometimes let yourself down with personal invective.

Incidentally, PR doesn't have to involve media - it's the management of the flow of information between an organisation and its publics. So it can be quite subtle. And I work in it. And get very well paid to do so - though you won't find me crassly quoting figures.

And although this board isn't mega-populated, it does partly contribute to the publics perception of the club. All these things add up and if I were a new fan looking to support, I'd think twice given some of the things that are said!