Fantastic Mr Catpiss wrote:
Tell us about your branding then
McManus is in 3rd year of branding within the community to make the club very much part of the town. Its been very successful and the RFL have given us awards 2 years in succession on its promotional foundation to RL.
The club goes into schools, hospitals, care homes, war veterans, autistic and mental health care as very much as an image brand by the first team players. We've got a great young mental + physically impaired rugby team now. Same for ladies rugby McManus has invested money into this venture and beat Leeds in the next round we will be in the Challenge Cup Final and is promoted in the mens semi finals venue at Bolton.
We've also worked hard in the service areas to get a good quality young player into the scholarship programmes, some parents from Warrington and Widnes have allowed there kids to come to Saints and Wigan because the development program is more structured and has a quicker tier. The Saints brand for youth development in rugby league has got great recognition.
The club is well known in Australia for its Academy product brand with seasonal tours with the NRL counterparts, I think the academy team have always come home with a lot more wins than losses. This is one of the reasons you see the first team with a very heavy weighted home product and we could probably compete well with just an academy produced players in the first team.
All this branding is done at grass roots level first with progressions to the super league levels, promotions of the games are through social media avenues with regular networking across the existing and future fan base.
We have copied the Wigan and Warrington Big Game Image Profile but its not really had much impact on drawing in a lot more fans, its the quality and entertaining playing standard which is doing that at the moment.