Laurel Lindsay is the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team Vice-President of Consumer Marketing.
Note in the discussion, Laurel has spent time in the marketing departments of a number of professional sports teams, in several different sports including hockey, football, and baseball. As a result, her ideas and sports and event marketing theories would prove useful to any event related business.
The marketing staff has made the stadium improvements a small part of their advertising campaign, but they focus this on direct mailing, as opposed to media marketing. The stadium improvements also tend to become well-known through word-of-mouth and newspaper/TV coverage, so the team doesn’t need to promote them specifically. Of course, the team listens to what fans enjoy and don’t enjoy about the in-game experience and will make major modifications at the end of a season. Guest Services provides the department with feedback concerning common complaints, as do the surveys the team undertakes. Next year the team is planning to implement a Kids Zone and major renovations to the suites are on-going. Basically, the only part of the in-game experience that the department has no say over is the concession stands, which are not owned by Rogers.
Marketing to women is also a very important aspect of Laurel’s marketing focus:
For this reason, Laurel explains, the club focuses it’s advertising on other avenues than the sports pages and stations. Combined with this focus on casual fans, the Jays have made no secret that they have focused a portion of their media buy and advertising on targeting women. They nurture their male audience, particularly those aged 18-34, but research has revealed that women make decisions about how to spend about 80% of the household’s consumer dollars. For this reason, the Jays have positioned themselves a family-friendly source of entertainment. For example, the Jays will place print advertisements not in the Sports section of the Toronto Star, but in GTA or What’s On sections. This increases the chance that a mother will come across the advertisement and keep baseball in mind as a family activity on the weekend.
Many of Laurel’s proven and dynamic marketing techniques could be used very effectively for most events, whether businesses in themselves, or special conferences.
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