Over half way through my internship with the Perth Heat, and really enjoying the wide array of opportunities it has presented me with. Things are starting to heat up (pun intended) in the office as well, with the official season launch a mere 4 weeks away.
My primary task during my internship has been to draft, and implement a full scale communication policy for the Perth Heat, as they did not have a current policy. For this blog post I want to talk about what I consider to be the main obstacles and opportunities for developing sporting brands in Western Australia. To do this, I have categorised the Perth Heats main competition into 3 categories (team based sports only).
1. Dominant Perth Sporting Brands
- West Coast Eagles (AFL)
- Fremantle Dockers (AFL)
- Perth Scorchers/Western Warriors (Cricket)
2. Emerging Perth Sporting Brands
- Perth Wildcats (Basketball)
- Perth Glory (Soccer)
- Western Force (Rugby Union)
- West Coast Fever (Netball)
3. Niche Perth Sporting Brands
- Perth Heat (Baseball)
- Perth Thunder (Ice Hockey)
- WA Reds (Rugby League)
Obviously the long term goal would be to become a dominant brand, but realistically that would take at least 10-20 years of solid following. The goal therefore is to become an emerging sporting brand, and build on that. Possible obstacles towards this goal include.
Obstacles
1. Lack of Funding - Perth Heat have a limited budget, and do not allocate a lot of this towards media and communication. This means that traditional advertising (print, radio, tv) is not really an option. With the rise of social media this is not as much of an obstacle as it was 10 years ago, but it still places a limitation on the degree of brand success you can achieve
2. Concentration of Media Availability - If you ever watch the nightly mainstream media news, you will notice a pattern in its reporting of sports based stories. AFL gets first billing, followed by Cricket and then summaries of all the Golf, Tennis, Motorsport and Soccer news are jammed into the remaining 2 minutes of the segment. The last piece of Baseball news that was reported on mainstream news, was the Perth Heats 2013 Premiership Win..........which was in March.
It is not all doom and gloom however, especially given Perth's recent history of adopting and re-invigorating a number of key sports (I recommend people look at the history of the Perth Glory and Perth Wildcats during the mid 2000's). A number of opportunities do exist for the Perth Heat to develop a strong local brand.
Oppurtunities
1. Get Involved in the Perth Community - Any brand wanting to gain acceptance in the Perth market, should be actively involved in Perths Event community. This week the Perth Heat have been set up at the Perth Royal Show, and have seen a steady increase in ticket sales and membership as a result
(This Photo was taken during one of the quieter parts of the day...)
2. Utilise Online Communication - This has been at the forefront of Perth Heat's communication efforts, in order to boost the awareness of the brand. In 2012, one of our rival teams the Melbourne Aces created a viral video (through the help of an advertising agency) that sparked a huge increase in Baseball in Melbourne, and resulted in International News Coverage.
(I will let you guys decide whether or not you think this video is real or not)
Without giving too much away, there are similar plans in motion to create a video for the Perth Heat in order to create viral interest in Baseball in Perth.
The Perth Heat have their first preseason game in around 4 weeks at the Barbagallo Ballpark. It is a great time to be in the office, given the players will regularly come into the office to talk with everyone, and there is a general sense of excitement. Having never attended a Baseball game in my life, there is also a personal sense of excitement about the launch of the 2014/2015 season.
Till next time
Simon Kerrigan
1 comment:
That would've been great, a week to go to the royal show and pitch baseball to the masses. It's a really good idea and good timing with the start of the season around the corner.
But with your plan, I wouldn't put rugby league in the same boat as the heat and the thunder. Firstly the WA Reds are defunct and while the NRL wants to bring a team to the west there are two franchises fighting for it. Rugby League is huge here, this year the Souths took on the Warriors, nib Stadium was packed out. The NRL will bring more and more league out here until we get a team.
But with ice hockey and baseball, being american sports, they are definitely emerging as you say. But baseball is easy to grow here than it is ice hockey, kids generally have three choices for summer sports cricket, athletics and softball/baseball/t-ball. However it helps when the MLB brings games out here like when LA and Arizona played an opening series in Sydney. Plus Fox Sports give more airtime to the ABL than it does to the AIHL.
Anyways, it's going be a good summer for the Heat once again, enjoy being a part of a successful team.
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