Competing in Perth's Sporting Market

Hi all

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

Brainpower Sessions!

Vision-Board Making

Hello everyone!

I’m Justine Lai, currently interning at Porter Novelli (PN) Singapore and in the midst of my final semester.

For my third post, I would like to share some valuable things that I’ve learnt working at the PN office.

When I first entered, the office had just begun to undergo some managerial changes due to change of employees and staffing. Our new Managing Director, Jimmy, implemented fresh practices and one of them is the Brainpower Session, where the PN team gets together every week to learn and share topics that are beneficial and could be applied to our public relations (PR) work.

For our very first session, we had guest speaker Tim Love (Biography), Vice-Chairman Omnicom and CEO of APIMA, to speak with us on ‘How Asia Got Its Name.’ Porter Novelli is part of Omnicom Group, a holding company which specializes in advertising and marketing and has a network of more than 175 companies worldwide. Thus, we all felt appreciative of Tim for taking his time off to speak with us.

Being in the industry for over 39 years, Tim Love oversaw how the media affected each of the generations and the evolution of new media. The internet shifted the influence power from traditional media to people, who now possess greater influence as well as the ability to control the social media and trends. An advice given by Tim was that clients appreciate and value the ability to shape things fast, and the right application of strategies. It was a very fascinating and thought provoking presentation.

Another session that caught my interest was by GMR Marketing, a company also under Omnicom which shares the same office as PN. Lisa Johnson heads GMR Singapore as its Asia Lead and the company specializes in sports marketing.

One of the recent projects undertaken by GMR was the P&G campaign for the London Olympics 2012 shown above. The GMR team shared some back-story of how sports marketing is being carried out, such as having athletes undertaking ambassadorial roles and how products are being marketed through sports. The team also described the challenges that they faced during the P&G Mom Campaign as they had numerous of responsibilities, like taking-charge of the linguistics and hospitality of the athletes’ mothers during the London Olympics. The session was very intriguing as it never occurred to me how huge sports marketing is in the industry and the crucial role that athletes play in product marketing.

The PN team also had our own creative discussions during the weekly brainpower sessions, such as vision-board making where we thought about our own future achievements and how we aim to balance our work-life.

Product of our Vision-board making session, guess which one is mine?

These weekly sessions are extremely refreshing and really beneficial. I think it is really good to put off work for a few hours and learn about the different facets of PR. Being too focus with our work may not always be good, and the knowledge that we gain during these sessions definitely make a difference to how we perform in our work. I feel really lucky that I’m in PN, as I’m able to take these great insights home with me every week.

With love,

Justine Lai

15215640

Curtin Singapore