So today, as a member of Carolina’s Sports Business Club, I had the chance to be a part of a discussion with Matt DeMargel, the Director of Media Relations and Promotions for the Durham Bulls. This was the first meeting with a guest speaker I was able to attend this school year and was pretty excited to hear what Matt had to say. This post is basically going to summarize what he talked about. Hopefully you will be able to get something out of it (I definitely did)!
The Minor League Philosophy
Matt began talking about Minor League Baseball and the philosophy Minor League Teams across America have taken on. In the 40s and 50s, Minor League Baseball was a hot product which was making a lot of money. Over the years, it begun to lose its steam with the extreme popularity of the MLB. With baseball fans being able to watch MLB games on television, the Minors found themselves unable to compete with the level of talent and quality of baseball the Majors had to offer. Because of this revelation, teams began to implement a new strategy, which led to somewhat of a resurgence in the 90s. This strategy, as you can probably guess, is centered around fun and affordable entertainment. He related it to wrestling (not that it’s fake, haha) in that in order to compete with other sports like Boxing and “college-style” wrestling, the WWF, WCW, ECW (whatever it is now), focused on the entertainment aspect of the sport. Minor League Baseball, similarly, has come to focus on entertaining their fans, whether it be with mascots, between inning promotions, or fireworks.
Matt’s Career
After this intro, Matt went over how he came to be with the Bulls. I’ll give the short version. Out of college he sought an internship and found one with the Single A Colorado Rockies affiliate and then went to California for a teeny tiny Single A team. He got a call one day and within 48 hours was on his way to Durham to work for the Bulls. He’s worked for the Bulls since 2000 (if my memory serves me correctly).
Economy
Oh of course, the economy. Matt mentioned how the economy has forced many families to cut back on vacations and extravagant trips, presenting an opportunity for many Minor League teams. For example, they are offering “Vacation Packages” where it’s something like “a 10 Night Vacation for $68,” which is essentially a mini game package with a great name. Great to see them using the economy to their advantage.
Durham Bulls Marketing
After his personal introduction, Matt discussed some things going on right now with the Durham Bulls, which I’ll tough on each point briefly:
- 2009 Program – Matt showed us this year’s team program hot off the press. The look and feel of it was like a magazine, and he said their hope was fans would keep it on their coffee tables. Inside, it had a promotional calendar for each game, showing a picture and telling what was going on each night. It also showed some of the Bulls community efforts and highlights from last season (like Kevin Costner paying a visit on July 4th to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Bull Durham. This event apparently didn’t go so well, as the power went out at the game).
- Tampa Bay Rays – Matt mentioned how the Bulls are VERY excited that the Rays had such a successful season last year. Their parent team’s success has opened up many opportunities for the Bulls this season. For example, a few nights of the year, they are handing out free Rays replica t-shirts for players like Eva Longoria. After so many years of disappointing seasons out of Tampa Bay, in the past the Bulls apparently almost had to try and distance themselves from their MLB parent. Now, with a huge percentage of players with the Rays coming from the Bulls, they have a tremendous opportunity.
- Radio ads – Matt mentioned how the Bulls are very fortunate in that one of the local radio stations they advertise on, the morning DJ is a huge Durham Bulls fan. The Bulls merely pay to sponsor the morning scoreboard synopsis of last night’s games (ex. – this score update is presented by the Durham Bulls); however, since the host is a fan, he usually will begin talking about last night’s game or an upcoming matchup. Matt pointed out that if you can match up where your money is spent with people who are actually fans of your team/product, you will get a much better return.
- Moms! – he briefly mentioned that much of their marketing is targeted towards mothers, because they’ve found that they are who make many of the decisions on entertainment for the family.
- Facebook! – Matt mentioned that they just began using Facebook ads this past Fall and had tremendous success. He said that in one week their ad got around 1,000,000 impressions with about 300 click thrus. This is all at a fraction of the cost of a normal ad (a little over 100 bucks). He said you will definitely see more of this this season. I was glad to see they were somewhat in tune with the Social Media world in using these ads as well as Google ads.
Q&A Highlights To what extent do the Durham Bulls still benefit from Bull Durham? Interestingly, Matt said that for a variety of reasons, the movie doesn’t really have a huge impact on sales. He said a lot of people travelling through Durham and make the connection will stop by for a game based on the novelty factor, but there aren’t many links between the Bulls from the movie and the current team. For starters, they aren’t in the same stadium the movie was filmed in, which may be disappointing to some fans of the movie. Also, he mentioned how a lot of people asked why they didn’t show the movie on the jumbotron, to which he responded, have you ever seen the movie? With an R rating, it’s not exactly a family flick. Locals value the team for what it is now, not movie star history of the team.
What are some of your favorite in game promotions that you’ve seen? Matt begun with a promotion the Bulls have done recently, called “Rock On.” It’s basically a knock off off the show Don’t Forget the Lyrics, where contestants stand on the dugouts and sing along with the song, the song stops, and they have to finish the verse, with the fans voting for the winner by cheers. He said it’s gotten to the point where when fans hear Kiss’s Rock ‘n Roll All Night, the song which introduces the contest, they go wild.
His favorite that he had seen from another team was a team out in California, which had the “Trash Family.” Sponsored by a local waste cleanup company, these volunteers would dress in Tuxedos and, when it was their turn, would walk up the aisles and pick up trash (funky, huh?) Then, during pitching changes or pauses in play, they would stand on the dugout and begin doing meticulously choreographed dances. The clean up crew really enjoyed them! But so did the fans!
So that’s the bulk of what was talked about tonight at our meeting. Please leave some comments on what you thought of what was said. I’d love to hear some of your thoughts out there!
