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Getting Fannies in the Seats
BNH talks with Bill Berger,
the new vice president for sales and marketing for the New Haven Ravens baseball club.
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Business New Haven
6/12/2000
By: Tammy Rachau
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What are your responsibilities with the Ravens, and what is your previous marketing experience?
The primarily responsibility is the advertising, marketing and publicity for the Ravens, and I also oversee all of the sales. This is my second year with the Ravens, and actually my job title just changed recently. I haven't had any previous experience in marketing, strictly, but I've been in other positions where I was doing marketing as part of my job functions. I've had quite a few jobs in public relations.
What media do you utilize for advertising,
and what is your current focus?
We do everything from outdoor to print, radio, cable, network TV and direct mail. We also have a Web site, which I don't consider to be advertising per se, but we see that as being probably the most powerful marketing tool that we have. Once we actually get into the season, probably 95 percent of our advertising is geared directly toward trying to get people into the ballpark for individual events that we're doing. We are doing game promotion more than anything else once the season starts. In the off season, we advertise season-ticket packages, advertising packages and group outings here at the ballpark. When we're not advertising game promotions during the season, we'll also be advertising things like baseball camps, Kids' Club, birthday parties and other special events such as a co-promotion concert that we did with WPLR recently. And also, group outings are something that we advertise year-round. Our advertising volume also increases significantly during the season. From April through September we do the bulk of our advertising.
Tell me about the media partnerships you
are involved in right now.
Besides WPLR, we do a lot with WTNH-TV. We always look for media partners, as I like to call them. What we do with the media partners is to make sure that not only are we getting something that is valuable to us, but that they get something that is valuable to them. We have an exclusive agreement with [WTNH] with respect with advertising on network TV. Part of our arrangement with them is that we are receiving significant exposure on their station, in association with what we are doing with them. They are receiving significant exposure with us by being a presenting sponsor of our season.
What is your relationship with the Seattle Mariners? Do they have anything to do with marketing the Ravens?
Although we are an affiliate of a Major League team, the Seattle Mariners, that relationship is strictly player-related. Everything that goes on on the field, with respect to the players, the trainer, managers, coaches, is all done by the Mariners. We have absolutely no control whatsoever over the players who are on the field. They have nothing to do with the advertising we do, the ticket prices, concession - anything along those lines.
Do you have a specific demographic that
you market to - an age range, a geography,
new sports fans, etc.?
We sort of argue the point of exactly what the age group is, but he bottom line is that it is families we're marketing toward. Families are our demographic. We make sure when we're doing television, for example, that we are doing television that will reach our demographic most effectively. So, we're not going to advertise during a 1 a.m. time slot. Chances are that families will not be tuning in at that time. Conversely, in terms of what is effective for us, we try as much as possible to make sure that we tie ourselves to news product, because of the fact that that is very local, and that's where we're going to get the most bang for our buck, trying to reach families in the local area. As far as area, greater New Haven is our primary market.
So it's baseball fans with families?
We aren't really even trying to target baseball fans. What we are really offering is affordable family entertainment. Everything that we do in the ballpark, from the giveaways to the entire entertainment experience is, in some way or another, geared toward trying to appeal to families. An example of that is that this year we added a brand new kids' playground in the ballpark. We have inflatable equipment that we make available to kids both before and during the game. We felt it was important to try to make an even better family experience.
How does marketing local sports differ from marketing national sports?
I think the biggest difference is that you are speaking to a different audience. When we are going out and doing our marketing, we are speaking directly to people who are in this local market. We aren't doing anything with trying to reach people hundreds of miles away or across the country. What we need to do is we need to get people into our ballpark. That's what makes us successful as a business.
We don't really market the players as much as sports on a national level often does. Again that ties back to the whole family aspect of our marketing, because what we are really focusing on is the family atmosphere we offer here at the ballpark. Because of that, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to market players, specifically. The other problem with marketing players is that we have no control over the players: We could decide that a certain player is perfect to market, develop an entire advertising campaign around him, and then have him be promoted to the major leagues a week later. At this level we are very close to the majors, and there are a large number of players who come through this ballpark, on our team and on other teams, who go on to play in the majors and go on to become major stars in the major leagues. But when the players are here, the people don't know that yet. The audience is seeing people before they are stars. BNH
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