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Message: [QUOTE="cuseinchina, post: 623379, member: 3079"] First off, I like McDonald's challenge, it sits well with the rest of the fan friendly behavior we've seen from the new staff. I also like the fact that he's 'working with' syracuse.com to get the message out. Maybe he'll get a thousand more than would have otherwise come. This new openness with fans and the community WILL pay off. It is also about 3 months old and it will take time (and some more winning) for people to fully buy in to it. But it's the right attitude and right direction. Having said that, the athletic department needs to do a much better job if they hope to make this a real event and in general NEED TO STEP UP THE MARKETING to even close to what other schools are doing. A small investment could have real returns in terms of season ticket sales and in single game ticket purchases and support this fall. What it does for recruiting is tough to say, but more people definitely can't hurt. Whether you think it should be necessary or not, whether you think it's cheesy and stupid or not, clearly our competition is doing this stuff and doing it for a reason... step 1 - You can look to some of the other ACC schools to see what they do, some ideas from the middle to lower tier of the ACC include: UNC - Food trucks and food vendors (free, good for local businesses makes it more like a weekend festival feel instead of just a die hard football event), a decent band playing on stage, pictures for kids in team uniform cutouts, photo session for 'boys' of all ages with the cheerleaders, autograph session with signed autograph cards for first 3000 fans Georgia Tech - live band, inflatables/games for kids, beer/food outside the stadium, fireworks after the game NC State - not at the spring game but huge concert/festival in august called Packapalooza - google it step 2 - Beyond the stuff above (some of which would be easy to do (vendors, maybe a band, stuff for kids to make it like a street festival), you could potentially have these randomly thought up offerings or something like them : first 500 kids through the door participate in practice drills with the team - could have stations for throwing, receiving, kicking field goals etc; autograph session with the FINAL 4 BASKETBALL SQUAD (i know i know but you have to play the cards you got); sneak preview mock up tent with a large model of the IPF; prizes given to random ticket holders - dinner with the team captains or head coach, autographed jersey, season tickets etc; NY state craft beer tasting tent etc. step 3 - promote it via traditional outlets and let people know how different it is now than it has been in the past. McDonald is doing the right thing getting it out via the post standard...and with some new bells and whistles that outlet would be enough to get a big increase in the number of people coming..i mean people love city street festival, add a football game to it and all of a sudden the dad is happy too not just the wife and kids. You could do some TV spots too but I think you do better getting in the local paper and maybe getting on the local news. step 4 - direct promotion. How easy would it bee to print up 100k 'tickets' to this event? Make them look cool, include some promotional material on the 'stuff' that will be available and then give them to the following groups: season tickets holders for any sport (obviously), every student should get two in their mailbox as should every professor (yes even the women's studies department), then give out a couple to every single one of the 19000 kids in public schools in the city of syracuse. Make this about family, community, and coming together to support something positive in the city. The point is to make syracuse football part of the cultural fabric of the community and make the spring game attractive enough for casual fans with families to take up half a saturday to attend. Die hards will be there anyway, adding this 'stuff' does nothing to take away from what they experience. Gotta broaden the reach. Doing a fraction of what I outlined in step 1/2 (many of which are free), and spending the money to do step 4 - would work wonders and generate a great deal of goodwill. If it annoys the die-hards who want it to be all about football, so be it. [/QUOTE]

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