I worked very closely with the marketing team at Scarlets Rugby, which was something that I’ve not done before, especially in that sort of environment. Seeing how the marketing team was run within the club and the different strategies used taught me a lot about other options I could consider in this industry and broaden my horizons.
The first initiative we did was ‘Paint the town Scarlet’, which we did in the lead up to face the Dragons in the URC that weekend. To engage the fans, we scheduled a meet the players in Elli town shopping centre, with Ioan Nicholas, Kemsley Mathia, Marc Jones, and Tom Phillips attending, as well as Cochyn the mascot. When we got to the shopping centre, I handed out flyers with links to tickets for the upcoming game, by the time I had got back to the offices we had a message to say that there had been several people buy tickets for the game in those few hours. Therefore, the marketing ploy worked to gain more ticket sales for the upcoming match. This taught me a low about how important little marketing campaigns are for the clubs’ finances and sustainability. I also learnt how effective it can be with fan engagement as well, it was the school holidays, so the timings worked well as there was a very good turn out of supporters at the hopping centre. From this marketing campaign the club could’ve earned several new followers and supporters who would sign up for season tickets and memberships.
I also helped create a video for the marketing team to promote season tickets for next season. We asked fans to come in the video so we could record them saying “Yma O Hyd” which is the Scarlets slogan, translated to, “We’re here forever”. This taught me how important fan engagement is when working within a club’s media team. The video wouldn’t be as engaging to fans if didn’t already include fans that attended matches already and showed their passion for the club. It also taught me how to position objects while filming people in this sort of scenario, for example I was tasked with holding the big microphone on a pole but had to make sure that it wasn’t in the camera shot and there was no shadow of it either. A little part like not having the shadow of the mic in the camera is something very little that I wouldn’t have though about immediately. However, after this being pointed out to me, it will be something I remember when shooting video packages again. These slight things could be the difference between a good video and an excellent video.
17th April, 2022
Tobias' Sports Journalism Blog 