Recent interview by laketheposts.com with new sports marketing guy at NU.

Obviously I have a bias here. But you have to admit that increasing attendance for NU in a pro-sports town is no easy task. It's not like we are Birmingham Alabama where the Crimson Tide IS your pro sports team. Even Columbus, OH has small competition for sportsfans. The basic question is how do you develop a fan base of people who haven't attended the school and have many other entertainment options. I like his approach, "Oh, you're an Iowa fan and a college football fan? Well come grab some cheap season tickets and watch some great college football. NU can be your second favorite team and you'll get great seats when your #1 team comes into town." I also think that there are plenty of pro sports fans that want to provide a gameday experience to their children. It's a walk from public transportation and it only costs a small fraction of taking your family to a Bears game.

http://www.laketheposts.com/2010/08/purple-mafia-profiles-sr-assoc-ad-mike.html

As we sprint towards the start of college football season, instability is the theme of the summer. BYU's want to become the Mormon mirror of Notre Dame's independence - meaning, a football independent and league affiliation in everything else - has set off absolute chaos as the WAC and Mountain West pillage one another. The only thing that is certain in the CFB landscape is uncertainty. Coincidentally, Northwestern enters 2010 on the cusp of cementing stability. The 'Cats look to earn their third straight bowl game - a program first - and potentially notch the highest 3-year win total in history as well. The major downside to NU continues to be its inability to fill Ryan Field with Northwestern fans - or any fans for that matter. The 'Cats were dead last in attendance in the Big Ten once again in '09 - by a wide margin (Indiana was 10th averaging 41,000 fans per game). Enter Mike Polisky.

On June 10, 2010 Athletic Director Jim Phillips scored a Chicago-market coup by landing Mike Polisky as the Senior Associate AD External Affairs (still not sure why he's not Sr. Associate AD Sales & Marketing). Priority one? Increase attendance at Ryan Field. Polisky served most recently as the president of the Chicago Wolves and prior to that, as president/GM of the Arena Football League's Chicago Rush - a team that was the gold standard for attendance and marketing. Mike has a fantastic reputation in Chicago in sports marketing circles and his coming to Northwestern coincides with a landmark time at Northwestern - one that Jim Phillips deserves a lot of credit for as he finally convinced the university to invest in NU Athletics. Let's get in to it with Mike....


LTP: What ultimately lured you to this job?

MP: The opportunity to work for Jim Phillips and all of the incredibly talented people combined with the renowned reputation of the institution. The Coaching staff is one of the best in the country - not just football -but across all sports - and to have the opportunity to assist the program with Jim's (Phillips) and Morty's (Morton Schapiro - NU President) support. For the first time Northwestern has really been able to put some resources behind the marketing - from the strategy to the resulting ad campaign. A ticket department starts this Monday. There are just so many firsts here that are beginning and it's an honor just to be a part of it.



LTP: I've got to go there. You're an Iowa alum. You must be aware of the "friendly" rivalry between Iowa and NU. How is this going to work?

MP: When I was at Iowa I wrote for Des Moines Register the entire time. I didn't go to a single Iowa game during my four years so it is easy to separate for me. I've actually had a ton of my family go to NU - aunts, uncles, cousins. My sons first cheer was "Go U, NU!" If you ask my sons who their favorite teams are they'll tell you - Bears, Northwestern and the White Sox. I'm a big fan of Northwestern.



LTP: You helped build the Rush in to the attendance envy of the AFL. What are the key's to success from that experience that you'll bring to Northwestern?

MP: Great support from ownership with special people who want to make something happen. We have that here at NU. We've brought in great people to run the ticket department and perform at a high level with the proper skill set. You have to be able to invest to realize the revenue. There are a lot of smiles around here...but we all know there is a lot of work to be done.

It's not going to be easy. We're starting by doing the fundamental things. We are one of 30-some teams in town - its not same as Ann Arbor or Iowa City. The mention of those cities immediately evoke an association with their schools. When you say "Chicago" it is far more competitve than college towns to get that association and when you combine that with a very small alumni base and undergrad population it presents some challenges. While there are challenges so many sports fans are looking for competition and value entertainment. We're making changes to make a great atmosphere whether it be gameday at Ryan Field or when you walk in to Welsh-Ryan.

We need to really get to that college football fan. If you didn't' go to school here that's fine. We are happy having Northwestern as your second favorite school. If once every other year you root for your favorite team at Ryan Field we're OK with that. We're convinced after a couple of years of experiencing Northwestern football you'll find yourself rooting for the 'Cats for all 12 regular season games and find it harder and harder to even eventually not root for NU over your #1 team.



LTP: With so much work to do to get us to the level we need to be at where do you start? What are the top priorities.

MP: Number one is to get in to the marketplace. I've only been here since June 10 and a lot of work was already in progress on this. The entire marketing campaign and ad campaign was done in-house. I can tell you we've got really smart people in the department and we're working together well. We knew we needed a ticket department. We brought in someone from the Chicago White Sox who ran group sales for six years. We wanted someone with relationships, but if from a team, we wanted someone who was hungry and had to fight for their food. I wanted someone who really understood the marketplace and knew what it took to try and drive attendance in a competitive marketplace.


The next thing was that I said we have to have great attention to detail on everything that we do. We can't do every single thing at once, so let's really pick the priorities and do them incredibly well. To the staff's credit there are and were a lot of really great ideas that we had, but know have the resources to act on some of them.

Next, we had to make sure we're conducting the fudnamentals correctly. We had to put logitstics and an infrastructure in place for outbound sales. From a marketing perspective - are we in the right spots to connect with our target?. We need to put in metrics to differentiate between what we're doing that is brand building and awareness and also really measure the ROI (return on investment).We know we need to track the resonance of what we're doing in the marketplace.


I'm anticipating a good year, but we need to measure renewal busienss, group tickets and the like. Once we get a little history we'll know how to change, tweak and plan 5, 10 and 15 years.


I can tell you it is an exciting time. We've got a huge group getting here really early and working leaving late but everyone has smiles on their faces. There are just so many special people here and we're spending a lot of time together. Everyone is missing seeing their kids and families, but we realize the opportunity we have to make this even more special. And now is that time.

LTP: Have you been able to draw on best practices from other markets' teams that are like Northwestern. Specifically, BC, Miami and Stanford - you know, the major market private school teams?


MP: We haven't yet. We work together internally on how to move forward and use different learnings. There is a network of people we can tap in to, but we just haven't got to this part of it yet. And, the truth is the situation here is different. When you really lay out the attributes - private school in a major city, the small alumni, the sports competition, the weather...you realize how unique the specific brand attributes of this market are.


LTP: We've read about the gameday atmosphere being a priority. Tell us what you have in store.

MP: I officially started June 11. We had to do some serious hustling knowing how quickly the season is approaching. We need to make some real appropriate changes. Gameday upgrades are underway - we've installed a brand new sound system. We're able to go down every path to analyze how we conduct our business and the impact it has/will have on our customers. We are going to implement more dramatic player introductions. We are really going to harken back to the history of NU and bring that to gameday experience. There are so many new things that are going to happen - so many things to make it nice to go to Ryan Field. Look, ther is nothing earth-shattering, but it will definitely be towards providing a customer experience as good as can be.


It took some hard work and insight but Jim Phillps was able to convince the university that Northwestern Athletic is really special. We are now able to address the fan in some really good ways. We're going to be able to provide stability.

LTP: Define what success looks like this year from an attendance standpoint and a gameday experience standpoint.

MP: Quantitiative - it will be tought in year one. Qualitatively we'll make some strides. There ia a "rule of 5s" in outdoor advertising that is predicated on keeping it simple. We've got a clean, clear message - "Chicago's Big Ten Team". There is a helmet. There is the website address...all very simple. So far the feedback we've received is that people are loving it. We're getting a very positive response. From a business standpoint we've got a loooooong way to go. One marketing campaign is not going to solve the business problems. We need to build this thing one fan at a time. We need to re-engage alums, we need to engage our students and future alums, we need to engage the sports fan looking for value entertainment, area college students...and we're going to do so by building relationships.


Success will be on a daily basis. Ultimately the numbers will prove it out. We've got a good start as season tickets are up 35% from last year and that was without even having a ticket department in place. The Wrigley game has paid dividends.


Ultimately I will say we've had a successful first year if we do everything the way we set out to do the level of expectation we've set, meaning that we do it extremely well.



LTP: You've mentioned that NU didn't have a true ticket department - meaning, dedicated, full-time staff concentrating on targeted outbound sales - until now. Can you walk us through the specifics of what this new ticket department looks like?

MP: Sure. Our ticket department starts on Monday. We've hired six full-time account executives and a ticket manager who they will report to starting next week. Most of the time when you have an established brand you have a ticket department and then there is an operational part of the departmetn which is the logistics behind making tickets work - (processing, shipping etc...).

We're going to have outbound ticket department for the first time. We're starting with six account execs (AEs) and then we will grow the department based on the ROI of that investment. These full-time staffers will be following a strategic, targeted plan and making 80 calls each per day. That's 480 calls per day, nearly 2500 per week and 125,000 calls per year. They'll be visiting with local companies and individuals. They'll be building and growing our database. Nuturing relationships with present and future ticket holders. These calls are not harassment. They'll be targeted calls of folks who've been to games or have heard about us through marketing outreach. We are really focused on integrating our efforts to leverage the names we've already garnered.

LTP: Mike, I can't tell you how thrilled we are as a fan base to have you on board and furthermore the appreciation we have for Jim to have secured the financial and emotional resources of the university to really finally put us in a position to build a stable program. We definitely want to reconnect with you soon, to find out how things are going and what we can do to help.

not reading all that shit

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Me neither. And I'm an alum....

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.