Ideas for Falcon Marketing Upgrades

[Father Brown]

General thoughts that I think can help us kick our exposure up a notch with low impact to overall expenses on execution:

1) Football Helmet Logo - The interlocking BG change from the old bird is the best decision our Athletic Dept has made. Those helmets are shown every down of every game and when you factor in national TV, its huge exposure and recognition. When you see a bumper sticker or logo of the University of Texas, the orange bull speaks volumes. But the BG letters are tad bit thin. If we bulk up the width of the logo, make it thicker with more mass on the helmets, it in my estimation will not only look better, but you will be able to see the logo from a distance better (for example, the University of Oklahoma's interlocking OU).

2) BG Credit Card - I dont know how many of you have the BG sponsored credit card, but the image we blaze onto the plastic is a picture of F&F. I love our mascots but the presentation is totally second rate and looks like someone put it together with photoshop at home. When you look, at say, Arizona State's University credit card, it is all yellow with their Sparky logo centered and covering 2/3s of the front view. Very sharp and promotes their best known logo. It would be great to have our card orange with the BG-Bird logo dead center.

3) License Plate - Perhaps one of the best ways to market BG, we should upgrade efforts to get all alum to order new BG sponsored plates where they dont have them today. We dont do enough here. We should have a front page link on the BG University site as well as the University Athletics site promoting getting the plates. Not only does the University pick up fee income (and should be able to submit as a tax write off for alum) but more importantly, those plates rolling down the road are a great way to remind everyone who is the best. I just received my new Ohio plates with the upgraded logo and they did a great job, totally smokin'. And when you wrap an electric orange bracket around those same plates, it screams.

4) Campus Banners - We now have banner displays around campus, usually attached to lighting fixtures. Great idea and can really help spark who we are visually. But too often we post banners that dont support the Brown n Orange colors. ANY banner that we place around campus has to have trace elements of our University colors or they dont go up.

5) University District/Athletic Complex Street Divider Lane Colors - For the key roads in and around the campus district, add a Brown n Orange center stripe as part of the painted dividers (or whatever you call them). As an example, Dublin OH applies their city green colors to special zones of road in the heart of the downtown. Looks great and adds a special pop and excitement.

6) Merchandise/Gear -I have no idea who in our AD controls decisions around apparel, but it is incredibly bad. At first, we had no plan, no master plan to our gear. We would have a million different vendors with no discipline around look n feel. So, I guess we have made some upgrades since we finally selected Addidas as our primary vendor of choice. Fine, not as good as Nike but ok. The Addidas Sideline gear is actually pretty good stuff. Our colors and logo are done well and it generally looks good. I just received my Addidas BG logo visor, baseball cap, and winter pull over hat. Very acceptable and the best I have seen ever for our gear. But you have to search high and low for the Sideline gear and you only find bits and pieces in a variety of places. The current on line offering housed on the Athletics site is atrocious. Aside from 2 or 3 nice selections, its a bunch of murky grey colors with terrible graphics, especially the T Shirts. Can't we launch an on line store with a comprehensive selection of Addidas Sideline gear? And have brown,orange,and white based color selections. Stop offering 90% grey colored shirts and sweatshirts. Oh, one more thing - PLEASE offer authentic gear like B-Ball, hockey, and football jerseys. I am not saying we will sell a ton of this higher priced gear, but it will sell well and give a certain percentage of our alum what they are looking for.

7) Residential Buildings (The Quads) - Ok, so this is not a classic marketing suggestion but its driving me crazy. I have so many ideas as do many other on how to get our campus residential halls upgraded that I could go on for days. But there is a special quick fix needed on the Quads. The rust or whatever it is that leaks from the metal window framing has to be cleaned up. The Quads are one of the first images presented and the discoloration around the windows looks like a Soviet ERA Housing Complex. I was a Residential Advisor in Bromfield, and if anyone can love the Quads, its me. But I dont. They need to go but for now, consider an exterior cleaning (and a quick clean up on the back of the Rec Center as well).

I have many other thoughts but wont burn your time on them....for now. Father needs his sleep.

[Ydfalcon]

1 (Helmet Logo) - Personally, I think it looks fantastic as it is and it might look odd to make the letters any bigger. First off, there's the issue of them being in our signature font, which looks fantastic, and where Oklahoma can get away with the OU interlocked, O and U are fairly simple looking letters, whereas there's a little more going on in B and G, so making the letters bolder might make them a little less clear, if that makes sense.

2 (Credit Card) - I gotta admit, I didn't even know we had one, so they could definitely stand to market that better. And your ideas there sounded pretty good to me.

3 (License Plate) - Hard to argue with this one. What I've seen of the current ones looks great and it's always cool to see someone promoting BG in this way.

4 (Campus Banners) - The banners out by the athletic side of campus are great, orange with what is commonly referred to as the "peekaboo" logo in the center, and sporting the "18 sports, 1 team" mantra which I think is really cool. The banners towards the academic side are also orange or brown, so I don't think we're in any danger of losing color placement in this regard.

5 (Colored lane dividers) - I don't know what the laws are regarding street markings, but this is a unique sounding idea. I think we could definitely do something to get our colors/logo/both integrated into the streets around campus, especially the athletic areas, which would be a cool way to help the atmosphere and denote that this is falcon country.

6 (Merch) - I don't mind having numerous vendors and I personally don't care whether it's Nike or Adidas that manufactures the majority of our apparel, but I couldn't agree more that the official online store needs major help. For that matter, so does the actual bookstore in some areas. Most notably of which is that you cannot buy a proper looking football jersey from them. The closest the bookstore sells is this:



which obviously is missing numerous elements. SBX sells a replica with all the correct trim/colors/etc, but it seems absurd that the official store does not. Neither of them offers them online the last I checked, however. I understand that BG is a smaller school, and so I don't expect for other college merchandise retailers to carry an equal amount of BG stuff as they do some of the bigger colleges, but our official store should be THE place to go to find all kinds of great merchandise, and as it is now, it misses that mark big time.

7 (Quads) - Are you aware that Kreischer and Harshman both received major exterior upgrades in the last two years? They look a lot better now with new awnings, signage, landscaping/paved areas/bike racks/etc. Are they perfect? No, but they look worlds better than they did.

[BillyLP]

Why is this in the football thread?

[VDub26Falcon]

I have one issue with the BG plates...I couldn't have my personalized plate with the BG logo because you can only have 6 characters on the plate with the BG Logo. My plate, "I ZG ZMBA" would not fit on that which sucks!

[Globetrotter]

Why is this in the football thread?

Who Cares?

Sorry about the above quoted post Father Brown. There is one in every board. We have more than our fair share.

Great ideas. I think that they would be wise to focus on the area counties in marketing. They are the most likely to make it to games and have an attachment to the team.

[VDub26Falcon]

That's a great point Globetrotter. I definitely feel like even other communities in Wood County aren't very well marketed. I could be wrong, seeing as I've been out of Wood County for over 2 years now. There are so many surrounding areas that have no "big league" sports but have a major university just a half an hour or 45 minutes away. We need to make every opportunity to get everyone in the area to know about BG!

[FMBfan07]

2) BG Credit Card - I dont know how many of you have the BG sponsored credit card, but the image we blaze onto the plastic is a picture of F&F. I love our mascots but the presentation is totally second rate and looks like someone put it together with photoshop at home. When you look, at say, Arizona State's University credit card, it is all yellow with their Sparky logo centered and covering 2/3s of the front view. Very sharp and promotes their best known logo. It would be great to have our card orange with the BG-Bird logo dead center.

i once had a BGSU c/c. i don't anymore.. i maxed it out.. and no long can use it.. opps.. i love BG so much I kept shopping with it. LOL

[jg4242]

I agree that there is no excuse for us to not be able to get ahold of Adidas replica jerseys, jackets, etc... And it's kind of embarassing that SBX has a better selection of merchandise in terms of variety and quality than the bookstore.

As for the credit card, we need to get deals with more banks. You can't get a BG card through Huntington, which is the main bank in BG! For shame!

[Father Brown]

Why is this in the football thread?

This forum serves a variety of roles. At the end of the day, its about marketing our Athletics and University and getting them stronger.

[FalconTurf]

The two thing that should be done first are:

1 - Improve the gear available. I should be able to get a variety of nice hats, shirts and sweatshirts without looking very hard with the new logo and font that are crisp, clean and uncluttered in appearance. Some of the designs are awful and the best ones often have one sport or another on it - I want to support all 18.

2 - Improve local media relations. Get all the area papers, as small as they may be, to print something about as many games and events as possible even if it means submitting the story from our own PR people (seems that's how the corporate world does it). The New-Messenger (Fremont) prints several submitted stories each week.

[redskins4ever]

I don't think BG has a lot of control over what is produced, and what isn't produced, and when you are scrambling for whatever dollars you can get, its best not to piss off Adidas.

Should the stuff be better... absolutely, but unless you have access to their apparel contract you won't know.

Now on the other hand.... if you wanted to know... I would do a Freedom of Information Act request to find out.

[Father Brown]

I don't think BG has a lot of control over what is produced, and what isn't produced, and when you are scrambling for whatever dollars you can get, its best not to piss off Adidas.

Should the stuff be better... absolutely, but unless you have access to their apparel contract you won't know.

Now on the other hand.... if you wanted to know... I would do a Freedom of Information Act request to find out.

We have absolute control over what is produced based on their product offering. The idea here is we make more than we spend by providing a good product to our customers. As to not making a vendor upset (crazy concept in my mind), Addidas works for us and I am sure they are very happy to have our contract. Nike, UA, Russell, etc are all out there and these companies covet every D1 university relationship they land. Make no mistake about that.

[daspollak]

Want to improve BG's marketing, win, and do it consistently. Gonzaga is known, because it is a small school that can compete with the big boys year in and year out. If BG can win on a regular basis adidas would be more than happy to make our jersey available. I wonder what Boise St. was like before they consistently battled for a BCS spot.

[thewebboy]

Want to improve BG's marketing, win, and do it consistently. Gonzaga is known, because it is a small school that can compete with the big boys year in and year out. If BG can win on a regular basis adidas would be more than happy to make our jersey available. I wonder what Boise St. was like before they consistently battled for a BCS spot.

I've always look at Boise St. as the type of program we should aspire to be. Winning cures all (as does only having to compete for fans with the University of Idaho).

[Dayons_Den]

I think the authentic/replica adidas jersey boils down to a supply and demand thing.

SBX is obviously in tune with the fact that people will spend $65 or so on the Sportex replica jersey. They carry them, often times home and away, multiple numbers and are fairly quick to get new designs in their store.

SBX also carries a decent variety of adidas BG gear- polos, jackets, t-shirts etc.

This says to me a couple of things. One, SBX probably has looked in to carrying adidas replica jerseys. And two, SBX has probably determined it wouldn't be worth it for them to make the purchase. I would venture to guess that either adidas requires a massive minimum on replica jerseys or the price point on the replicas is set so that it doesn't make sense for SBX to carry the adidas ones after carrying the Sportex ones they currently have. Or both (high minimum and high price point).

I've been pretty satisfied with the Sportex jersey- it is quality and a pretty accurate replica. Would I like an adidas one? Yes, but I probably wouldn't buy as many if the price was closer to $100, I have multiple Sportex jerseys- Omar white, Diyral orange, brown #18, Partridge white, and Tyler orange.

And those of you complaining about selection, the last time I was in SBX I was blown away with the added floor space since the expanded and the great selection of shirts, hats, and novelties.