This would make a great marketing case study.

would Boren have transferred if RR and staff made out of season conditioning voluntary (wink, wink) as LC seemed to do towards the end of his tenure?

Yet when RR was hired Justin Boren went to Ohio. I do not know of one Michigan fan who suddenly switched their allegiance to Arkansas upon the RR hire, but I do know of one player who did. 

 

This is false.  Justin Boren did not suddenly switch his allegiance to OSU upon the RR hire.

Fact One:  By all accounts, Boren (who grew up in a Columbus suburb, Pickerington) had always been interested in Ohio State.  Bo Schembechler himself, and Lloyd Carr, worked closely with Mike Boren to secure Justin's Michigan commitment.

Fact Two:  When RR was hired, Boren didn't suddenly go anywhere.  He remained part of the Michigan team.  He was performing well in practices, by all accounts.

Fact Three:  Boren -- or more correctly, Boren's parents, who crafted a Press Release for Justin -- DID suddenly pull Justin out of Michigan.  It happened within a day or two of offer letters for the incoming recruiting class of 2008.  And younger-brother Zach Boren did not get such a letter.  (The Rodriguez offense simply did not use fullbacks, and they had decided not to offer Zach as a LB.)  The Borens freaked out in a rage, and yanked Justin out of Michigan.

As for Mallett; that story is probably not as easily documented as the Boren story, but I do think it is safe to say that it is as unconnected to Rodriguez, as was the Boren story.

very interesting, I hated the Hoke hire but would never dream of switching my allegiance. I couldn't be happier to eat some crow after what has transpired, but no matter what happens to Michigan I will always be a fan. The same can not be said of a 16 year from Texas.

That's the angle I think the marketing guru's are taking as well.  And this would include future recruits (which was a strategy implemented under RR regarding piped in pump-up music at least during warm-ups and the push for a night game).

But what exactly is the product? Let's assume you're talking about the Michigan football brand itself-- and what that offers the fan is very different than what it offers the student athlete.  So different that the offer to one might contradict the offer to another-- the rawk music is a perfect example.  Players would probably love to hear Lil Wayne or something in the Big House, but it's the last thing the traditionalists in their passed-down season tix will stand for.

Michigan football means a lot of different things to different people.  Which of those things, then, does the unversity most agree with?  Can it be all of them?

What is, at least in terms of the marketing department, Michigan football?  Is it the team that wins games?  Or is it the stadium experience?  Or is it simply an extension of the school itself?  Or, like you've said, the family that a young man will tie his future to?

You're right-- you're dead on right-- that some of the decisions being made lately can make a guy wonder who exactly they're selling this stuff to.  The loyalist partisans who make up this great blog will never change, they can't stop loving Michigan-- but there's plenty of fair-weather fans who will continue to clamor onto the bandwagon as the team wins and Denard's exposure grows.  We scoff at those, and especially those that gave up on UM football during the past three years, but what Brandon and his marketing team doesn't want us to know is that those very people-- the bandwagon casual fan-- are also an important part of the marketing campaign.  Those people, that will spend money on a #16 jersey or shell up the cash to visit the stadium for the first time, are new growth on an existing product, which you never want to neglect if you don't have to.  Those mild fans can become MGoBlog loyalists if the product continues to meet expectations long enough.

Michigan football is a monstrous, monolithic brand that transcends local, racial, age-oriented or even social marketing approaches.  It's Coca-Cola, not that local soda bottler down the road.  So can a single brand definition make all of those facets of the audience happy?  Should the brand be marketed in diverse, simultaneous campaigns, the way McDonald's markets to young adults, kids, the health-conscious, and even the morning coffee crowd all at once?

This is some really interesting stuff-- considering how the program is promoted.  Luckily for the marketing people, the product is PERFORMING right now, perhaps OVER-PERFORMING in terms of business.  Brandon's no dummy as far as business goes, so all of this should come as no surprise.  But I think we're all underestimating his plan to cultivate new Michigan fans... which cannot come without change.  And he's been all about the change.

Great stuff, Dewey.

And more examples - not just student athletes, but recruits. In the last 5 weeks we've seen:

Gameday comes to our campus

We host night games (F U Everybody)

We have special jerseys too (F U Oregon)

Remember when you saw that crowd get hyped on TV? Look at ours to the rock music (F U everybody)

This is all in addition to our inherent traditional advantages (Biggest house, most wins, championships, etc.) Brandon is expanding on that and hitting other teams where they have been getting advantages on us. Oh, you like Oregon for their Unis? Check out ours. But ours aren't some Nike whim, ours are (VERY LOOSELY) based on our 132 years of tradition. Oh, you want to go to LSU to play at night? do you get ESPN? Our night game atmosphere exisis (and is better, yadda yadda).

Recruits can be quite fickle during their recruitment. Moreso than current student athletes. Brandon has been (in some ways rightly) pandering to them as well. Or at least trying to get us on equal footing where we had been getting passed up.

So, you took your CMO's platitude ("there is always competition - know your competition and you will know your market"), and used it to reach a theory of what it is to be a customer. But that platitude isn't really among the central platitudes we might use to get a picture of what customers are generally thought to be. (Contrast it with the notion of a customer as someone who can vote with their feet, which seems more central.) I'd think it's more central to the notion of a customer that a customer is someone who pays money for a product or service, which is why something just sounds wrong about calling the football players the customers. I mean, you can talk that way, and you can get people to understand you, but I think criticisms that you're deploying the concept incorrectly are still appropriate.

As a brand marketer for a major consumer package goods company with a Michigan MBA, I feel compelled to chime in.

Basically, as you think about customers and how you want to grow your business, typically you either try to grow household penetration (i.e. get more people to buy your products) or increase buy rate (i.e. get existing customers to buy more).  When put into this context, fans are clearly the customers as they are the only people buying anything.  The players are your employees that you use to improve your product and your brand.  Obviously, in this case the employee compensation and work contracts are non-traditional in that student-atheletes get an education, a potential shot at the NFL, and other non-material things in exchange for a somewhat binding work contract.  We are in competition with other companies (schools) for labor talent (players).  Obviously, the school does not want to refer to student-atheletes as employees which might be why they are trying to call them the customers even though they are clearly not.

Mgobloggers and other rabid fans are part of the super-loyal or super-heavy subset of consumers.  They probably already 'buy' as much Michigan football product as you can get them to.  As such, you don't do things to make them more happy.  Rather, you try to avoid pushing them away as you try to either convert light buyers into medium/heavy buyers (buy rate) or you try to add new buyers (penetration).  In reality, you do both, but from a marketing perspective, it's easier and cleaner to focus on either penetration or buy rate because the tactics you use are different.

This, by the way, explains why you see some of the things that they are doing.  They think about adding a mascot because they want to increase penetration (young kids).  This is sometimes referred to as an entry point strategy.  You want to get new buyers at the point that they are making a brand choice that will often last for life.  From a marketing perspective, that is why it’s not as insane as it sounds.  Obviously, this is horrifying to the super-loyals, but will they really go away because of it?

They need to do the quantitative market research to understand if the benefits outweigh the negative.  I use the word quantitative here on purpose – several, one-off anecdotes aren’t that helpful.  Is a mascot really all that motivating to young kids?  Will adding a mascot deteriorate the brand such that Michigan gets less buying from ‘brand switchers’ (fair weather/bandwagon fans)?  Will the super-loyals buy less?  It’s not that clear, actually.

Interesting take.  Thanks for posting.

This is a little tangential, but it's on the Brandon/marketing topic.  I've agreed with a lot of Brandon's moves (Hoke, night game, etc.), but I still deeply distrust the guy.  Part of that has to do with the moves I haven't liked, from the midseason OSU idea to Pop Evil and mascots.  I think it runs deeper than that, though.  I'm realizing that my fear of Dave Brandon is rooted in paranoia that he's an egomaniac who's ready to use the Michigan football program to demonstrate that he's an innovative, 21st-century marketer.  In my industry, it's very hard for leaders to establish golden reputations if they preserve what the previous administrations have done.  Doing new stuff just for the sake of doing new stuff, though, creates this false glow that you're an innovative reformer. 

Long story short, I'm nervous that Brandon's incentives aren't well aligned with what I believe are Michigan football's long-term best interests (preserving something that's remarkably unique and special) and that Brandon will be quicker than others to put personal reputation ahead of preserving some of those special qualities.

Interesting take. Like Drenasu I see the players as employees (and I'm not trying to get into the whole "they should be paid" argument). But your point still holds.

For many companies, internal branding is as important as external branding. Companies that talk the talk and walk the walk internally are better able to "live the brand" externally. A classic example is Southwest airlines, where the company's main goal is to make its EMPLOYEES happy and motivated, not its customers. The company believes, and has seen, that satisfied/engaged employees will lead to satisfied/loyal customers.

But even though I'm in marketing, I get the heebie-jeebies when I hear Brandon and Lochmann talk about "the brand". As long as they know they're gilding the lily, but not "creating" a brand that's been around for nearly 200 years, OK. But if they think they're going to create something from whole cloth, well, then, welcome to New Coke.

"I do not know of one Michigan fan who suddenly switched their allegiance to Arkansas upon the RR hire"

Before we start taking this statement as fact, I have to imagine that Rich Rod did bring some fan's along with him.  I'm sure the few WestVa residents who didn't want his head on a stick probably aligned their allegiances with UM for the years he was here.  Now that he's gone, they are probably gone too.

Not to state the obvious, but sometimes some hardcore fans do leave for good. They certainly sometimes back away and become less involved (go to fewer games, buy less stuff). Is Brian going to become a Buckeye? No. Am I? No. I like to think that nothing would reduce my Michigan loyalty, but I can't be sure. I was a die-hard RR supporter until the end (and now I'm all about the HOKEAMANIA), but I had plenty of friends who were relatively serious M fans who became much less inclined to go to a game during these last three years.

You say: "Here, the fans are not customers because their brand loyalty is basically certain." But that's not true. I don't have any real data, but I'll guess that maybe 20% of the fan base is so loyal that almost nothing could change that (and I think that may be a little high). The bottom 20% or so are so fickle they will switch teams after a down year or two. That leaves 60% in the middle, between bleeding maize and blue and being a bandwagoner.

It seems to me that the players are the customers when it comes to recruiting and quality of life in school. So the quality of your facilities and coaches, and the plushness of your players' lounge and locker rooms, is stuff you're directing at the player as customer. The stadium experience is mostly for the fans, and only a little bit for the players. Anyway. This all seems obvious to me so I'm probably not adding much of value here.

I'll close with a  story about a once die-hard fan of a team who not only stopped rooting for that team, but switched to their biggest rival: I have a friend who was a real Yankee fan, had been from about the age of ten. He stuck by them for about a decade and a half, including a long stretch when they seemed to be perpetually in 4th place. But then they lost in the playoffs to the Angels (early 2000s, don't recall the exact year). My friend lived in Orange County and hated the Angels more than he liked any team. I'm sure there were little things here and there that had weakened his Yankee fandom prior to that fateful day, but losing to the Angels was the final straw. (I swear this is true) Immediately after the final game of the series ended and the Yanks were eliminated, my friend got off the couch, walked out of his living room onto his back patio, threw his Yankees hat on the concrete, pulled out his unit, pissed on the hat, went in the garage, came back out with a gas can, dumped fuel all over the hat, and lit it on fire. He's been a Red Sox fan ever since.

"Here, the fans are not customers because their brand loyalty is basically certain."

Have you ever attended a game at a school like Rutgers (or UConn...), where when the team wins, people come to watch and buy merchandise?

For Michigan, we will always have sellouts, but things like merchandise sales and TV viewership (which = money) will decline with a bad team. Just look at schools like ND and how they have been mediocore to bad for so long that Comcast/ NBC wants to push them to Versus.

Also, using Brian (who is an alum, and makes his living from covering Michigan athletics) is not a good representation of anything.

Let's put this another way. I have a cousin who doesn't attend Michigan. He watches games on TV, and buys some gear now and again, because he likes Michigan. When we had RR, and played terribly, his interest went down a bit. He didn't watch all of the games, didn't attend a game... Now, with Hoke, and Michigan winning again, he's "die-hard".

The AD's Marketing initiatives are to 1) Sellout boxes, 2) Make die-hard fans spend more (buy another shirt, go to 2 games/ year instead of 1, get BTN on your cable package...) and 3) Appeal to fair weather (read: Walmart Wolverines) and make them buy more...

I think that the "customer loyality" that many UM fans can be, for the purpose of this discussion, dissected into smaller subsets, with varying degrees of an actual connection with the University other than being a fan.  Those who have graduated from UM, or have parents, siblings, children, etc. who have graduated from UM, will have a different kind of relation with the University, and thus the UM "product".  These groups will be far more loyal for far longer, regardless.  Were some fans in these groups dissatified with the RR era? Sure, but , by and large, they would never sever their ties with the University, wheras the baseball fan reference in the previous thread could change his loyality without sacrificing any deeper relation to the team other than just being a fan. I think the "hardcore" fans that would leave the program would be those who were, and were only, fans.

Not sure what I else I can add to the conversation, but I too have a career in marketing, so of course, I will add something.

The #1 rule/step in marketing is identifiying and knowing your customer and audience.  FOr something as broadbased as Uof M, U of M athletics, or even just U of M football, there are many markets which are equally important.  So let's try to identify them:

1) Big money donors - these are the people who's names show up on buildings and fields, etc.  They are vital to any university.  They truly pay for the infrastructure which allows everything to happen.  As important as these people are, they are a very small number in the grand scheme of things.  They couldn't fill the stadium by themselves everyweek.

2) Loyal fans who spend money - these people are also extremely important.  They are the ones who pay for the tickets, buy the merchandise which turns them into walking advertisements for the university.  This is a moderately sized group in the grand scheme of things.  This group also spans a pretty broad age range. 

3) Casual/Band wagon fans who spend money - I group these two together becuase there are many similarities.  These are the ones who come and go depending on the success of the program.  Don't be fooled, this group is willing to spend money when the band wagon is really rolling.  This is a potentially very large base.  I know it is hard to believe for those of us who spend our life on this blog, but this is the majority.

4) The next generation - for something as large as U of M, you always have to be recruiting that next generation and trying to move them up the consumer scale.  If you aquire them early enough they may move from a casual fan to a loyal fan.  If you are lucky, they become rich and become a big money doner. 

Notice, the players do not show up on this list.  Why?  Because as much as it pains an old school person like me to say this, they are not student atheletes anymore, which means they are not customers.  They are one of the cogs in the machine which drives the 4 markets to spend money.  So yes, you keep them happy, just like you want to keep your best employees happy, but they are not the customer.  The customer spends money, and players do not spend money.

I think the problem is that our new Marketing Manager has come into the position with a concept of what he believes the "problems" are, and he's dead set to fix them, rather than actually evaluating the scene and trying to understand what the problems really are.

The product is not the game. The product is the team. We are consuming the team. We attend games, and buy merchandise, because they are the team. Playing RAWK music and getting a mascot to "improve the gameday experience" actually diminishes the product, the team. To improve the product, they need to be offering more of the team. More games people want to see. More access for the people. Not Pop Evil.

This thread probably sets some kind of record for average words per post.

This is a good read and gives me thoughts on perspective in the eyes of the director of marketing.

Michigan Football marketing is pretty easy compared to other school football because Michigan Football can sell itself pretty easily and always has 100,000+ fans coming to the Big House to watch a game.

What would you do if you work for a smaller D1 school that is struggling to sell tickets for a football game especially if other sport(basketball or hockey) is their biggest sport?

I made an account just to comment.

Insightful. Well done. Thanks.