Media Coverage and Club Communications

brinyhoof

This is more like it

brinyhoof

Dunno how to paste it on here but there are at least six fonts in my happy birthday email from OUFC today. Mix of old and new ones. Absolute dog’s breakfast.

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof Happy birthday! 🎂

TrevorAylottsHeadband

brinyhoof I’ll take the subtle hint too..

Happy Birthday Rich!!

Bspittles

Happy birthday

brinyhoof

Looked like I was passive aggressively saying it was my birthday but was genuinely astonished by the mishmash of graphics and typefaces in the email.

Can only be a reflection of a marketing dept in utter chaos!?

Gingermoods

brinyhoof happy birthday Rich! X

I will look at the range of graphics in my birthday message on 11th July, so you can all make a note of that if you like.

brinyhoof

Mad there’s not a single competent graphic designer in the whole of Oxford.

JonnyBiscuits

YELLOW GRAPHICS! Is Benson on holiday?

TrevorAylottsHeadband

Still has that feckin horrific font though.

JonnyBiscuits

TrevorAylottsHeadband Indeed. Baby steps though. Baby steps.

brinyhoof

Yes its yellow but again, what a dogs dinner.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

brinyhoof They’ve literally just changed the “Coming soon” for “On sale Now”…

I’m genuinely starting to worry about what is going on at the club with the lack of comms until the last moment. This one is a case in point. They’ve launched these ‘home’ memberships from 10am this morning, with tickets for the first home game going on sale at 10am tomorrow. So, fans who didn’t get a ST have 24hrs to work out if they want to/are able to shell out £60/£30 for a membership, and then the (as yet unspecified) cost of the ticket on top.

The fact that these are clearly pitched as ‘home’ memberships strongly hints at there being some sort of ‘away’ membership. But, what is this going to be? A straight membership scheme to ‘buy’ priority? Points based using ticket purchase history? With just 25 days until the first away game, it’d be nice to be told. Edit before posting: in response to one of my tweets, the club have said that away priority details will be confirmed later this week.

So much of the gloss of promotion and the excitement of being back in the Championship is being tarnished by some horrifically bad comms.

JonnyBiscuits

I think this one is less of a comms thing and more that they’ve only just figured out how it’s all going to work following the emergency pulling of ST sales. My guess is that the Gold tier membership is a last minute addition as a concession to the fact that a bunch of people who wanted a ST got screwed over by the sudden withdrawal of ST sales. As a result, they’ve probably had to rejig a lot of this at the very last minute and they were already working to a massively compressed timeline.

I’m usually fairly critical, but I think a degree of slack needs to be given on some of this - I’m not suggesting they’ve managed it particularly well, but I reckon the major changes of direction they’ve had to take in a shorter than normal summer will have been pretty challenging.

Not sure why the couldn’t have announced the membership details last week though. While the worldwide IT thing prevented them from selling the memberships on Friday, they could still have announced the details.

TrevorAylottsHeadband

JonnyBiscuits You know what, I would be prepared to give them some slack if this was an isolated situation. But we have had misstep after misstep this close season and my goodwill well is nigh-on empty…

JonnyBiscuits

TrevorAylottsHeadband Just been looking at some of the chat on social media. The point about them separating the comms on the home and away ticket priority schemes is definitely a problem. Distinct lack of clarity on what people are/aren’t buying.

JonnyBiscuits

And as always, the club leaves its loyal terriers in the supporters panel to answer all the questions and address the concerns rather than doing so itself.

brinyhoof

The branding, the graphics, the messaging, the timing, the confusion - all indicative of the behind-the-scenes shitshow that Benson is heading up. How he is still in a job when the CFO lost their’s is bewildering. Pissing Sunderland off clearly more important than pissing off thousands of supporters.

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof I rather worry that the bottom lines that he’s probably judged on - ticket/merch/corporate sponsorship sales and that kind of thing - are all positive numbers.

When all that stuff continues to do well, all the complaints get shrugged off as social media noise etc etc.

Financial spreadsheets don’t make it clear when the positive numbers are in spite of the person in charge rather than because of.

brinyhoof

JonnyBiscuits yep, that horrible email a fan received from Benson was fully focused on retail numbers. Which is what you would focus on if you believe you have customers not supporters I guess.

JonnyBiscuits

brinyhoof A point demonstrated by the fact that the featured merch sales section is more prominent on the homepage than all the football related stuff.

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