Straight from Her Inbox: Five Questions with Leah Beasley.
A look at all things Attendance, Atmosphere & Brand with the Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs at Mississippi State University Leah Beasley.
Mike: What has been the biggest change in sports branding that you’ve seen from your start in the industry until now?
Leah: I think it's got to be the continuance and the growth of technology. That means social media, content, videography, digital presence, and digital marketing. I know that everything is tied to branding, but I think that specific point is tied most to branding, because it's a free resource that everyone can use. There are many different means that you can dive into, but I would say that how we tell our stories is how our brand is perceived. This allows us to control the narrative and provide an opportunity for more engagement with your story (your brand). In addition, this is all predicated upon how you're pushing out, and how your fans and national media are perceiving the content. There is so much more of an abundance of content, and people want more and more of it. So, I think that that the increase in technology, social media, content, and engagement are driving the bus behind the sports branding and marketing growth.
Mike: In your eyes, what is the perfect gameday driveway-to-driveway experience for fans?
Leah: The first word that pops into my head is collaboration. From an external standpoint, this is something that we have been trying to do especially within the last few years. Having an external background, we must be able to touch all areas. We are not only responsible for the game atmosphere and entertainment, but also, as you said, the driveway to driveway experience. How are the fans taking in our content? How are they purchasing tickets and engaging with our ticket sales team? How are they then going to your site and ingesting information? Do they understand the parking system? Do they know how to get to our venues? Are you guiding them through maps? How is the parking experience when they arrive? Do you allow your fans to provide feedback to help their future experiences? All these questions led to us forming a Family Feedback Committee—our fan experience committee. This committee has every single person that touches the gameday experience. There's a representative from every department—merchandise, police, security, game operations, marketing, ticketing, parking, concessions, etc. Everybody is included in this committee. We meet once a week to discuss surveys, social media, and all items that hit gameday. The good, bad, and ugly are reviewed which lead to action items. Without that collaboration then you’re not going to have, or even come close, to the perfect game day. Why? Because not all parties are aware of what's going on. Regardless of what area you're in, it's your responsibility to make sure that the gameday flows well, so we ask for feedback from everybody. If a member of the marketing team sees something, then it is their obligation, and I do mean their obligation, it is their responsibility to turn that in their supervisor. This allows their supervisor to take notes and bring it to our committee. Hopefully, this form of collaboration prevents us from making the same mistake twice.
Mike: In today’s world, what inspires someone to attend a sporting event?
Leah: FOMO. I have used that word over and over. We just had our marketing, external, and SEC calls. On the calls, we were talking about having that marque player to promote. However, this past year, we didn't have that. So, we knew what we had to do: create FOMO. We had to create that fear of missing out by reminding them of the good parts of the previous seasons. We would play clips and ask our fans, “Do you remember this moment?” We were asking what their favorite moments were in various sports. By creating that FOMO, hopefully, that inspires them to not want to miss that next moment, because you never know when that may happen.
In addition, we want to leverage their passion. Obviously, when you say fan it leads to fandom which leads to passion. When you think about passion, then what is driving a fan to come to our events? It's their love for that event or their love for the student-athletes. If we're doing our job by showcasing our student-athletes and telling their stories properly, then our fans will fall more in love with them. Consequently, this strategy makes it less about wins and losses. Hopefully, regardless of our record, our fans are coming to our events, because they’re falling in love with the sport and our student-athletes. FOMO and passion.
Mike: Your football gameday is considered one of the best in the country. From Cowbells to adding additional speakers to certain sections to your “Keep Tailgating Clean” campaign, Mississippi State Football gamedays are unlike any other. What is the most important part of having a great gameday experience and how do you continually enhance it?
Leah: Number one, listen to our fans and student-athletes. If our fans and student-athletes don’t feel heard, then they are not going to feel invested in what we're doing. I speak to every single team, and I provide them with my contact information. I'm on the field after they, and I talk to their parents as much as I can. Many of our administrators on our external team give their cell phone numbers to our student-athletes because they're present and want to hear their feedback. If we're making our student-athlete and fan experience the best it could possibly be, then our gamedays become exponentially better, because you're touching your two main constituents in our athletic department. If we’re not listening to them, then we're doing a disservice to both sides.
Prioritize. It’s extremely important to prioritize your student-athletes and fans whenever you're listening to them. When they are telling you what they want, prioritize that. Risk versus reward. If you have a large group telling you what they want on gameday, it’s imperative to listen and prioritize what they're saying. So, that's the first part—listening and then executing. The second part is creating opportunities for engagement and content. That's what we are now. Even in the stadium, people have their phones out and either want to capture content for themselves or they want to showcase that they're at the event—and let other people have FOMO. And on our end, we need to provide them with those opportunities. Whether it’s our Cow Bells or our “Keep Tailgating Clean” campaign, we need to keep those subprojects and then make it to where it’s easy for them to capture that content. The more people that see this content, the more people will come to our games.
Mike: When a new Head Football Coach comes on board, what is your strategy to effectively market him, the program, as well as integrate coach into the culture and community of “Stark Vegas?”
Leah: Research first. When we had an inkling of what was happening this past offseason, we were researching everything we could about Coach. And this isn’t just what we do when we hire a new football coach either. We just hired Nikki McCray-Penson as our new Women's Basketball Coach, and she is going to be awesome for us too. On the football front, we did a lot of homework before Coach Leach was hired. In doing so, we knew what Coach was all about. Obviously, people know about his personality. People know about his love of pirates, and so we wanted to use that. However, we didn't want to lose our brand during his hiring. We were able to dig into what kind of makes Coach, Coach, and then showcase his personality to our fans in a funny and engaging way. You'll see a lot of clips of him doing some of his best antics, and you’ll also see some of the national media commenting about them. But what we always did was tie it back to football. First and foremost, he is a football coach and that is what we hired him to do. He was hired to win football games, but we want you to love him and his pirate antics. Our retails are loving us because we're allowing them to use the pirate thing in retail. However, we're not going overboard. It’s still about the Mississippi State brand. So, first is research and then tailor your content and messaging to that coach while also being mindful of the platform and demographics you are trying to engage.
As far as the culture piece, we knew that is going to be a bit of a change in culture from what he had. Obviously coming from the West Coast, we knew that we had to endear him to our fans. This is when we used clips that showcased his personality. As soon as he hit the ground, we immediately had all hands-on deck to allow our fans to feel fully invested in Coach. Our fans want the behind the scenes access, and we give that to them. We provide them with that access in every sport and football is no different. When Coach landed, he went around to greet fans and sign autographs, and we had our video team capture it. We sent that video to all our fans who couldn’t attend the event to tell Coach’s story: he is blue-collar, a grinder, and he is a bulldog. That is our brand. Day in and day out, Coach is going to work. He may do it a little bit differently, but he is going to get it done using that same blue-collar mentality. He also must be personable, so we put him in positions to do so. We took him into classrooms. He met with band, cheer, and other constituents. Those are the things that we did to endear him to our fans, because we knew that our fans must have those touchpoints with our coaches.
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