I apologize first for starting another thread on attendance. But I am just baffled at this season. Peak covered it at length (as he usually does) in his podcast and he makes some good points.
Things are in place for a good year for attendance. Good opponents, winning team, local stars (Boyd), winning team, great weather, and a winning team. We always said win and they will come, and they have not.
Of course, who is 'they'? In my opinion, 'they' is the common bandwagon fan in the Pittsburgh area. This fan loves football, watches the Steelers religiously, is also a fan of Pitt but just doesn't attend games. We have our core BASE of fans, which is about 35,000 and will be there even if we are 1-10.
However we have not attracted the bandwagon fan this year. Attracting the bandwagon fan is first, and hopefully we can convert them to our BASE. We must grow the BASE and this is done through students attending games, having great experiences as students, and then coming back as season ticket holders as alumni. This takes years of success. But I would have thought that we would at least have attracted some bandwagon fans this year. In my opinion, the lack of bandwagon fans this year is because our marketing has been very poor. Creating a cool video showing Panthers working out does absolutely nothing. The Pirates brought in bandwagon fans with bobbleheads and fireworks, and it kept their base and bandwagon fans interested until they had a good product. We have done NONE of this type of thing this year. The casual Pitt fans doesn't care about retiring jerseys from old stars. The BASE does! But we are trying the attract the base, we are already there! They need to target the bandwagon fan.
I also believe 'media obsession with the Steelers' has drowned out any buzz for Pitt. The obsession with the Steelers gets more intense every year, and with Big Ben's injuries, Leveon's plight, etc. had created much to talk about. This is another reason there is not much buzz in town to attract bandwagon Pitt fans. With Pitt, they have just quietly won games. And in a town dominated by the Steelers, they will never get any air.
All this said, I believe that Pitt needs to be very bold and creative to get attention. We have used very basic marketing concepts (video, facebook posts, etc) which are nice but boring and unimaginative. Drape the Pitt logo at the top of UPMC Tower for a few weeks. Float a barge down the river with Narduzzi standing on top like George Washington crossing the Delaware. Do something to get attention of the casual football fan. We are in competition with the Steelers! They need to recognize this. Pitt simply has not done any creative marketing to get this attention and raise interest in Pitt. Unless they do, it will take 5 9-3 seasons to grow our base a few thousand people. We need the bandwagon fan and have not been even close to attracting them this year. I blame our marketing group for this failure to attract the casual/bandwagon fan.
Things are in place for a good year for attendance. Good opponents, winning team, local stars (Boyd), winning team, great weather, and a winning team. We always said win and they will come, and they have not.
Of course, who is 'they'? In my opinion, 'they' is the common bandwagon fan in the Pittsburgh area. This fan loves football, watches the Steelers religiously, is also a fan of Pitt but just doesn't attend games. We have our core BASE of fans, which is about 35,000 and will be there even if we are 1-10.
However we have not attracted the bandwagon fan this year. Attracting the bandwagon fan is first, and hopefully we can convert them to our BASE. We must grow the BASE and this is done through students attending games, having great experiences as students, and then coming back as season ticket holders as alumni. This takes years of success. But I would have thought that we would at least have attracted some bandwagon fans this year. In my opinion, the lack of bandwagon fans this year is because our marketing has been very poor. Creating a cool video showing Panthers working out does absolutely nothing. The Pirates brought in bandwagon fans with bobbleheads and fireworks, and it kept their base and bandwagon fans interested until they had a good product. We have done NONE of this type of thing this year. The casual Pitt fans doesn't care about retiring jerseys from old stars. The BASE does! But we are trying the attract the base, we are already there! They need to target the bandwagon fan.
I also believe 'media obsession with the Steelers' has drowned out any buzz for Pitt. The obsession with the Steelers gets more intense every year, and with Big Ben's injuries, Leveon's plight, etc. had created much to talk about. This is another reason there is not much buzz in town to attract bandwagon Pitt fans. With Pitt, they have just quietly won games. And in a town dominated by the Steelers, they will never get any air.
All this said, I believe that Pitt needs to be very bold and creative to get attention. We have used very basic marketing concepts (video, facebook posts, etc) which are nice but boring and unimaginative. Drape the Pitt logo at the top of UPMC Tower for a few weeks. Float a barge down the river with Narduzzi standing on top like George Washington crossing the Delaware. Do something to get attention of the casual football fan. We are in competition with the Steelers! They need to recognize this. Pitt simply has not done any creative marketing to get this attention and raise interest in Pitt. Unless they do, it will take 5 9-3 seasons to grow our base a few thousand people. We need the bandwagon fan and have not been even close to attracting them this year. I blame our marketing group for this failure to attract the casual/bandwagon fan.
