IU Football Billboard in Terre Haute

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SycamoreVictory

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Saw a billboard on 3rd Street promoting tickets for IU Football. If they haven't already, ISU needs to start promoting the HELL out of this upcoming season or at the very least the Butler and Youngstown State games as they are only about a month away. I know it all comes down to $ but we need to start promoting on TV, radio, billboard, etc. I wish we would start doing something like NDSU does with their 10,000 Bison Strong season ticket holder promotion but to a slightly smaller scale.
 

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nwi stater said:
That's nice, now do we have one in Gloomington?....

Who's respondsable for this?...
Very tasteless!
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Um, I'd imagine A. the gloomington athl department and B. the owner of the billboard.

While I'm not a business person, I believe this is an easy to understand example of the free enterprise/capitalistic system.
 
Hey, let's face it - gloomington thinks that the Terre Haute area is a fertile hunting ground for ticket sales, and I'd bet they are correct in that assumption. I've said for years that the Wabash Valley is so starved for good college football that if we ever got really good, I think we'd sell out the stadium on a regular basis. If IU beats us to that punch, they'll steal those dollars. It's a race, and the winner will get that nice budget boost!!!
 

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This is something that has bothered me for years.....

the marketing end of the athletics department. But until there is a better budget to afford a real athletic department marketing campaign (many billboards, radio and tv ads, newspaper ads), this will continue to happen.

If only the athletic department had a real workable marketing budget. Facility improvements are great and have been much needed. But you have to be able to sell and promote your product, especially in economic times like these.

Marketing of ISU sports has been a long-standing problem. And nobody seems to have a good answer for it.

We could use the old Beanie Cooper plan for sports marketing -- if you're good, people will show up without promotion or marketing. if you're bad, you dont want them to show up.

Sadly, I think that mindset remains the same for today.
 
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TJames said:
the marketing end of the athletics department. But until there is a better budget to afford a real athletic department marketing campaign (many billboards, radio and tv ads, newspaper ads), this will continue to happen.

If only the athletic department had a real workable marketing budget. Facility improvements are great and have been much needed. But you have to be able to see your product, especially in economic times like these.

Marketing of ISU sports has been a long-standing problem. And nobody seems to have a good answer for it.
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Can you come up with a ballpark figure for a marketing budget?
 
Don't disagree...

but State has been playing football (during the late summer and autumn) since, what, 1900?

Granted not always the best team to watch but 'surprising' that we're talking about ways to reach the local populace...

$$$$ cures SO many problems
 

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Monies set aside by the University to market its athletics programs......

is very small in comparison with other schools in the MVC. I dont know an exact figure of what ISU's athletics market budget is, but I have been told that it's miniscule when compared to other conference athletic programs.
 
TJames said:
is very small in comparison with other schools in the MVC. I dont know an exact figure of what ISU's athletics market budget is, but I have been told that it's miniscule when compared to other conference athletic programs.
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Believe it's true of all of our budgets!

If able, cut a check to the foundation for academics and/or athletics.

MarchOn! ends in Dec 2011. Heard a rumor that a follow-up campaign is in the early, early stages...
 
TJames said:
the marketing end of the athletics department. But until there is a better budget to afford a real athletic department marketing campaign (many billboards, radio and tv ads, newspaper ads), this will continue to happen.

If only the athletic department had a real workable marketing budget. Facility improvements are great and have been much needed. But you have to be able to sell and promote your product, especially in economic times like these.

Marketing of ISU sports has been a long-standing problem. And nobody seems to have a good answer for it.

We could use the old Beanie Cooper plan for sports marketing -- if you're good, people will show up without promotion or marketing. if you're bad, you dont want them to show up.

Sadly, I think that mindset remains the same for today.
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The problem is this is a cyclical issue. In order to market more, you need more advertising dollars and in order to get more advertising dollars, you need more asses in the seats, buying merchandise, etc.

That said, billboards are just not very effective IMO, so I honestly don't care about those. I don't read them and I'd say many folks don't either. They need to come up with ways to creatively advertise and you can do this where it is much cheaper. I'd recommend filming some spots with the actual players and then trying to get them viral with the Terre Haute/Indiana State community online.
 
When it comes to viral things, I went to a San Francisco Giants game this past year and was reminded of my wonderful Sycamores when I saw the shirts of Giants fans that say:
TORTURE
They dont blow anyone out and watching the game is torturous but they win. I thought it was a perfect catch phrase to describe the Trees.
 

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Jason Svoboda said:
The problem is this is a cyclical issue. In order to market more, you need more advertising dollars and in order to get more advertising dollars, you need more asses in the seats, buying merchandise, etc.

That said, billboards are just not very effective IMO, so I honestly don't care about those. I don't read them and I'd say many folks don't either. They need to come up with ways to creatively advertise and you can do this where it is much cheaper. I'd recommend filming some spots with the actual players and then trying to get them viral with the Terre Haute/Indiana State community online.
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Effective or not, I've no idea. I DO know that they're hard as heck to avoid seeing at times, especially the new ones that (digital, gigantic)...
TV spots, I can mash the channel button, mute, etc.

Sitting in traffic... you can always look away but the billboards seem more 'permanent...'

Simply put --- we need more revenue, assets to build the program AND the University.
 
Use the business school...

Perhaps a great project for the business department is how to generate the funds needed to support a multi-sport campaign...football in the fall, basketball in the winter, Track & Field/Baseball in the spring...how to market the programs to the marketplace...students, fans, parents, families, faculty, etc. very grass roots way.

It would seem that this would be a very viable solution to support athletics on very lean times.

I was just up in Terre Haute over the past couple of days to drop my son off for football camp. Very disappointing that the local media...tv, radio, newspaper does NOT give football much airtime.

BTW...I did see the IU sign and was wondering how the fan base felt about that...
 
SycamoreFootball said:
Perhaps a great project for the business department is how to generate the funds needed to support a multi-sport campaign...football in the fall, basketball in the winter, Track & Field/Baseball in the spring...how to market the programs to the marketplace...students, fans, parents, families, faculty, etc. very grass roots way.

It would seem that this would be a very viable solution to support athletics on very lean times.

I was just up in Terre Haute over the past couple of days to drop my son off for football camp. Very disappointing that the local media...tv, radio, newspaper does NOT give football much airtime.

BTW...I did see the IU sign and was wondering how the fan base felt about that...
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SycFootball, that's a great idea. I think with Megan McKenna (Director of New Media), they have begun to realize that marketing, even on a tight budget as she is, can be VERY effective. Her stuff excited us many times over last year and combine her talents with the Scott School of Business, and you might have something that could help sports in their promotions and the University in general.
 
It would take a lot of money and success to keep IU out of the Terre Haute market. They've probably lost some traction in the last couple of years (with our success and increased enrollment), if your IU what is your response to that? You don't have to be a marketing guru to figure it out, try to get some of that market share back - buy some billboards. It's like has already been mentioned, this has been going on for years though. Billboards are expensive for the most part and if you look at the ones in high traffic areas (I-70 or 3rd St.) they are owned by organizations in town that are the most wealthiest.

Some things to consider:

A. If Lamar or whomever is not charging them a higher premium on that billboard then they ought to be shot, I'd guess they are not because Lamar will do whatever they can to sell a billboard - granted IU would probably pay for it anyway because they can afford to do that.

B. Indiana State can't afford every billboard in town, that's unrealistic.

C. How else could that money be spent? Do you really need to be putting up expensive (because it's probably the most costly form of advertising) ass billboards? I am not convinced that we do. How much do you think Indiana State is paying for those 30 second psa's that WTWO runs and WTHI runs? Probably nothing or next to it.

So what's your solution? IU will always have a market in Terre Haute, Indiana as long as high school graduates from Terre Haute continue to go to school in Gloomington, Indiana. It's only a 45 minute drive to get to Bloomington and it's a Big Ten school - you might as well face the reality of the matter. Personally if I owned Lamar I'd tell them to get :censored: lost and buy the billboard from someone else - sound business? Probably not, but then again I dislike IU. Your not going to stop it - you can only contain it.

THE SOLUTION:

1. Continue to put a winning product on the field, floor.

2. Upgrade facilities

3. Continue to increase enrollment

What will these 3 things do for you? Clean up your image and everything else will take care of it's self. Spend the money on your facilities and what you can do to increase enrollment and let IU buy all the damn billboards they want.
 
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