Jaded No More

Hamish Blake is another prominent Melbourne man who has a big profile, and two of the Sushi Mango trio who are massive on social media. Not to mention that our president’s partner is a news presenter for channel 10. If we can’t leverage some of these connections to build a platform then we’ve failed.

Who is talking about moving clubs? This is about attracting new supporters and sponsors, and engaging supporters who are non committal. This is 2024 FFS. Social media presence really matters in such a lucrative market!

Depends if he wants us to use his brand to further our own, which I am guessing right now is a firm no. I also think his personal platform with the cooking is quite niche for football supporters. It's about expanding his brand beyond AFL, which is a clever thing to do for someone heading towards 30. He is actually not that much of a natural media performer IMO. We have players who I reckon would do better in promoting the brand. People in their late 30s are not our target audience. If you're in your late 30s and you are a club member, then you are committed for life. It's about gaining and keeping supporters in their teens and early 20s, who are fickle and can quickly lose interest in footy if they are not being engaged.

His personal account has Dees related stuff. OnTrac5 does not.

Hawks social media team deserves a bonus. Phenomenal numbers across all platforms St Kilda’s TikToks are quite self deprecating, which I reckon has gained them a lot of followers. Because they are the least exciting brand in the game otherwise. West Coast being terrible lately has really hurt their TikTok numbers hey? It’s the newest platform in terms of mass engagement and it shows the clubs who have been down or behind the trends

Collingwood has 161,000 fans who can read? I call BS!

He refuses to pose with Melbourne merch these days, says his brand is being damaged by our poor culture. He's such a diva 😁 By the way, players with their pets = social media GOLD. Clarry has two mini Bears, and I reckon if the social media team got them wearing little Melbourne jumpers, that would get us 50k likes instantly... 49,999 of those likes would be from me.

100% This is where doing "lives" is really really effective, because it keeps you engaged for longer than the normal 7 seconds most people spend on a post. Especially for say interstate games where the players are together. Run a live during their dinner, and ask them what they're eating. That sounds boring as hell, but when you have an emotional attachment to players, you would lap up that content. If teenage girls are given the opportunity to watch Trent Rivers get ready for a game, they would be all over it. Also player take overs on socials would be a great way to gain younger followers. If you can get our younger players to do some silly TikTok dance trends, that would get good engagement numbers too, especially if you're using a song that is showing up on everyone's algorithm. Anyways, if the MFC marketing team is reading this thread, feel free to steal our ideas. We don't even want credit, just get better so I can get the teen living rent free in my house to start following the Dees. Thanks.

Email marketing is useless for non-product related comms IMO. Even when we run offers and discounts at my work, the open rate for emails is super low. Most people just delete or unsubscribe. The App notifications is about the best thing that they've done in 20 years, and I reckon that's AFL not MFC as the app is the same for pretty much all clubs. 100%! The Hawks with the wizard hats is such a dumb but effective idea. Kolt has "Kult" figure written all over him. He doesn't even need to be a remarkable player either (which he might well be anyway). If he's charismatic enough, and I reckon he is, then he should do a heap of stuff on our socials. Remember Gawny doing interviews on our site years ago? He built himself a media profile doing that, while playing for Casey!

That is an excellent point. It's how GWS gained such a following, by making fun of themselves. Get the players to put a cheese board together for all I care. That would be funny and you could use some product placement branding to make some money. And we don't use the girls enough. Even stupid things like a get ready with me for a game, would get a lot of engagement. Those things are always popping up on the algorithm. Not sure if anyone on social media has come across Jess Waterhouse from Adelaide, but they have a massive following and people are now following the Crows in the AFLW because of it.

Haha thanks, I manage a far less fun brand than the MFC, but like the MFC it's a bit of a heritage brand with an old consumer base so the challenges are not too dissimilar. Most of our marketing is still physical, which is quite rare these days. But even our physical marketing at the club is rubbish. I understand we are at the mercy of the AFL as a whole, but gees we could do so much better in terms of game day experience for example. I reckon Robbo is one of the best on ground announcer in the league, but we don't do enough to utilize how charismatic and passionate he is. If they paid me enough, I would absolutely run that department 😁

It had a few good weeks then dropped off. They aren't keeping up with social media trends. Whoever is running the account needs to use the business platforms of the social media sites to look at what is trending. We are paying for a business account, but obviously not utilizing all the readily available data to drive the content. We are not a 'sexy' brand, but we absolutely can be if we market the right players and the right things. Hawks have really turned their social media account around and focus on their young players and the high vibes around the club right now. I understand vibes around our club have been low this year, but 3 very successful years should have given us plenty of positive content to build our brand in a positive way. Especially when Covid saw the biggest rise in social media engagement ever. I don't even specialise in social media, I am a product person first and foremost, but anyone who works in product in 2024 knows how to drive said product and brand via social media.

One of the easiest way to gain followers, is to run competitions where the condition of entry is to follow our club's account, like the post and either comment or share it. It's really so simple, and will cost the club peanuts. You can run a competition to go into the rooms post game, to win merch, to win a membership etc. You can also run competitions with our sponsors, which we do sometimes but rarely do we use social media to drive the competition. There are even apps that will auto generate the winner for you. Run regular competitions and watch the engagement increase. Can also do 'lives' from training, and behind the scenes stuff.

Possibly, but Trac's audience is very different to Smith's audience. I don't see Trac's personal accounts attracting followers to our account. Whereas Smith's followers are like 80% young girls, which will follow the Dogs by association hoping they'll post Smith content.

I have no idea how we don't ruin our soft cap if we want to make multiple changes to the FD. Everyone is contracted as far as I can tell.

That is embarrassing GWS would have 10 times more engagement than we do as well The Dogs being higher than us is 100% down to Bailey Smith. If he is traded watch their numbers plummet.

Morris doing a Sandra Sully with the late news.

Hawks used to have a 'family club' image. Their social media team has now given them a 'cool' image. GWS have no members, but their social media engagement is through the roof because they are funny, on trend, they know how to make fun of themselves, and they are consistent in what they post. A good marketing team can make anything appealing

I mean bundle our second and third round picks to get back into the first round, or get better second round picks. So for example can we bundle our third round pick, plus the 2nd rounder that's tied to Sydney and get a better second round pick in return? I don't think we can do much with pick 5. We will take it to the draft.

You laugh, but Bailey Smith has 329k followers. Bont has 133k. Who is a better and more well known player? Case closed.

There are a number of issues/reasons our club has a poor social media following 1- Our social media team is non existent. I doubt very much that we have someone dedicated to increasing followers and engagement on social media within our media department. To some, this may seem a frivolous waste of money, but for those of us who work in this space, it is anything but. 2- Our membership and supporter base is skewed older. Unfortunately given our lack of success until 2021, we do not have a lot of followers who fall into the social media age. Take Demonland for example, I reckon most posters here were not exposed to social media in their teens, as it just did not exist to the level it does now 3- We are terrible at promoting our brand. We have plenty of marketable and 'cult hero' players on our list. Gawn, Trac, Kozzie, Rivers, Roo, Kolt are ALL players you could really market. Hell you could get 20,000 teenagers to follow our social media if Rivers and Roo did some sort of semi regular 'thirst trap' posting (tasteful of course!). Instead we show a lot of 'family club' content, which is lovely for the Facebook users, but has zero cut thru on Instagram and TikTok. I really hope the board realises how important it is to invest in our social media and communication. We have been so poor in this area, and it's really damaging to our brand and more importantly, it's a massive missed opportunity financially. Go out and pay an influencer to do some posts, hire a marketing grad to work the social media platforms. Run competitions. The opportunities are endless.

We had a review in 2020

Poor Frosty that really stinks for him!

In breaking news: Trent (or Jared if you listen to Dermie) Rivers and Tom Sparrow (or Swallow according to BT) both request a trade to Collingwood

Well done to Brad Green for doing what he said he will just 48 hours after taking on a temporary presidential role