Alternative Marketing and Promotional Strategies

A post by Natasha -

Alternative marketing and promotional strategies

-          The first thing we need to see is a culture shift! Society needs to accept the fact that while in our grandparents and maybe even parents younger days, women didn’t play sport, more and more females are starting to participate. Not only this but the fact that more traditional ‘gender specific’ games are going out the window and females are beginning to become more involved with what are classified as ‘typically male sports’.

Government

Example of Title IX in America and its changes to the sporting system. One major thing that has affected the culture and collegiate sporting system in general in America is Title IX. It is a law that was passed in 1972 and means that for collegiate athletics departments that received government funding must ensure that the number of females participating in organised sport and the number of organised sports must be equal for both males and females. Title IX has a lot of critics in all circles of sport, saying that it unfairly reduces opportunities for male athletes. However, this is not true. It is dependent on the school and athletics department that are implementing this law. The schools that are doing this well will, rather than reducing the number of male athletes and programs, increase the number of opportunities for female athletes. Some good examples are at the University of Northern Colorado. They have the second best soccer field in the state and it is used solely for the college women’s soccer team. Also, while renovating, they added change rooms and lockers for the women athletes who previously had nothing.

Good example of what they have started to do. About Time report, a total of 18 recommendations http://www.regional.gov.au/sport/resources/reports/women-in-sport.aspx

Currently, a total of 24 sports are working to achieve participation outcomes with under-represented population groups and 11 national sporting organisations have been funded to support initiatives to increase participation by women. The 11 that have specifically identified women as a targeted population for additional assistance within their participation growth strategy are:

1.Australian Football League

2.Netball Australia

3.Basketball Australia

4.Australian Rugby League

5.Bowls Australia

6.Australian Rugby Union

7.Cricket Australia

8.Tennis Australia

9.Football Federation Australia

10.Touch Football Australia

11.Hockey Australia.

 

To celebrate Australia's achievement in women's sport, the Australian Government has committed to sponsoring the Women's Health, I Support Women In Sport Awards, which will recognise our elite sports women, as well as the achievements of our hometown heroes, women in leadership positions and service to sport. In addition these awards will also include the reinstated Prime Minister's Sportswoman of the Year award. But you wouldn’t know who won these because of the lack of coverage!! (Alicia Coutts, Anna Meares, Steph Gilmore, Sally Pearson and Sam Stosur nominated. Notice anything? All individual athletes)

The ASC has 2 x programs (sport leadership grants for women and women in sport leadership register) recognising that sport is a great way for women to prove their worth. Studies show that businesses where women hold at least 30% of the senior management positions are significantly more successful and better able to deal with future challenges than those without. The grants provide women with opportunities to undertake training to reach their leadership potential within the industry as coaches, officials and administrators. The register is to assist the placement of women on boards and in executive positions where they can apply their training and experience to benefit Australia’s sporting system. There are many qualified, talented and experienced Australian women with the ability to positively contribute to the governance of organisations, however, have had limited opportunity to be considered for a senior position or a directorship. Sports organisations have also reported that they would like assistance in sourcing talented females for consideration for leadership positions.

Media

One way the media can improve the promotion of female sports is advertising and the way they advertise. I will show a comparison of typical men’s and women’s promotions, first looking at the AFL and then the newly formed ANZ Championship Netball:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethO10NbhE4 AFL 2010 promo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STBgFqxVXKk&feature=related ANZ championship opening 2011 – Who is going to be taking this seriously?

A good example of how they should be marketing women’s sport is this ad from the 2010 ANZ championship, which seems to give off the idea that we are not making any moves into equal coverage for men and women, given the previous ad was from 2011.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp4_jDOL2Oc&feature=related ANZ championship 2010 ad

Another easy change for the media is to start focusing on the athletic credentials of these female athletes rather than their looks or personality. There are some incredible female athletes out there that have made significant achievements both as individuals and teams, and you don’t hear about some of them because they aren’t high profile sports.

Entrepreneurs

Unfortunately there is a vicious cycle – these female sports are low profile without the media attention but they cannot get this media attention until they are high profile. How can you expect a sport to go massive without the funding of entrepreneurs or business-people? This is where there will be a massive advantage if we can start to get more females on boards, hopefully they will have to sway to take the chance. A recent example of this is netball’s switch to a new form ‘Fast 5’s’. This is like the netball version of T20 cricket. We see the removal of 2 players per team, a 1 point, 2 point and 3 point shooting area, the introduction of power plays with double points, and unlimited interchanges, all of which make the game incredibly fast! Not only the sport, but the entertainment that was held over the 3 day tournament, the off-court enthusiasm of the players and the skill levels of the players made for an amazingly exciting brand of netball! But of course you wouldn’t of heard about it because it is a women’s sport and received coverage on pay television, where they could be fit in, in between replays of old NRL games and tennis matches. You would think with the majority of the sporting viewing audience, that they would be looking to appeal to the female audience to take this further.