If you think that I am constantly sniping, moaning or criticising the club then the rest of this board will be extremely depressing for you!!
I think that the club are doing brilliant things in the community, with our youth development and behind the scenes with the stadium project. I believe that Robinson is not given the respect that he deserves by some, and I have every confidence that we'll bring the right players in this summer.
However, when it comes to marketing and promotional work, and sometimes the communication that goes with that, I feel that the club is badly let down. The season ticket launch was too little, too late. As has been mentioned endlessly, we had the 1000 ticket update, the 2000 ticket update and then nothing since. I still don't think that we're doing enough to promote the payment plans that means that a season ticket can be covered by (effetcively) a monthly subscription. I don't think that we've done enough to look at family packages and adding value at zero or limited cost to the club. For example, I would like to see that every junior season ticket holder is given the opportunity to be part of the flag waving kids as the players come out, with a draw to give many the chance of being a mascot too. And I would also like us to look at innovative ideas to widen the social media reach of the club. An easy example would be to look at having themed games (new shirt, old shirt, wear a hat, bring a scarf, fancy dress etc) and to post photos on to social media with the club tagged into them. If 1000 fans post an image, and they all have 500 social media "friends" then potentially 1/2 a million people could get to see images directly linked to the club.
And, on top of all of that, we have the issue with the kit. We have had a couple of explanations from posters that I trust. One has said taht there were issues with the final product that needed changing, the other that there was a delay with finding a sponsor. Both are valid, but both could have been avoided if we had looked to get on top of the matter at the earliest possible opportunity.
A few weeks delay is not the end of the world but it is sloppy and a missed opportunity. Next summer we will hopefully ne heading into the championship and we have to be seriously looking at maximising every opportunity to get our marketing absolutely spot on. I would already be looking at planning pretty much every day from the last home game of this season until the opening day of the 23/24 season to make sure that no opportiunity is overlooked. I actually think that the OUSP is a really good initiative to help link the fans with the club, and wouldn't target them for any negativity for one post alone. However, like the Halifax guy the other day saying that people can close their accounts if they're not happy, I do think on this occasion the
@OUSP Secretary has misjudged the comments from some of us who really do mean well when we say that things could be better.
Let's see what the next few weeks bring, but I remain open to the opportunity for us all to work collectively to get things right, but that can only happen if those involved recognise that we have got things wrong this time around.
