Day 9

The Age & 3AW

Our first day back in Melbourne and it was almost strange to not start the day with everybody else around. We met at Caulfield Uni and slowly piled onto the bus. The first stop of the day was the Age building across from Southern Cross station, we waited in the foyer not really knowing what to expect. We were greeted by members of the companies team and were separated into two groups for quick tours of both of the offices. My groups first stop was the 3AW offices and studios. We had the opportunity to go into a recording studio and watch the hosts near by in action. We also stopped and talked to employees along the way who described their roles and how the station ran. Team members need to constantly stream and research news headlines throughout the day to keep relevant and make sure they have the most recent updates. One of the employees explained that sometimes callers are the first to report stories to them often calling 3AW before they have even rung 000, which the team prompty instruct them to do. We walked past the offices of many big names including Derryn Hinch. We were then handed over to The age for a short tour of their department. 

When the tour was over we were ushered into a room to hear a presentation by the teams. It was the largest group of people we had present to us over the whole trip. The team had well identified the decrease in readership of physical newspapers but had taken opportunity in other channels available. These channels include an IPad and IPhone application and website. When launching these applications research was undertaken to investigate user requirements  and feedback. What seemed most important to the team was being capable of communicating with their reader at every point throughout the day. This included a cycle of technologies used and what information was wanted at particular parts of the day. For example on the train readers are using their mobiles and want news headlines whereas in their lunch break they might be using their IPad and searching for entertainment news. It was great to see the company so successfully adapting to this technological change and new consumer behaviours. 

Western Bulldogs

After lunch at Spencer St Mall we were off to meet Nick Truelson the chief Commercial Officer for the Western Bulldogs AFL team. Nick was in fact a past student of the international MMSP program so he had a true understanding of our purpose. We explained to him our research topics and he then gave us a run down of the teams marketing strategies and current conditions. Nick explained the high growth rate in Melbourne's Western suburbs and the huge opportunity this was for them. They are working on building the Bulldogs brand and have started a campaign called 'The Western Front'. While the title of this campaign has been controversial the campaign has in fact been very successful. The video included images of big businesses in the West and produced an emotional and community appeal to those living n the west. They engaged their audience and produced an image as wanted of being dynamic, professional and a leader. The AFL club are using these marketing techniques to increase membership signups and promote loyalty in the program so members re-sign year after year. Their target market are existing members, new prospective members and community & corporate partners. With such large growth in the Western suburbs the team plan to leverage this buy engaging schools and young families with the team and even inviting immigrants to attend football matches. 

The team are using Facebook to engage with their fans and it was noted that monitoring it was sometimes an issue, especially when the team had lost a game. The bulldogs seems to be one of the only AFL teams with a long term marketing plan and we can expect to see a great rise in their fan numbers given growth in the area and effective marketing strategies to match. We then visited their gym for a quick look and we were back to Caulfield to go home for a nights rest.