I know it’s a couple of weeks away but just wanted to let everyone know that the poster advertising our home game against Barrow is on display outside the Shay.

Best form of advertising is performance on the field and whilst the attendance was poor those watching on tv who are on the fence may have been persuaded to commit a bit more.

I suspect the real motive from the usual suspects was more about moaning than advertising.

Very true but they would still have to know when there's a game taking place.

Well if they were watching on TV as he mentioned they must have done.

So there is a hardcore fan base of 700-800 people that will go regardless of marketing or pricing, it has been integrated into their way of life and part of their normal routine to attend games. There’s probably about another 1000 fair-weather fans who are influenced by on field performance and other mitigating circumstances in their personal life. I don’t believe that physical marketing has a place in modern day rugby league and certainly in this instance given our financial predicament, financial, the reward for commitment is not a viable marketing strategy(for example I’m not a massive fan of Chinese food, it doesn’t matter how many leaflets get posted about discounted Chinese food I am still not going to get a Chinese). As far as I’m aware there are at least 2 people who regularly visit schools targeting a more agreeable market. As I’ve mentioned before the only marketing strategy we need to do is attaching the club to other businesses and ventures that are part of people’s daily life/routine so gyms, swimming pools, cinemas, eateries ect. I think we need more enhanced media marketing on socials.

I don't think performance on the field is nearly as important as we want to believe. Go back all the way to 98 when we could only attract 5k for a semi final play off game against Saints when we had the best team we had in 10 years. Even recently when we look at '21 and '22 with teams that finished 3rd we couldn't get higher than a 1.7k average.

What we do have is a large gap in the age demographics for our average attendance, its not rocket science just take a look around at the next game. People in the ages 16 to maybe 40 or so are in the minority, we have entire generations missing from the fan base and this needs to be the target which needs a large improvement. I mentioned on the other thread that we do a great job with the junior section and work with the community clubs and that has been going on for years but it has not transfered over in to bums on seats when those juniors become young adults. The club needs to address the reason why and a lot of it will come down to pricing. "Rugby League is a family sport".......yet in the areas the game is played most people can't afford to take their families to a game. Not just a Fax issue but it does affect us directly.

Despite the talk in the other thread I am not a huge fan of fylers/posters for the reason that LU mentions in that it mainly won't appeal to anyone with no interest in the sport. That said in Halifax we must have a lot of people that have either been to games or know about the club, so in that sense having posters up might just remind them and keep the club in their mind. As mentioned also if you can work a way to get that advertising for nothing then its really a no brainer and TF is bang on when he says it is about brand awareness and at the moment the Fax brand is in the gutter, we are a begging bowl club, you see the Fax logo and you wonder what the bad news is or how they are trying to get money out of you. That will take a long time to change but it has to start somewhere.

The fact we could not even muster 500-600 paying fans through the gate for a game against a top SL team is appalling which ever way we want to look at it, its the worst draw possible without a doubt, but its not the oppositions responsibility to get people through the gate. That ground should have been rocking yesterday especially with that performance. The club needs some big changes, we look to have a pretty decent team on the field this season, so in my opinion the changes need to start upstairs.

Interesting to see / know from the few banging on about posters / flyers etc how many did the following.

1. Attend the game they knew about from other platforms?
2. Invite someone else to attend the game?
3. How many who were invited actually came along?

The 3rd point will answer the effectiveness for those not interested or with more important issues to deal with.

And if there not doing the first 2 then it’s a bit hypocritical to rip into others who are doing far more than they are in other areas when they themselves are doing nothing apart from moan.

They talk about advertising, imaging and the message being sent out.

I wonder if they ever stop to think what sort of advertisement, image and message they are sending out to any potential interested parties?

Every year, year after year it’s the board, the coach, the players etc etc and there out early this year even before the regular season had started over a poster.

Sad and pathetic.

No doubt the 3 moanateers will rally round liking the others post in some attempt to justify it but not surprisingly I won’t be one of them.

Back on thread if we play as good as yesterday we will beat Barrow (and Sheffield next week).

In my opinion having watched the game on TV, I’ll say we did well in defence, conceded minimal penalties and looked fitter at this stage of the season than we have in a while, however that only goes so far to securing a win. My view was we looked a bit clueless and panicky in the attacking 20 and I honestly think we could still be playing now and still not have a try on the board.

As I said, just my opinion based on what I saw, and happy to be proved wrong