Marketing kicks up for Green Wave hoops

As October closes in toward November, The Wave Report’s attention slowly turns toward Fogelman Arena and the 2009-10 Tulane basketball season, which is poised for a breakout year. But before a sneaker touches the court or whistle blows, TWR sat down with marketing coordinator Jason Potuto to find out what’s going to be different in the stands and to explain “Late Night in Fogelman” taking place Friday night.

The Wave Report: I know practice started last week, but is this “Late Night in Fogelman” supposed to be a Midnight Madness style event? What all does it entail?

Jason Potuto: I guess practice has been going on a week, but one of the first things we started talking about since I got here, both with coach Stockton and coach Dickerson, was reviving a Midnight Madness that a lot of schools do.

We earmarked this year as a good place to start. We didn’t do it on October 16th like most schools did, because it was the first day of practice. We wanted to couple it with our volleyball program since we have a volleyball game at home on the 23rd. We talked to the conference, and coach Momic and UAB’s coach and everyone was okay with pushing the game back to 8:00, so we can come close to having a traiditional Midnight Madness. It’s billed as “Late Night in Fogelman” since it’s not starting at midnight, but we hope this brings out a good crowd for the volleyball team. They are having a great season and we figured it would create a little buzz on campus.

There hasn’t been a pre-season event like this in a few years. We are going to have volleyball at 8:00 and then hopefully get the basketball event going at about 10:30, or 30 minutes after the end of the match. We have our cheerleaders, Shockwave, Sound Wave, a college band that will perform in between events. The Honeybees are coming. So are the French Quarter Flyers, who will put on a 15-20 minute high-intensity, acrobatic dunking exhibition. There’s trampolines and music and all that good stuff.

On top of that, there’s giveaways like t-shirts for the students and players signing autographs. Plus we are looking at doing four different “shoot for money” promotions which will take place between these acts. It might be a shot for $10,000 or two or three for $25,000. A three-point shooting contest as well. We will keep it high energy, a lot of music, a lot of fun.

Then we’ll introduce the women’s team one-by-one, to give each player their due respect. Then we’ll hand the mic off to coach Stockton who will give us a brief synopsis of the upcoming season. It’ll be followed by a three-point shooting contest with the women’s basketball players and some of our students.

After that we’ll introduce the men’s team the same way, handing the mic over to coach Dickerson to talk about the upcoming season. Then the men’s team is going to do a dunk contest. We’ll have a Honeybee, Riptide, a cheerleader and a student as a judge. It should be a really fun way to tip off the season.

TWR: Not long after the event, the focus for your department shifts to the season opener against Georgetown on Nov. 13. How are sales coming for that, and have individual tickets been put up yet for that game?

JP: We are still pushing our season ticket and partial ticket packages right now. I believe we are going to be starting with single-game tickets on Monday the 26th. We are really trying to leverage the Georgetown game not only for the men’s program but also the women’s game.

We have the women playing ULM before and billing it as a double header. $20 gets you in to both games as a single-game ticket. If you are a season ticket holder to either, they get you in to both. It’s going to be a great way to kick off.

Just talking with some other people, they said they can’t remember the last time there was this much buzz for the opening of basketball season and a lot of it is because of this game. People are really excited.

TWR: There’s some excitement overall for the men’s season because they have so much returning and finished last season strong. Are the season ticket sales reflective of that or do you think it’s going to take some early season success to really feel any effect?

JP: We are actually above last year’s renewal pace right now. We are over 75% renewed with about three weeks to go. We also have a solid amount of new season ticket holders. There’s some faculty and staff and some community members who are just now catching on to our basketball program.

So they are going very well, exceptionally well. Of course they could always be better, but we are very pleased where we are standing right now.

TWR: As far as partial packages, have those been released yet? What are they and how are those selling?

JP: One thing we learned last year during baseball was that there are a lot of games for our fans to attend. It’s six football games, 16 to 17 home basketball games for both men’s and women’s basketball. That’s a lot of games before baseball even starts.

So last year we introduced partial packages for baseball and those were a hit. In basketball this year we have a great non-conference pack with Georgetown, George Mason, VCU and Alabama State who are all NCAA Tournament teams recently. That’s the non-conference package, and it costs $70. Then for those who prefer Conference USA competition we have a package with: Southern Miss, Memphis, and some other conference games for $70 as well.

So you have a choice. You can do a full season, but if it is too much time commitment we understand that so we are offering out smaller packages.

TWR: And what’s the strategy in terms of promoting these ticket packages? Are you going the same route as football with advertising buys?

JP: We are going to do the same media we did for football. We will have yard signs all over uptown a week or so before the first game. We will do bus stop advertising, internet advertising with Nola.com. We will be on the radio with WIST and ESPN Radio 1350.

TWR: If things start turning the right direction and the team is playing well, do you have plans to throw more money at advertising or hope the momentum kind of catches on?

JP: Absolutely. We will certainly try to leverage with how the season is going and the budgetary restraints you try to work within.

But if things are going well, we want everyone in the area to know about it and to come see our product. Hopefully the start of the season is just the beginning and we can use it build Tulane basketball into an event fans want to come out and see.

TWR: With that in mind, are there any plans to enhance in-game promotions and maybe bring some added people into Fogelman by making it about more than basketball?

JP: We are going to target some games to do pep-rallies and activities and tailgating outside of Fogelman which should generate some students and some younger fans. We are working with the Reily Center on trying to bring in some of what they do for students, like gaming nights. We will try and set up inflatables up on the concourses up top and let’s make it more of an event inside the event.

There are some games being targeted to do that. We are also going to ramp up in-game promotions. We are targeting youth basketball groups to come in and play each other at halftime. That ensures we have kids coming to experience Fogelman for maybe the first time It also means they are bringing their parents who may need to be re-introduced if they haven’t been here in a while.

Expect some more in-game contests, promotions, acts to come in and entertain our fans at the same time. It’s all pretty exciting and I believe we are going to recapture all the great things about Fogelman from the past I have heard so much about.