marketing/promotion that constantly reinforces it's greatness to the world beyond Dog Patch. It's always 1) Product, 2) Excitement, 3) Promotion = Winning Casual Fans.
Folks in places like Columbus are immersed in significant amounts of promotion. There is simply a dearth of promotion about UConn football. In places where football matters, where I often go on business, all the TV stations (not just the station carrying the game) are filled with promos. News reports are filled with stories about the big game and weather leads with the game forecast.
Our historical lack of media support presents a challenge to building the necessary demand for our football product. If we can't rely on our local media oulets for promotion, our UConn AD staff needs to start banging those drums, loudly. A great example is NECN, New England Cable News. Their sports reports hardly ever mention UConn. Aren't we in New England? When our five players were drafted I watched their sports report to hear about the feat. But there was nothing mentioned about it on NECN. So I sent this tweet:
4/29/13, 9:14 AM
@kevinwalshtvSaw your NECN segment on NFL draft. Why no mention of 5 UConn players drafted? How often does that happen? Isn't NECN a New England network?
His response? Good point, but we had a feature on Blidi.
@kevinwalshtv Thanks Kevin but even a simple "kudos to UConn with 5 players drafted!" would have worked. We got nat'l att'n yet zero from our "home" TV.
Why do I complain? Because a simple mention of our draft success on their broadcast (which gets repeated throughout the day) gets both clueless viewers and casual fans all over New England thinking "Wow, that's impressive--UConn football is a lot better than I thought". It puts us in their consciousness--whether they were paying close attention to the broadcast or not.
Frankly, we need to hold outlets like NECN to a higher standard of reportage. They had time to mention Geno Smith but not enough for a shout out to one of their constituent schools after a tremendous achievement? If we can't control what these media oulets say, (which is the constant response I get from Storrs) then our UConn athletic brass should at least let them hear about it when they miss the mark. And folks like me shouldn't have to do it. There should be interns monitoring this stuff.