Yeah I think the people in those roles have to care about the club too and genuinely want to make a difference. Too many marketing graduate types out there. I know you can’t necessarily just hire a fan for the sake of it but I think you need people who understand how fans work and what they want. And have a genuine interest in football and the betterment of the club.
We did have a fan engagement person who used to post a lot here (name escapes me, Canadian I believe he was). That was my original contact to do the BBBQ. Position virtually disappeared and became more social media content maker sort of thing.
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Was that Ryan McKee?
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Bingo.
Bertocci Ham for you.
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Haha. I think he’s moved back to Canada now. Could do with someone like him!
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Essendon Fan Engagement sounds to me like walking into one of those huge fans you see in industrial/factory settings in horror movies…
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Reading back on the old posts he really did engage well with the fans.
Fan engagement is what the club is currently doing with the faeces of the last 20 years.
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And this is one of the biggest issues with the club…… is that they are relying on people with marketing backgrounds to do the supporter engagement.
There’s nothing wrong with having these people trying to sell memberships…. But attempting to engage supporters by trying to sell them merch, memberships, tickets to functions, etc is not engagement. Members don’t want to be customers, they want to be community members and important stake holders.
The club needs Community development staff who’s job it is to build a strong and cohesive Essendon football club community. To consult them meaningfully on the club’s decision making…… and You cannot do that with business focused people from marketing.
Edit: and if anyone from the club is reading this, they’re more than welcome to DM me. And I’m happy to jump on the phone and discuss this.
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Fan engagement is having Pete lazar at the G every Friday night telling Bomber fans to get rowdy, then being at the G every Saturday night telling Carlton fans to to get rowdy, and then pretending it never happened
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Mason does.
Some of the women, but we haven’t said as many nasty things over the past five years as are said daily about the men…
Essendon Fan Engagement. Oxymoron much!!
“Fan engagement” is a Nige from Nth Fitzroy kind of thing.
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Not that carrot salad bloke
Bulk engagements/activations at our AFLW match (link below) but I’m there to see us smash the Dawks… again.
My experience of Essendon fan engagement was very poor. I assisted in taking a group of indigenous kids from Townsville to Dreamtime 7 years ago. I had arranged the kids to perform a traditional dance at Essendon, Carlton and Rebels.
We turned up to the Hanger, we had zero access to the players.
Ended up performing in front of a primary school group and Michael Long, who talked throughout the dance. A few players came over to the internal nets to watch but most kept to themselves. Jobe, Hep, Tippa and Fantasia were fantastic.
When I asked if the kids could meet the players, I was given a lecture and that was it. No one thanked us for coming. No one cared.
They say never meet your heroes. This was true.
The following day we went to Carlton. All players and coaches watched the dance and the indigenous players participated with the kids. We then spent 2 hours with the players and coaching staff. mark Murphy and the other injured players played kick to kick with the kids while the main group trained. A few of our kids even went into a main drill.
The Rebels were equally as good as Carlton.
That’s the kind of engagement I want. An organisation that wants to mix with their fans.
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Not surprising to hear. Our indigenous celebration during the Dreamtime game was embarassing.
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Fan engagement is just next level kiss cam
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essendons engagement with indigenous australians atm seem to be ‘woah they exist and we did some stuff 20 years ago’
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My view of fan engagement is informed by Nathan Kalman-Lamb and his article Imagined communities of fandom: sport, spectatorship, meaning and alienation in late capitalism.
Particularly the below:
Fans choose to align themselves with a team in order to become part of something that transcends the atomistic alienation of neoliberal society. What they do not see as they make this complex and emotional choice is the extent to which the community they are entering is itself a palliative extended by the economic system in order to sustain itself.
Essentially good fan engagement should make you feel part of a community. Bad fan engagement drops the veil and doesn’t hide the fact that the relationship between fan and club is one where the club sees you purely as someone whose role in the equation is to be marketed to or to consume (ie. sponsor “activiations”).
So I guess good fan engagement is difficult to define in terms of particular actions but more about creating situations and conditions where organic or spontaneous experiences of belonging are more likely to occur.
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