I would hope everyone would agree that we are subpar at getting State’s brand out there. We should be throwing up our baseball natty every chance we get. On every type of media. Also publicize our academic accolades. Other universities are light years ahead. You would be surprised how many timesI travel anywhere and tell someone I’m from Mississippi of the references I get to the Grove and OM when sports is related. I’ve gotten a Dak mention some but you get my drift. What do y’all think? I guess I’m a homer but just wish we got more love outside state lines.
We have to improve marketing
- Thread starter EdamCheeseDawg
- Start date
We travel a lot for a junior sport with our kids. Our marketing department definitely needs to push forward a lot more but State is definitely known. I’ve had great conversations with people from all over the country that love the state of Mississippi when they travel here and several that have had visits on campus that were blown away. I talked to a guy several months ago who flew his family in from Northern California for a tournament in Memphis, booked a flight out from New Orleans just so they could tour the state for a couple days. This was all based on how much they loved an earlier visit to our campus.
Well that is good to hear and hope my experiences are isolated! I do wear Miss State apparel as much as possible when traveling so I try to do my part !
You've heard it before but Mississippi is a small market and Mississippi State is a smaller market. The University can only control its direct sales (Book Store and online), but marketers are apprehensive to invest big $ and not sell out. Apparently, we don't create the buzz that Alabama does, we're not in the big market like Georgia is and we don't sell enough online gear to interest the big merchandisers. Some of you out there must be marketing gurus and can expand on this.
It has dropped off some since Steve Strickland left. Especially on the non-traditional marketing front. OM gets a lot more pub because they have a significantly larger journalism school and their grads love waxing poetic about it.
As someone who worked in marketing for a long time, I can tell you that if you don't have something significant to talk about it, your "marketing" will be white noise. I'm not sure we have anything worth talking about at the moment.
IMO, we let the baseball natty rot on the vine from a promotional standpoint. We could have figured out ways other than the university's 30s commercial to leverage that event. All I ever saw from the university were emails and sponsored content selling swag. Nothing propping up the university. I'm not saying somethings did happen, but in marketing, if you don't see it...it didn't happen.
That's on Coinz...
As someone who worked in marketing for a long time, I can tell you that if you don't have something significant to talk about it, your "marketing" will be white noise. I'm not sure we have anything worth talking about at the moment.
IMO, we let the baseball natty rot on the vine from a promotional standpoint. We could have figured out ways other than the university's 30s commercial to leverage that event. All I ever saw from the university were emails and sponsored content selling swag. Nothing propping up the university. I'm not saying somethings did happen, but in marketing, if you don't see it...it didn't happen.
That's on Coinz...
I love that you're getting downvoted for this. Some people love the po old state mentality. But when there are millions in revenue coming in, you gotta be running it like a million dollar business. Our AD marketing leaves a ton to be desired.
The University Marketing is worse than the AD… both my wife and I are MSU Grads. Our kids got a significant amount of info/mailings/calls/free stuff from Ole Miss compared to MSU their senior year of High School.
Not saying we couldn't have done better, but I'm not sure how much juice there is to squeeze from that, especially outside of the SEC. It'd be like us seeing marketing pumping up whoever won a woman's basketball championship last season. It's nice, but it's a relatively small niche that is going to care or take notice.
Next time you are watching football, check out the Rocket Mortgage commercial with Herbstriet. He tells the homeowner and the mascots to huddle up. There is a funky looking Tiger. Its Jackson States. Plus Deion is alongside Saban in the Aflac commercials.
Not only does Ole Miss kill us with marketing, Jackson State is as well.
You can find Ole Miss everything. Outside of Starkville, its tough to find good MSU gear. Outside of the state of Mississippi, its impossible.
I was at Kohl's in Flowood recently. They have a whole rack of maroon MSU stuff that is Missouri State, not Mississippi State. That's not a Kohls in Flowood problem.
Not only does Ole Miss kill us with marketing, Jackson State is as well.
You can find Ole Miss everything. Outside of Starkville, its tough to find good MSU gear. Outside of the state of Mississippi, its impossible.
I was at Kohl's in Flowood recently. They have a whole rack of maroon MSU stuff that is Missouri State, not Mississippi State. That's not a Kohls in Flowood problem.
We don't pay anything to hardly anyone to get better marketing. Unpaid interns are solicited most of the time.
So where are you seeing all of these other universities being superior in marketing and "light years ahead"? Other than during a televised game, I don't recall seeing any marketing from any other schools? And what are you suggesting be done?
People who run websites, news outlets, etc., are cheap and lazy. They love free content to fill space and place ads around. We should have some grad students, interns, low level employees, etc., just pump out stories glorifying the university. Potential headlines, "Mississippi State the Nation's most Veteran Friendly University," "Starkville the best College Town in the South," "Mississippi State, 1941 National Champs!" Just pump out pro university stuff, it need not be Ernest Hemingway writing this stuff, virtually anyone can. Take a lot of liberties, "The Junction voted best tailgate in America!" (by SPS). Take Outkick for example, I see pro Ole Miss articles floating around periodically, I rarely see a pro MSU article. I'm sure Clay would love to run just about any free college football related articles he can get.
Looks like we squeezed $146 million from it as of 9/28/21.
https://cdispatch.com/news/2021-09-28/baseball-title-nets-msu-media-exposure-worth-146m/
I definitely agree with lack of marketing.....and not just in the AD....
ive said that folks who turn their backs on marketing and branding are often out of touch. I will give you an example.
MSU wins National championship in baseball. All i want is some athletic shirts not made of cotton. We have some really cool designs out there, but 99% of what you find is made out of cotton. WTF wears cotton t shirts anymore? my 11yo son refuses to wear cotton t shirts, its all athletic gear......go to a gym and see how many folks are wearing cotton work out gear? none. My wife, bless her soul, is a huge Ole Miss baseball fan....my kid has several pieces of UM baseball in his closet (thankfully doesn't wear anymore) but they are all made out of what folks wear these days....I've gone into the lodge and CBM several times trying to find decent stuff like ive described, and minimal at best. This may be more of a rant than an example, but feels our folks are out of touch.
TBQH, I was never a fan of Cohen becoming head honcho....i felt like he was more like templeton and less like Byrne and Strick.....his lack of getting our brand out there, even within our own borders is really concerning IMO
ive said that folks who turn their backs on marketing and branding are often out of touch. I will give you an example.
MSU wins National championship in baseball. All i want is some athletic shirts not made of cotton. We have some really cool designs out there, but 99% of what you find is made out of cotton. WTF wears cotton t shirts anymore? my 11yo son refuses to wear cotton t shirts, its all athletic gear......go to a gym and see how many folks are wearing cotton work out gear? none. My wife, bless her soul, is a huge Ole Miss baseball fan....my kid has several pieces of UM baseball in his closet (thankfully doesn't wear anymore) but they are all made out of what folks wear these days....I've gone into the lodge and CBM several times trying to find decent stuff like ive described, and minimal at best. This may be more of a rant than an example, but feels our folks are out of touch.
TBQH, I was never a fan of Cohen becoming head honcho....i felt like he was more like templeton and less like Byrne and Strick.....his lack of getting our brand out there, even within our own borders is really concerning IMO
I travel all the time and I always wear state gear. I get a ton of hail states, lots of thumbs up, and general positivity.
National perception of our brand is good. Our football program is generally perceived as solid. Those who follow college baseball know that we are solid there. Our academic perception is fine.
I don't think it's nearly as bad as you think. Part of the problem is how our own fans see ourselves, particularly the older ones.
National perception of our brand is good. Our football program is generally perceived as solid. Those who follow college baseball know that we are solid there. Our academic perception is fine.
I don't think it's nearly as bad as you think. Part of the problem is how our own fans see ourselves, particularly the older ones.
I think that winning in a meaningful way is the best marketing. I've not run into any out of state folks who don't know that both schools exist, they just don't know much about either. They DO typically know that we won the CWS last year if they are sports people.
I've never seen the Jackson State Tiger in that commercial. The most out of place mascot I've seen there is the Southern University Jaguar. Deion Sanders is in those commercials because he's a celebrity and is good on camera. He doesn't say the words "Jackson" or "State" one time in those commercials and the marching band and dancing girls behind him are all clad in Aflac, not JSU.
My family lives in Corinth, MS. I can go to the local Hibbett's there and find as much State gear as Ole Miss gear. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the stores around here pretty much only sell the Texas and Oklahoma schools and sometimes LSU or Arkansas. I never see any other schools here unless it's randomly at a place like Ross, TJ Maxx, or Marshall's.
Actually, that's exactly what it sounds like. This sounds like an issue with the supply chain where somebody saw a maroon MSU or 'Miss State' or 'M State' on the shipping order and sent the wrong shirt. I can't imagine a situation where a Kohl's in Mississippi would knowingly order Missouri State stuff and NOT Mississippi State stuff. That explains why there's a "whole rack" still sitting there.
It looks like the vast majority of that exposure was not generated by MSU marketing but by the broadcast and news related to the broadcast. Again, I have no clue whether MSU marketing did a good or bad job, but I'm not sure how much they can leverage it beyond the people already interested in NCAA baseball, who would see it from the broadcast of the world series or news sites reporting on the world series.
N
Nope. Its JSU and Clemson.
JSU uniform
JSU mascot
Clemson on left, JSU on right. JSU uniform changed a little bit from the summer when this was shot. Same color scheme, Under Armour, same font.
JSU logo at end of commercial
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I don't think I've ever seen that version of the commercial and if I have, I guess I thought it was Aubie, due to the Under Armour insignia. In any case, the fact that you had to use forensic evidence like Jim Garrison explaining the magic bullet shows that this isn't the marketing win you're portraying it to be.N
Nope. Its JSU and Clemson.
JSU uniform
JSU mascot
Clemson on left, JSU on right. JSU uniform changed a little bit from the summer when this was shot. Same color scheme, Under Armour, same font.
JSU logo at end of commercial
I never said it was a magic bullet. Its just an example of an in-state school taking their brand national. Someone said it wasnt JSU and I knew it was.
Georgia Tech found a great way to do it with their Invesco partnership. We get ads with Lane Kiffin reading a script for Coca-Cola on our SEC Network games.
Our marketing group is fine with picky people picking Polk's. We can do better.