Jul
25
2010
Rider Pride invades Calgary
Author: Stuart R. CrawfordSaturday, July 24 is the only date on the CFL regular season schedule this year that typical normal everyday Calgarians turned into green monsters from Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan Roughriders played the Calgary Stampeders at McMahon and lost 40-20 to Henry Burris and the Stamps. To put this game into perspective for my readers south of the border or outside Canada…Henry Burris says this game is as big as Florida vs. Florida St in College Football.
Back to the fans…it is true…Saskatchewan fans lurk amongst every day Calgarians and once or twice a year they come out of the closet to support their “GO RIDERS”. Look over your shoulder and you will see Roughrider fans mixed into everyday Calgarians.
Have you heard of Saskatchewan? It is the only province in Canada that is easy to draw but extremely difficult to spell for the non-Canadian, in our schools we learn how to spell Saskatchewan…sometimes over and over and over. OK, I am poking fun at the thousands of Saskatchewan transplants now living in Calgary and according to the Edmonton Eskimos President, the same thing goes up in the only CFL team not to have a win so far during this season’s campaign.
I am talking about Football and our game, the CFL.
Rider Pride…for those who support it is a beautiful thing and those who don’t well they may not be the biggest fans of the cutout watermelons and the strange get ups that come out of the closets to those who support the green.
RIDER PRIDE IS A MARKETING SUCCESS STORY!
Why is Rider Pride important? Like many CFL teams, they had their struggles when it is uncool to like Canadian Football. Their has been a tremendous amount of change in the CFL since those days across the entire league. Maybe we owe Saskatchewan some credit. CFL football is once again cool, fun and extremely exciting to watch. 3 downs, 110 yard field and 12 guys banging it out on our turf.
Here is an interesting fact about Saskatchewan though.
Did you know that the Saskatchewan Roughriders (aka RIDERS) sell more merchandise than all the other CFL teams combined! Why is that? What is happening in those small towns and in their big cities throughout our central prairie province? What did the Riders do to attract raving fans? And what can we learn in our own businesses to do the same thing?
As a Calgary consultant who focuses on marketing the Riders just maybe a great study. One thing I can assume very easily is that the Rider brass doesn’t care about logo infringement with their fans who paint the Rider “S” on almost anything that can hold a coat of paint. Cars, houses, chests, Pilsner boxes…you name it, if it can hold an “S” it gets painted on.
I see so many companies and recently had a discussion with a colleague of mine who works for a MLM. The directors of the Multi Level Marketing firm have dictated to their loyal supporters that they are not allowed to use logos, verbage or product descriptions on any outside marketing material. Here they have an army of sometimes brainwashed raving fans who can’t share their story online or make their own marketing materials.
This I simply don’t understand and never will. It is mind-boggling when you look at what happens in Saskatchewan and how the fans are raving about their team and organizations like Harley Davidson who never frown upon people painting their bodies with Harley tattoos.
It is obvious Raving Fans are the best thing for your business. Never, ever stop them from promoting you in their own way. Let them rock and roll and make things happen.
It is not uncommon for a company like Frito to obtain large followings on many different social media platforms and have groups where former employees, current employees and fans of their products gather to keep in touch with each other and to continuously network. Pepsi has over 800,000 followers and I believe Coke has something like 2 million. Coke’s story on social media is truly unique. It is actually run by fans of Coke from what I understand during my research on Facebook Fan Pages.