To the entire GW Hoops community (both of you! ), first and foremost, I hope this is a happy holiday season for you!

This past week, the debate over why GW doesn't draw students arose again.  This is an old topic, but one that is perhaps more relevant now that the team is playing well.  For myself, a few thoughts to share...hopefully you'll find this thought-provoking if not useful.

I teach event management at George Mason, and one of my event marketing case studies that I use is that of the apathy of GMU students.  After their Final Four run, students were highly engaged and happily attended games.  As the years progressed, their attendance dwindled.  I do a survey of my students on how many have attended even one game during their time at Mason...and usually out of 15 or 20 students, maybe 1 or 2 have attended (and generally only a game or two).  The reasons students give for not attending vary, from it's not convenient to they have other things to do, to them just not having interest.  

We then spend that class day going through an exercise on how to get students to attend.  For those who know Simon Sinek's Golden Circle model, I stress that marketing to students must give them a "why" as to why the game should be important to them.  I ask them to compare going to their high school football games (when they were in HS), and "why" everyone went to those games (i.e.: it's social, FOMO, place to be seen, but generally not for the football itself).  The idea is that students must feel like their lives are better by going.  

Anyway, the reason GW students don't attend is there really isn't a "why" that is important to them.  I'm not going to pretend I know what the right answer is for GW without doing more specific market research, but it absolutely has to start with WHY their lives would be better by doing so.  For the George's Army crew, it's clear that this is more than school spirit...it's social. For other students, not so much.

As for alumni, there are completely different reasons, but it all still relates to how their lives are positively impacted.  Could it be that alumni be given "spirit credits" that perhaps give them benefits they wouldn't otherwise have without financial donations?  Even for a fan, it is very easy to just stay home and watch the game on tv or streaming. Someone referenced parking, and I couldn't agree more.  Buy season tickets and get parking free of charge.  It doesn't cost the university much at all, since the parking lots have plenty of unused spaces.  

Another area to focus on would be faculty and university staff.  Make it a benefit of working at the university that every FT staff member is given comp tickets to a nonconference game.  Better yet, recognize the academic superstar students for a given department at halftime (like we do with athletes from other sports), and the faculty AND students would show up.  Giving away free tickets isn't a financial loss if you have unused capacity and the recipients wouldn't buy those tickets.  That's what marketing is.

Finally, there are plenty of businesses and residents of Foggy Bottom, eastern Georgetown, and the K St. corridor who have no connection to GW.  Again, offer free tickets to get them in for a game and maybe they'll want to buy more tickets to other games.  Maybe not, but community engagement is a gateway drug to gaining corporate and community support.

Last bit of academic thought here...There's a marketing theory called Story Brand Marketing by Donald Miller.  Without getting into details, it offers that most marketing fails because the service or product being marketed views itself as the hero of the story, that they're great and you (the customer) should want to spend your resources on them.  The reality is that successful marketing works when the marketing entity view itself as the guide and not the hero (think Obi Wan and Luke, or Dumbledore and Harry Potter).  We can talk all we want about how we have a good product that people should just want to spend their resources on, but GW basketball is not the hero of the story.  

You are.  

And GW Athletics and university leadership must view themselves making a difference in your life, and not that you're making a difference in theirs.

That's my two cents.
 

Barry, I've not posted in a long time, but I visit your board frequently.  I agree with most of what you've written.  I only wonder if the lack of press hurts us.  These days, it seems as if the press (not just the Post or Hatchet, but maybe, ESPN, Athletic and other outlets including social media) set the tone and create a buzz and demand, including feeling of FOMO.  GW seems to hardly get any press.  I don't know if GW is an a position ot influence, but I suspect there's a way....

Big push to change moniker by non alumni. Name changed to bring unity and school spirit. Really? Where are those people now? Sad.

You make some good points jf, what do you think could be some solutions? How could GW engage alumni better and make it useful?

One thing I noticed from grad school (not at GW) is that a ton of people there have affection for things they used to do on campus - there’s a lakefront terrace with a bar and food, a cool old German beer hall in the student union, etc. And the alumni magazine and various other official publications remind people of that all the time.

GW doesn’t really have anything like that. There’s no cool place just for students, no real traditions, and so on. And GW is a very old school!

Not that it has to be a bar, but why not have some kind of rooftop thing on the terrace at the Marvin Center, or make the Alumni House in F St an actual place for students to go, or some other kind of fun social campus place that doesn’t change every five years (RIP the Hippodrome.)

Bonus points to who can guess the grad school

Ahh, the annual why aren't we drawing more conversation. This has bedeviled GW for more than 30 years. We have never drawn well excepting games here and there. 90% of the students are disinterested and will only show up for big TV games (which lately we have had virtually none) and we have an aging blue seat fanbase. It's a shame but after 30 years I am prepared to accept this reality after watching many efforts die unsuccessfully. If you all have ideas, by all means try them. Personally, I am not expending any more energy going down this rabbit hole again. 

GWRising wrote:

Ahh, the annual why aren't we drawing more conversation. This has bedeviled GW for more than 30 years. We have never drawn well excepting games here and there. 90% of the students are disinterested and will only show up for big TV games (which lately we have had virtually none) and we have an aging blue seat fanbase. It's a shame but after 30 years I am prepared to accept this reality after watching many efforts die unsuccessfully. If you all have ideas, by all means try them. Personally, I am not expending any more energy going down this rabbit hole again. 

Thank you Rising for expending the energy to let us know that you will not be expending any more energy on this matter.  Am pretty sure a non-response to this thread would have carried the same effect.

 

BC wrote:

I'm curious, what are the parking options these days.  I know legal street parking was difficult to find back in the days I lived near DC (almost 20 years ago).  I don't expect it's any better.   How does parking costs compare to other schools?   Could that impact alumni attendance?   

It’s incredibly easy to find street parking. I’ve never had an issue, at least not for years. Sometimes that means a meter, but sometimes I can find free spots.

Even if you have to go into the garage (which I do sometimes due to time constraints.  It is $12 - I had a visitor a couple a weeks ago that wanted to pay for parking as his part of the evening - he laughed when he saw $12.

Did he laugh because it was so low - or so high?   $12 isn't so much here in the Portland - Vancouver area for a day's parking,  

GW used to have a discount rate for those people with a basketball ticket stub.  Do they still do that?