Pete, Pete, Pete, you couldn't be more wrong. It has nothing to do with needing to win the argument.
It's because I'm always right.
End of the road for pros?
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It's because I'm always right.
If you were right (on the point I am challenging) , believe it or not, I would have no problem whatsoever in conceding but let's just agree to differ Chris, it's the most expedient thing to do in such circumstances....Pete, Pete, Pete, you couldn't be more wrong. It has nothing to do with needing to win the argument.
It's because I'm always right.
What's "enough"? But 'managing their own companies' is pretty general. I'm sure there are plenty of things these guys are very good at, but I don't think managing marketing dollars, including sponsorships, is one of them. A guy who gets products designed, figures out how to get them economically manufactured, and get them distributed, is not necessarily going to be an expert at marketing his business. Colleges charge tens of thousands a year for marketing degrees for a reason.
Think back 10 years about where these companies have invested their sponsor/marketing dollars. They've bought ads in paintball magazines, sponsored paintball teams, and sunk money into unsuccessful television shows. Does this strike you as being a very sophisticated marketing strategy? Do you think these guys have ever sat down and really put together a plan to market the sport to people who don't already play it?
Not only do I not give a lot of credit to these guys on how they spend their sponsor money, I'm fairly well convinced they have no idea what they are doing.
But I have a bit of an unfair advantage - the billion dollar companies that sponsor the NCPA do employ people whose CAREERS are marketing, and seeing what they want has been a very quick lesson in how poor of a job this sport has done at marketing. Everytime I think about how people thought all they had to do was get on TV and everything else would take care of itself I just have to laugh a bit - and not just at others, because I used to think exactly the same thing myself. Now I know better.
I agree that it's difficult to get ROI out of a Pro paintball team, and I think Dave addressed that by getting Ollie Lang instead. But even Ollie Lang is underutilized. Dave bought a young, attractive, extremely popular paintball player.
If I were Dave, I'd cut a Pro team or two, and buy some guest spots for Ollie on some mainstream television shows. Or maybe work some tabloid magic and have him "seen" with some celebrity person. Hell, Dave should hire Ollie a publicist. Would be the best money ever spent in paintball.
As for what Pro teams should do, there are lots of things. They can be as simple as having team posters made and sending them out to all the fields in your area to be posted. Put a link on your website for people to sign up for your team's monthly or quarterly newsletter. Have a fan site where you pick a couple people every event to be on your pit crew. Would you believe some Pro teams get pit crew by posting on a generic paintball web forum? If you were going to be especially bright, you'd make your fans go to your sponsor's website. Or you'd have your sponsor put your team on every gun they sell, and people who buy the gun get a chance to pit for you. Then you're getting your sponsor to pay to brand you!
Then once you've got your brand developed, you need to cash in - out of the industry. Go watch any of the other 'extreme' sports. Those things are not financed by the equipment manufacturers for those sports. There was a brief time in each sport where that's the way it was, but then players got picked up by out-of-industry sponsors.
I have, for example, never been to a skate park. I've never even seen one. Never saw it on TV until I started watching to steal ideas for broadcasting paintball. But I know who Tony Hawk is. You probably know who Tony Hawk is. Why is that?
Did anyone ever stop to think how it is we got to the point where the sales are declining? Isn't that the very definition of a marketing failure? Who is responsible for that failure if not the very same paintball company owners you're suggesting I should believe know what they are doing?
The most famous paintball player on the planet is Greg Hastings. Think about that. Scary, ain't it?
Oh my, not only do you think you are right all the time, you now wanna tell Dave how to run his business, does your arrogance know no bounds Chris coz from where I am sitting now, you sure do look a lot like cockdwarf II ?
I will concede however, you do tend to have more valid points in some of the stuff you write than cockdwarf but you do seem to be falling at the final fence like he.
Instead of trying to knee-jerk rebut Missyq, try to read what he says and take some of it onboard...please try Chris, just a little.
The reason I referred to Missy then was because I am taking it for granted you will automatically rebut me, no matter what I write.
I have a suggestion for one facet of his business.
I think one difference between you and me is you seem to put some of the paintball industry guys on a pedestal and assume that everything they do must be the right thing by default.
I don't. Nobody is infallible.
Don't get me wrong - Dave (and the rest of these guys) have put together huge businesses and I doubt it's something I would ever be able to do. Just not my cup of tea nor area of expertise.
But at the same time, I can also look at one specific area of paintball where I do have some expertise and pretty confidently say "This is not the best way to do things." It just isn't. And I have no reason to believe that Dave or Gino or the Gardners or anyone else is any more qualified to figure out how to best market the sport than I am. The fact is, none of us are very qualified - it's not like any of us are professional marketing people.
But I have had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a lot of big non-paintball company marketing folks over the past couple years and it has been a pretty eye-opening experience. And I have spent a *LOT* of time over the past couple years looking at other sports that started out a bit like ours did and how they managed to go from being something a few nutty kids played to activities drawing millions and millions of marketing dollars a year. I'm the President of a paintball league that focuses on getting out-of-industry dollars, it's my job to know that. (Of course, if we had more money lying around, I'd just hire some professional marketing people, but we're not there yet.)
We've had some moderate success - we've cashed checks from some of the biggest companies on the planet (including Microsoft and Doritos) and broadcast our programming three years in a row now with a signed contract for two more without paying a dime for air time and actually making some money on our TV deals. I understand that the networks we are on are not huge networks. But at the same time, if you watch one of our shows, or one of our DVDs, you'll see sponsor logos on our bunkers - because we actually have sponsors BEFORE we film. Nobody else has done that.
Now, you can keep replying with some variation of 'How dare you down the industry leaders!'. I guess my response to that is, how dare I not? Maybe you're comfortable just accepting someone else's opinion all the time, but I just can't. That's not how we do things better.
And for the record, I don't think I'm always right. That post where I said I was was supposed to be FUNNY (note the smiley thingy). I'm quite aware of my egomaniac internet persona and when not building it am willing to poke fun at it every now and again. I know I'm not right all the time - but I do make a concerted effort to be informed, and when I feel I'm very well informed about something, I'm going to be pretty confident in my opinion/decision until I get some new piece of information I hadn't already considered.
Chicago
I think some of the problem is that you take the " I know best" approach on almost every aspect you discuss.
Now Im sure your a smart guy, but do you really belive that you know the truth while all those people dont?
I read some of your previous posts and you have exactly the same attitude on most topics. So far you have knowed best how to
Run a pro team
Run paintball on TV
Reffing
Sponsorship strategy
How to market Oliver Lang
How to get money from outside paintball industry
etc...
But it seems like youre lacking the gift to make people listen to you, and i think that have something to do with your social skills. ( I have never met you I have to say ) But with all this knowledge it would be a waste if your lacking that.
Magued
I think some of the problem is that you take the " I know best" approach on almost every aspect you discuss.
Now Im sure your a smart guy, but do you really belive that you know the truth while all those people dont?
I read some of your previous posts and you have exactly the same attitude on most topics. So far you have knowed best how to
Run a pro team
Run paintball on TV
Reffing
Sponsorship strategy
How to market Oliver Lang
How to get money from outside paintball industry
etc...
But it seems like youre lacking the gift to make people listen to you, and i think that have something to do with your social skills. ( I have never met you I have to say ) But with all this knowledge it would be a waste if your lacking that.
Magued
Chris, as Lane has told you many times, 'you're a smart guy Chris but sometimes, you just need to shut the hell up'.....remember?
It seems as though you have a blind spot, not as extreme as cockdwarf's pathology but it's most certainly there Chris, if you don't listen to me, then trust the counsel of Magued, Missy and Lane..........but knowing you, I'm sure you'll begin to tell them 3 where they are all going wrong ...
And just in case you might accuse me of not practicing what I preach, Missy and Magued (not Lane so far but he could) have on occasion told me I was out of order and I agreed with them and adjusted whatever I was doing, it's all about respect Chris, that, and the ability to at least entertain the idea your opinion isn't sacrosanct.
It seems as though you have a blind spot, not as extreme as cockdwarf's pathology but it's most certainly there Chris, if you don't listen to me, then trust the counsel of Magued, Missy and Lane..........but knowing you, I'm sure you'll begin to tell them 3 where they are all going wrong ...
And just in case you might accuse me of not practicing what I preach, Missy and Magued (not Lane so far but he could) have on occasion told me I was out of order and I agreed with them and adjusted whatever I was doing, it's all about respect Chris, that, and the ability to at least entertain the idea your opinion isn't sacrosanct.
That's basically true. Most subjects where I don't feel like I know best I shut up and read.
I have no clue how to run a Pro team. I've never played on, coached, run, or anything else a Pro paintball team. But whether or not I know how to run a Pro team isn't the point - I don't run one, so I don't need to know.
My point is that DYNASTY does know how. There was a time period where Pro teams were doing very well, Dynasty chose to take certain actions to create long term value for themselves, most other teams did not. The people who were running those teams, whose job it was to run those teams, who did NOT do what they needed to do to create long term value for their teams, those are the people who are responsible for their teams losing sponsorship.
Me saying "See, look what Dynasty did, other teams should have done that and failed to" is not the same as me saying "I know how to run Pro teams".
As far as out of industry money and television goes, I absolutely think I have a better idea what I'm doing there than most paintball people, because frankly, my league has been more successful at it than anyone else.
I also think I have a decent idea how to run a better reffing program. But I don't have the time to do that and the other things I'm already doing.
I don't really know how to market Ollie Lang, other than if I had just spent a bunch of money on Ollie Lang, I would spend a little more to hire people (publicist, etc) who DO know how to market Ollie Lang.
As for getting people to listen, it generally doesn't affect me whether people listen to me or not, so I just don't put much effort into it. I post here because it interests me to do so. Whether paintball teams or companies market themselves well or not is not my problem, and convincing other people to change the way they run their businesses is not a good use of my time. Whether the reffing gets better or not is also not my problem. I figured out how to fix the classification/registration problem. Somebody else is going to have to fix reffing.