The story of the Saskatchewan Roughriders is a compelling one that any marketer who holds dear to customer-centric business models should hear.
Gregg Sauter, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, Saskatchewan Roughriders Football Club, will tell the story of this professional football team in the Canadian Football League at the 7th Annual Loyalty Expo, presented by Loyalty360 – The Loyalty Marketer’s Association. The event will be held March 17-19, 2014, at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida.
Sauter’s session is titled, “Enhancing Loyalty and Retention by Turning Every Customer Into a Fan.”
In the past decade, the Saskatchewan Roughriders have transformed themselves from a struggling Canadian Football league franchise into an iconic brand in Canadian professional sports. As the most successful CFL franchise, the Riders now sell more branded merchandise than all other CFL teams combined and more than four of Canada’s six National Hockey League franchises. Despite being the smallest professional sports market in Canada, the Roughriders lead the CFL in game day attendance and national TV ratings.
Sauter participated in a Q&A with Loyalty360 to answer some questions pertaining to the franchise’s profound transformation with the customer at the center of that success.
How did the Roughriders become an iconic brand in Canada?
That’s a long story and like most success stories, there is no one silver bullet action or initiative, it’s doing a lot of things right and having a little luck, but ultimately like any successful business you have to have great leadership, vision and culture, along with a great product or service. If I were forced to sum up how in one statement, it would be simple: We put the fan first in everything we do. We recognize and reward them.
I think at the core of the transformation were a few fundamental shifts in how the club operated.
Ten years ago, the club realized that players come and go, especially in Canada, so there is a lot of risk having your identity tied to a couple players and or your win/loss record.
The decision was made to make the fan the star of the show. In branding we talk a lot about emotion, and one of the key emotions that we were, and still are, selling is love and belonging. The club began shifting focus to our fan base and made our stadium experience the place to be – i.e., love the game and each other and join the club where all are invited.
We are the smallest professional sports market in North America and instead of that being a liability, we made it an asset. With this came another emotion, and that is “pride” in being the underdog, the little guy, the David and Goliath complex. As we began having success on the field, the media began picking up on this and celebrated the little guy that was now leading the league.
We put significant resources (human and financial) into giving back to our fan base and community (our owners) and recognizing them. This is perhaps our most effective marketing initiative.
How did the culture change and how difficult was it to pull off? What were the keys to this transformation?
Like most successful organizations, it usually starts from the top with leadership. We had a significant change in our management structure 10 years ago. We brought in two key leaders: a president & CEO - Jim Hopson; and our VP of Sales – Steve Mazurak, who had a vision to transform the culture, building a “major league” way of operating. We still consistently self-evaluate and ask ourselves if specific initiatives or ways of working are major league or not. New management transformed the business side by bringing in formal business strategies and processes including putting our customer/fan first and giving back to the community.
They brought the same professional structure, strategy, vision and process to our football operations which transformed a team that was floundering with weak on-field performance, to a team that was consistently competitive on the field. Was it difficult to pull off? It required some tough choices in terms of bringing in new staff, managers and volunteers to replace those that didn’t embrace the change. That’s always hard.
How did customer/fan behavior change in the past 10 years?
There was a time when there were pockets of fan behavior in the stands that wasn’t necessarily something to be proud of. The club made a deliberate effort to remove that behavior and celebrate and encourage good sportsmanship and community. This continues to be a big emphasis for us today. Part of this was accomplished by reinforcing pride in our/your own house and in your team. Part of it was accomplished by upgrading our facilities to a more major league standard and educating our game day staff and volunteers, which is an ongoing process. We also simply removed fans that did not support our vision of what we wanted for our game day experience. We began treating our fans as owners and conveyed a sense of professionalism. The team also started winning and, over time, this began changing behavior and how fans felt about the team, our brand and themselves.
There is another key component in all of this. At the moment, the Saskatchewan economy is booming, but over the past 20 years Saskatchewan had some tough economic times and thousands of people left the province, but they still had a sense of pride in their home. As success started coming back, and the team began gaining respect, these fans who now live all over Canada began getting on board and wearing their Rider colors with pride to support their team. We put considerable amount of effort into recognizing and rewarding that loyalty regardless of where they live. This is evident in away games where we have tens of thousands of Rider fans attend games at stadiums across the country.
How did the organization instill a sense of brand ownership in fans and employees?
At the beginning of this transformation we embraced, reinforced, and celebrated the fact that we are a community-owned team. Our fans truly do own the team and we made sure they knew it. We treated them like owners. They continue to be the focus or our marketing campaigns. We implemented a share program much like the Green Bay Packers to further allow fans to gain a sense of ownership and of course there was a financial motivation here as well. Our new management structure formalized new volunteer programs and we invested millions in improving our facilities. We demanded more of our staff and volunteers but we also provided recognition and rewards, elevating their stature in the organization and with our fan base. It’s funny, when you treat employees and volunteers with respect, when you involve them in the process and recognize and reward their loyalty, they will go to the ends of world for you and that attitude is then transferred to your customer base.
How do people view the team and organization as a whole, including its fan base, now?
It’s best described by some key words that represent our brand and those include: pride, inclusiveness, witty, underdog, unity, loyalty. Our core fan base feels a sense of ownership, and pride in their team. Other fans across the country hopefully think of us as the group that puts on the fun party that everyone wants to be at, the little guys that could, the underdog that we want to cheer for, a small town success story. If we aren’t their favorite team, we want to be their second favorite team. We hopefully have developed a brand that people want to cheer for and be associated with, even if they aren’t a big football fan.
How does that perception differ from 10 years ago?
Well 10 years ago the club was struggling to survive, an organization and brand that wasn’t exactly being admired across the country for its success. We’ve always had an incredible group of core proud fans and over the past 10 years we’ve been able to take that core, grow it substantially, and give them something that they can be proud of – their team and their community.