Fine then go support another club. I don't expect you to explain yourself to me, you said enough in your first post on the subject to tell me all I need to know.

Y'see this is the problem people are having with you though Pete, you didn't say that, you said...



Try thinking about what you want to say before letting it all spill out in what just seems like anger-fuelled drivel to others. People will just treat you with equal contempt.

Yes our marketing side has underperformed over the years, especially when directly compared to some other Superleague teams, but with all that has been going on at the club for the past few season's, financially, business wise and in terms of the stadium project, we've no doubt not had the same amounts of money as certain other club's have had to dedicate to the areas of marketing that we're talking about here.

To my mind the club doesn't do a bad job on marketing, they just don't do a fantastic job. Some things to do with the final season at KR where excellent, the heritage shirts and associated merchandise, the events that were held were good and the special programme etc were well produced. Did they milk the opportunity for all it was worth? Honestly no, but then some people would have taken a cynical view if they had done anyway.

The season at Widnes was an unfortunate situation and whilst it may have cost us in certain areas this may have been off-set by the club not having to spend the small fortune in maintenance and repair bills needed for the old ground to scrape through for another safety certificate.

The club has HAD to do things "on the cheap" for years because of the poor financial state the former board/s left the club in. Part of the reason we have been building the new stadium is to provide the club with a surer footing for the future, a future in which we hopefully will be able to channel more money towards marketing etc.

There are a lot of things that go unnoticed by us fans when discussing this topic, we tend to pick out and remember the things that we reckon are bad and happily criticise yet we fail to commend the club with equal gusto for the things they get right. How's about the fact that we never seem to fall short in attracting several shirt sponsors/'partners', or how about the several buses that operate from the town with massive pictures of the players splashed all over them?

If we want the club to improve its communication with fans we need to communicate better with them, we need to stop bitching about them all the time on websites, in the local papers and social media outlets, and provide them with constructive criticism alongside constructive praise.

I didn't say they were shocking. I said marketing has never been a strength at Saints.

And Tony, that is historic. The Council is just as bad. I'm rather thinking that there is something in the water in St Helens which disables the marketing gene. Either that or all our good marketing people leave St Helens for more promising climates.

Saints are good on the corporate side, of late anyway. To pull off the Typhoo shirt sponsorship was very impressive in my view. However, I'm of the view that such corporate nous has more to do with our Chairman and former Chief Exec than it does of our marketing ethos per se.

Mike isn't marketing but media communication, which while tied in is a different beast. But the club is poor on the non-social media side. Only with the build of the new stadium have ads appeared in the Star. And for the many fans who are not Internet savvy there has been no direct communication in years. My parents and other relatives (all of retirement age) have only known about things going on at Saints because I have told them. Even though they are all season ticket holders of many years' standing, the club has not thought them worthy of direct communication in years. That is a poor showing really given the amount of money retired people like them will have poured into the club's coffers over their many years of support.

But still, while it is frustrating that Saints are generally not up to speed on their non-corporate marketing strategy, it isn't worthy of the bile Pete has been emitting recently. Nowhere near worthy.

I've no doubt that is the case. As you've no doubt experienced during your recent period of unemployment there is a huge drain of jobs in the town that don't involve driving a HGV. I doubt there are many businesses left in the town that have a marketing department nor could offer the sort of salary a competent marketing bod could get by commuting to Liverpool, Manchester or elsewhere.



Again I suspect this is the case, put the marketing focus primarily into making the club attractive to investors and sponsors and use the sport side of the club as the key marketing tool to the fans.

I've no doubt the club will improve its communication and marketing to/with the fans in the near future. The recent restructure should help things and the stadium & facilities should serve as a very visual marketing tool in itself.

Mike App does a sterling job in his specific role, I don't know whether he has any support in his position, but at the end of the day he can only do so much.

I honestly don't know what the Marketing team/dept. is like size & structure wise, whether that too is one or two people or a whole group. If the team is small and has to split its time between marketing to sponsors & investors as well as to the team's 1000's of fans I can understand why it may not do things like regular mailshots to fans or weekly poster advertising for games around the town etc as such things take a good deal of time & expense to plan and execute whereas an email mailshot is likely free and takes a bit less time (though this obviously doesn't help the older & non tech-savvy). Of course if we have a large well structured marketing team then it does raise more questions.

If the club knew that season tickets that were bought later would not have been available on the 1st December they should have made that known.

That isn't good customer service and is a simple thing to announce on the myriad of outlets they now have.

Assuming they knew. The tickets only turned up at all on 30 November.

Has that been an official announcement?

I find it hard to believe that the supplier would not have told the club that anything ordered after the cut off date would not be delivered in time for the advertised date of collection.

To say they didn't know, or didn't attempt to find out, suggests incompetency of a high degree in the club to me and whilst there are problems in certain aspects I'm not sure it's that bad.

One of the staff told me when I went to pick up my season ticket on 1 December.


You're happy to think that the supplier is competent but not the club? Interesting.

No, they may well have been delayed, but I'd expect the club to have found out about the delay and informed their customers before the day they had told everyone that they could pick up their tickets.

I'm sure someone finds your unflinching opinion that the club cannot be at fault endearing, alas previous experience has told us that in incidents like this, of poor customer relations, they usually are.

BL unluckily for you she's one of yours. If she was one of ours she'd have been flushed out by now and shot.

Good luck mate.
At least with me you get a reasoned debate, one which you may or not agree with but hey ho.

It's the clubs fault as they took our money.

Saintsfan got her ticket so it all ok. Stuff the the fans that wasted their time and money going to pick them up to be told they not ready. No warning on the website, twitter etc

The fact they have told Fans they can't get in Friday if their tickets haven't arrived is disgusting.

But I can understand why they've said that, I'm presuming that it'll not be staffed to any great degree and is a test.

However, if you have a young child who's been promised that he can go and view the new stadium and he can't because of bureaucratic failings, I do also understand why you've got the hump with the club.

I am still waiting for my season ticket which i ordered on line on the 3rd of oct to be delivered by mail ,i know it is a box in the saints shop and has not been mailed out in time for me to goto the opening event in the new stadium my daughter had to take 2 hours holiday from work to get her 3 tickets after being told by the shop it will be with her by 1pm on thurs, her tickets had not been mailed ,to treat loyal fans like this does the club a disservice and puts a dampener on the new ground and new age of the Saints. Saints are a business and to be successful on and off the field one of the main aspects of a service business which what Saints are is customer service sadly they fell down in that in allocating peoples season tickets .

Came from warry yesterday afternoon for a christmas do and was staying over at the park inn.
Thought I'll just pop over to the shop to pick my season tickets in the mall.
I turn up just before 4 pm - doors locked! Lights on and staff working - no signs on the door saying anything about an early close, the staff just looked at me and then went back to whatever they were doing, no-one came over to explain what the heck was haapening. Whilst I was there about another 20 or people turned up and got the same treatment.

No worrries I thought; they are probably just packing stuffover to go to the new ground for the opening at 6 pm. I'll get them tomorrow either from the shop or from the ground. Got up this morning and rang the shop no - five times when someone answered. No you can't pick them up from the shop, no you can't pick them up from the ground; not until Monday that is as they were moving stuff over today and tomorrow.

My problem with this is the complete lack of customer care and customer commuincation. it means another trip to st H forme - not the end of the world certainly but it is an incovenience.

The club did make it aware through Twitter and facebook that the shop would be closing at 4 yesterday.

Yes, but the problem with Saints is that they think everybody is on Twitter and Facebook but they aren't. There are a lot of people who are on neither.

I can't see any reference to this on the Saints website and nothing was in the Star on Thursday about it. Saints should have communicated via paper, their own website and with a notice in the shop window all last week so that people could tell those they knew.

Poor by Saints this is.

You mean if you are linked to them via ter and FB?

Over 50's techno phobe don't count then?

Just checked the saints FB site and there is nothing there to say the shop is closed from 4pm - have you a link mr lump?
In fact the fb page is full of people like me complaining about the shop/season ticket collection etc.

What's wrong with a simple notice on the shop website (or even on the shop flippin' door for gods sake)?

Also, did the club tell its fb and twitter friends that no tickets could be collected until monday? It's frankly very poor and worries me for the future.

If we carry on like this we are going to have big problems.
Today - they just decided they wouldn't answer the phones. If they can't spare the staff because of the move to the ground, why not leave some info on a pre-recorded message - simples?

It's very poor and very typical to be honest.

Am I right in thinking the saints town centre shop was shut today due to moving stuff to our new shop at langtree park?

Not good enough is it. I don,t bother with Facebook and twitter and travelled the way down from Cumbria yesterday not knowing the shop was early closing.
Luckily arrived around 3-00pm so got my season ticket. Would have been miffed he I missed the ground opening.
Seems as though there's a staff shortage to handle the transition between town and ground, it was the same when we played at Widnes on match day think the shop closed earlier around 3-30pm.
The club need to go up a few notches on communication, let's hope they get more organised in 2012.

I agree that there should have been a news story on the website and a sign on the door (it's ridiculous to think that they didn't put a sign on the door. Perhaps the club has fallen into the trap of thinking everyone is online and those who are are on Twitter.

There was a message on Twitter about the tickets.

I use Tweetdeck to look at both and usually the same links or comments are posted on both at the same time, so no I don't have a link, it may well have been just on Twitter then.

Anyone got a number for the shop that actually gets answered?!