Tell us about your branding then

Vaping sets a great example to the kids too.

Because it’s embarrassing. ‘The wolves are waiting’. For what exactly? Another tonking? I don’t see much else happening on Friday. The phrase implies we’re sat back in style and in control, patiently waiting to batter them. No, we’re not, we’re sat in second with a massive gulf between us and them. Perhaps it’ll be different if we meet in knockout games, but I don’t see anything remarkable happening on Friday. I hope I’m wrong. Call me a bad fan for all I care.

Chill out. It's not embarrassing. A bit corny yes.... funny yes. Promotional yes. Responsible for defeat no.

Ok, so, scenario 1, warrington send a plane over the totally wicked stadium, promoting the game, we get a slightly higher attendance than usual, more money in the coffers, and possibly like the leeds game opening night, the momentum grows and the match might sell out. Our social media standing improves somewhat, warrington then get beat, saints fans take the , and lord it over us.

scenario 2, we don't do anything, get about 12k ppl, warrington then bet beat, saints fans take the and lord it over us.

scenario 3, warrington win,saints fans take the that they're still 4 points ahead and we've not won the league in forever.

The problem here is, you're still bothered by what saints fans are gonna say, and no matter what, as we've seen with as108 and the rest, they're a classless bunch who will move the goalposts and are poor winners and even worse losers.

As i've said to the judderman, ppl need to start thinking about WHY we're doing this, it's changing the perception of Super League games to being events. Popular events.

I could be wrong here, but considering the attractive and effective rl your side is currently playing, your attendances seemed to have remained fairly stagnant. So aside from a few more vape smokers and a few more extra saints folk owing money to Cash converters, I fail to see promotional success in any other areas as a result of Mcmanus' alternative branding.

Lmfao!
That's funny.

Which fans exactly are Wire appealing to by flying a plane over another town?

Do you think more Saints fans will attend as a result? Is it meant for floating Wire fans (who had an actual home game to watch at the HJ as the plane was flying overhead but would rather watch Saints on telly instead?)

I'm a bit confused as to how it's going to boost your attendance for the fixture but happy to admit I may be completely wrong.

It might lead to a few more watching the telly to see what the bluster was about I will admit.

I suppose had Saints lost it would have been a bit more interesting but we were racing into a early lead before it arrived overhead, to maintain a six point lead plus 100-odd points difference.

Felt oddly small time to me but that's just my view and I admit it has got people talking!

McManus is in 3rd year of branding within the community to make the club very much part of the town. Its been very successful and the RFL have given us awards 2 years in succession on its promotional foundation to RL.

The club goes into schools, hospitals, care homes, war veterans, autistic and mental health care as very much as an image brand by the first team players. We've got a great young mental + physically impaired rugby team now. Same for ladies rugby McManus has invested money into this venture and beat Leeds in the next round we will be in the Challenge Cup Final and is promoted in the mens semi finals venue at Bolton.

We've also worked hard in the service areas to get a good quality young player into the scholarship programmes, some parents from Warrington and Widnes have allowed there kids to come to Saints and Wigan because the development program is more structured and has a quicker tier. The Saints brand for youth development in rugby league has got great recognition.

The club is well known in Australia for its Academy product brand with seasonal tours with the NRL counterparts, I think the academy team have always come home with a lot more wins than losses. This is one of the reasons you see the first team with a very heavy weighted home product and we could probably compete well with just an academy produced players in the first team.

All this branding is done at grass roots level first with progressions to the super league levels, promotions of the games are through social media avenues with regular networking across the existing and future fan base.

We have copied the Wigan and Warrington Big Game Image Profile but its not really had much impact on drawing in a lot more fans, its the quality and entertaining playing standard which is doing that at the moment.

100k+ people saw that plane on Sky, plus those inside the stadium, plus those outside the stadium, plus the WolvesRL twitter feed, plus the Saints twitter feed, plus the local paper(s) plus those that got sent it via text msg, plus Facebook etc etc.

This isn’t about a one off ‘let’s see if we can get a few more bodies though the gate at the HJ’ for this specific fixture, it’s part of a season long campaign, which I’m sure will go into next season building interest, building the event and reaching out to as many RL and non RL as possible.

'it's got people talking' ergo it's done the job it meant to do. I don't think we thought it would have an effect on the attendance more promote a game to the TV public which should be a good advert for the game, full house, good players etc... We'll 17 of em will be undeniably world class. Like it or not our marketing is getting on sky sports news regularly and even sky news at times and I think its actually making our game NOT look small time. Cash Converters and Totally Wicked do that.

Our average in 2018 was up 7% on 2017 (and 3% on 2016).

Not huge strides I'll admit but better than being down 8% over the same period like Warrington I suppose.

Not sure where Saints or Wire sit this season with attendances - I'd guess we're down given we played Wigan at home on a Thursday night as the opening fixture. Trick for us is to try to get the extra 2,500 or so that regularly watched in our first season in the new stadium in 2012 when we averaged 14k or so.

Edit - Saints are up about 5% on last season's equivalent fixtures, pretty good given we lost out on a GF home game to a Thursday night season opener in January and had London at home instead of Widnes.

All very laudable, but they don’t need to be exclusive!

All the above you mention Warrington are doing too ( with the exception of the overseas tours for the youth team I expect ). We just had a community day for the Catalan game whereby every youth team player from a community club got a ticket for a quid. This was preceded by four or five coaches and players going into the community clubs and delivering training sessions. They did a similar event with schools earlier in the year. Blake Austin organised weekly sessions for kids on his local park to help promote health living etc etc.

Warrington’s ‘gimmicks’ are getting the club regional recognition, and mentions on Sky when they aren’t even playing. That has to be positive surely?

It is but its short lived. If you are doing something similar to us at ground zero community level but maybe at a lesser promotional expanse then thats good for the game, its certainly not exclusive but its need to be far reaching to the max.

If this was a one off, I’d agree, but it’s part of a much bigger campaign from planes, vans in Pieland, open press conferences, spy gate etc etc. They all have a compounding impact, so the impact i’d argue would increase with each individual ‘gimmick’

The biggest difference in our game attendances have been the away fans thats well down this season. We only get Warrington and Wigan occupying the 6 sections of the away end, Hull sometimes fill 4 sections but the majority struggle to fill 2 sections.

Leeds use to fill 4 sections but on Friday I estimated they brought only 280 fans, Castleford and Wakefield have gone the same. Some games the away stand is closed off because of that situation.

We also did a promotional game in the social media think it was against the catalans and we half filled the away stand with home fans.

Our attendances are up with the Impairment, Academy and Ladies teams. Its not always about the 1st team playing its the club involvement overall.

Possibly, but it was the Stobart campaign that put me off with that method, it took me 6 months to see a "Saints Lorry" with Wilkins mugshot on it.

We're also the current Club Year of The Year for, mostly, off field stuff. We're excellent in the community so we're going at it on all fronts. Current PDRL world champs as well.

To be fair, who’d want to see that?!?

Was that the PDRL festival at Victoria park last Saturday.

No, Warrington PDRL team travelled to Play South Sydney in Aus last year.

See what you did there, bringing "back in the box" up again is a far more subtle way to goad them in saints week.

Not sure why our current resident Saints fan is so worked up. It’s not their money being used for these stunts. I suspect it is about “brand awareness” for both the team and SL in general. If opposition teams need to use these things for motivation then it doesn’t say much for their general attitude or their coaching staff.

On the game, what are everyone's thoughts?

For me, saints are going to miss Roby but I still think they'll have too much for us.

What we need to do as a matter of priority is to try and gain command of the ruck area, which means full on intensity in defence ie moving up as a line right up to their attack and not stopping short allowing space for their forwards to build momentum, and backs to execute their moves. Then we're relying on our key players to play to their max and inspire the rest.

I would have one of our Tongans on from the start; theres no point bringing them on in the second half if we're down a few points, the damage is done,we need to set our stall out from the very start and put some hits in.

In an ideal world, if players were fully fit, I'd start with Hill, Clark,Coops, BMM, Hughes, Westwood in the pack. The saints pack are'nt going steam roll that lot. On the bench: Philbin, Aku, and j Clark with Atkins. Our passing isn't there yet, so if we're playing the power game down the middle (which we'll probably do), then use the power players, otherwise there's no point using that tactic.

We can do it, and if we do, it would be a real boost. Fingers crossed.

I think the Warrington efforts at promoting the game this year have been fantastic and a much needed tonic! They now have a great product on and off the field and are working hard on the image of RL. Game day is a pleasure at the HJ. It’s a breath of fresh air and as a previous poster said is promoting the game in front of potential new sponsors! The more hype the better! Keep it up for me. I wish the others would follow suit instead of just boasting about the size of their flat caps!