Story and Photos by Maggie Forrester

F or 15 years, Dr. Joanna Schwartz has taught Sports Marketing – MKTG 3168 – which includes an assignment to market a Georgia College & State University baseball or softball game during spring semester.

Dr. Schwartz is teaching two sections sports marketing this spring, each with about 70 students, and I am in her 2 p.m. section. In the first week, we formed groups of four and chose either a baseball or softball game to promote during the spring season.

Between the two sections, there are 18 groups. More than half chose to promote a baseball game, while the rest chose softball.

One group promoted a baseball game by organizing a canned food drive. The group donated all the items to a local food bank in Milledgeville.

“It’s been a win-win for marketing students and for Athletics, as GCSU teams have had a variety of student groups coming up with clever ways to increase attendance and improve the fan experience,” said Dr. Schwartz, professor of Marketing.

Dr. Schwartz’s classes have also promoted basketball and tennis. In the fall, her students promote soccer and volleyball matches.

Michael MacEachern, assistant director of athletics for communications, said, “Partnering with Dr. Schwartz’s sports marketing classes each spring has been invaluable. They help us spread the word about GCSU Athletics, especially baseball and softball. We leave it up to the students in the class to come up with ideas on how to market an event and we try to help them with giveaway items and other ways to help promote their event.”

My group chose the April 8 Bobcat baseball game against Erskine College. We brainstormed ways to make this game the ultimate experience for fans and decided on ‘Chick-fil-A x GCSU’ night.

One of our group members, Abby Pollock, was assistant marketing director at Chick-fil-A Milledgeville for three years and she used her community connections to help make our event happen.

I work as a student assistant in the GCSU Office of University Communications, so I also had help and advice from my colleagues to promote our event through the college’s social media channels.

We gave away free Chick-fil-A sandwiches to the first 50 attendees at the game. Chick-fil-A also allowed us to do a geofence giveaway: anyone who attended the game received a free chicken biscuit reward in the Chick-fil-A app.

Chick-fil-A Milledgeville posted about the game on its social media to help attract more attendees from our community. The game started at 5 p.m., and we got there early to set up our table and hand out the sandwiches. Once we were set up, the sandwiches were gone within five minutes!

Leading up to each group's game, other students used various types of advertising to spread the word. Most groups put up flyers, chalked around campus and partnered with the GCSU baseball and softball Instagram accounts to promote their events.

There were actually two other groups doing promotions at the April 8 Erskine game as well. One group hosted a dog contest since their original game was rained out. The other group ran a variation on the canned food drive: bring a canned good and receive a free GCSU t-shirt or cup.

Thanks to the geofence feature in the Chick-fil-A app, our group was able to confirm that 176 people attended our game and downloaded the promotion. Using real world tools and being able to track marketing metrics was a really valuable learning experience for my group.

“The project is a real-world experience that contends with the variables that our Athletic Department – and sports marketers generally – deal with in promoting events such as determining who their target audiences are for their specific promotions, and pivoting around unexpected variables such as weather,” said Dr. Schwartz.

Through these projects, my class has been able to bring together Milledgeville residents, university partners and the GCSU campus community to Bobcat games this spring.

Maggie Forrester is a senior Mass Communication major from Monroe County, Georgia. She works as a student assistant in the Office of University Communications and will graduate this May.