Discussion: How to promote competitive sport = ideas

I was looking at verious web pages and found some ideas but I also got an impression that promotion in orienteering is very diverse and small federation/club can't focus on all levels of promotions.

Is there any "guidelines" about "how to" promote orienteering? It would be great to see what others do in more detail. Here are some quick questions which came to my mind.

Do SWE, NOR, FIN have its unique slogans to promote the sport?
What include promotion of Elitserien or national championship race?
What federation - club is obligated to do before/after the race?
National orienteering day or similar promotional approaches to promote orienteering in wider community?

Doing something, instead of nothing, can't hurt.

A lot of people do something but without coordination you get out less than you invest in it.

See, the reason we haven't figured out what the best way to promote is nor have learned on our mistakes is that there hasn't been much, or any, promotion effort for most North American orienteering clubs. Clubs organize events for members, and if you aren't one of them, chances that you'd know that an orienteering or rogaining event is happening are slim. Most clubs are simply not set up to promote. If someone inside the club wants to do that, the first obstacle to overcome is that promotion takes time, and few volunteers are willing to do it. Next, people who are willing to do it must be "plugged"; connected with other people in a meaningful way that would leverage the time investment. Few orienteers are. Finally and perhaps most importantly, the way the clubs' finances are structured is not going to support a meaningful promotional effort. It perhaps costs $1 to $5 to gain a new event participant, and on a barebones, just-making-ends-meet entry fees there's no room for this expenditure.

We are finding that a variety of techniques is important. Facebook, Linked up were bringing 2 or 3 new people each week to our summer sprint series. We had a member give a presentation to a home schooling group. Over the summer sprint series we had over 20 new people try it from the home schooling group. Planning and posting the events far in advance has allowed our partners - the parks to advertise the events for us through their network of email and event calendars. Those bring in 2 or 3 new people each sprint. But we are always looking for new ideas to promote our events. No one thing seems to be the home run.

I changed the title of this thread because I wanted to start a thread HOW TO PROMOTE COMPETITIVE SPORT

Just thinking....

Before any club start with any kind of promotional activities it is good that someone inside the club set up the goals. It is true that many clubs don't have any strategy or people to do this regularly so most of them work on a daily basis (this is how things work here). Organizing local events for the members is social sport activity for club members and sometimes also for wider community more than promotion of competitive sport and most of clubs have adopted this "strategy". It is the most effective strategy if club doesn't have goals and their members just want to have fun and spent free time with family, friends and colleagues who have common interest.

Many clubs are interested to promote "sport for all" but with very limited knowledge about what is important to promote "competitive sport". After years I came to the conclusion that even if you have people within the club or national orienteering federation who are willing to deal with promotional activities you can't start promotional campaign without knowing what are true club/federation goals and interest. Consistency, interconnection and structure of competitive sport is very important for promotion otherwise it is very hard to reach some more long-term goals.

I was very positive surprised when I saw how works our mountaineering association and its clubs. Most of clubs have same goals and most of them support association to reach national goals. Clubs have strong comitment to lead national programs and they get support from federation to work towards these goals (badges, booklet, diplomas, uniform, newsletters, books, awards, etc). Most of the well organized orienteering federations work in the same way or at least try to act like this. One of the key moments to get more homogeneous association which is able to promote and develop the sport is to have more homogeneous clubs. Any club which want to become a member of national federation must present a clear vision and its goals in addition to administrative requirements. New club gets "provisional status" and "official ambassador" who helps club members to educate new instructors, advise how to make a plan to get new coaches and trainers and to give them information how to learn all about technical stuff so club is able to set up small events and to teach kids. This is a period when "sport for all" should be a club main focus and after club succesfully achive all this it is able to request for full membership. Only full members organize competitive events.

Our national orienteering organization is too small to adopt this kind of model but I know that Scandi federations have similar "club development program" for new clubs. I still think that we (and other small federations) should do something in this direction if we really want to get better platform to promote competitive sport on the long run. I was thinking to set up a list with most common Q/A to help clubs because all clubs go thru the same process. I got a feelling that most of our clubs and their representatives don't want to change and agree on any policy how their club works and don't want that somebody else make a national rules how clubs must work or what clubs should do to keep the status. It was strange for me at that time because I thought that we are homogeneous group which has same strategy and goals (even without official written documents) and which also include how to develop "competitive sport".

I also found that in some sports (in most cases where is more money) you have people who work very hard for competitive sport but in sports where is less money people don't want to make this comitment to adopt the rules, strategy and set up goals. Any national sport organization which is able to set up rules, development programs, strategy and goals for clubs and in same have a team of people to work on national level to develop activities under "sports for all" and "competitive sport" has a chance to grow.

Today I accept these "recreational views" which are a strategy and goals for national orienteering federation. Clubs have learned that without non-existent common approach does not make sense to think how to start a wider promotion. For clubs it is better to focus only on family circle and friends rather than to put money and time into promotion. To have a large club means a lot of work for leaders and competitive sport is not a personal satisfaction for more than 3 people in the club. Two different concept which must live with one another otherwise whole promotion could be set up only around event promotion and hoping that someone out there will see it - try the activity - and have fun. In some way we should be glad that most of these beginners have interest to join the clubs and help sometimes but in many cases these beginners don't have interest to develop the sport.

...and with event promotion (e.g. OO.cup) organizers were able to attract 1.600 foreign competitors this year but almost no one beside the local orienteers know about the event. OO.cup promotion was very succesfull and I am glad that they found out the winning formula.

@Tundra
Your situation is very similar to ours so you might find some similarities in this example...

6 years ago I tried with levy system with 1 EUR per event/participant but clubs say NO. In last 6 years entry fees went up for approx. 2-4 EUR, number of events stay approx. the same as before and federation got approx. 100 new registered orienteers but as a federation we end up with approx. the same number of starts. Clubs were good to attract new begineers, most of people orient less than before and federation is still not able to finance any development or promotion thru national league or championship races or summer events. In general: competitive level and attitude towards competitive sport went down.

Clubs said that they will better spent money than federation but in most cases clubs have used this extra money (event entry fees) to cover costs to participate on other races (travel cost, entry fees). But for me it would be logical that all runners must finance to some extent a competitive sport activities if they are true members of the club which is a member of national sport organization. I may say that only people who work for orienteering more time than they spent to practice it might have enough knowledge and understanding how whole competitive sport structure should work.

And I came back to strategy, goals and most important question. Why people who are in charge and you might think that they understand the competitive nature of the sport can't find the model which would be able to support the competitive sport?

...but hey, if clubs and people like orienteering this not mean that they want or like to develop also competitive orienteering or promote it.

Put up a 30 second ad during the Superbowl.

Has any other club in the States tried to promote themselves by setting up a MeetUp group?
I'm trying to get orienteering established on the west coast of Florida. I've got some JROTC units interested but I need to get to the general public. I've just had my MeetUp site up a few days and I was very happy with the initial response. (It's since stalled) but this seems to be a way to get to the 'active' market.
I'd be interested if there are any other experiences with MeetUP/
My site is here You are welcome to sign up to express your interest. It seems the more hits the higher your visibility.
One of the men who has signed up used to orienteer in Sweden and his dad was a national level orienteer there. Another knows of orienteering from her cousin in Barcelona.

GVOC tried MeetUp, and it really didn't work. No offence to anyone, but we found that the members are kind of flaky. Expect about 1/3 (if that) of those who sign up to attend your event. We also found that those who did come wanted to go out only with other MeetUp people, and were reluctant to try on their own....

We ended up shutting down the group, as the cost and time involved was not producing any results. We had a good connection to a local outdoors group on MeetUp, so we sometimes ask for our events to be promoted there. It's always worth a shot though, as I'm sure the community differs all over North America.

1/3?? that's superb! out here (for non-exercise, somewhat outdoor events), it can be <<10%.

Maybe I was a little over zealous with 1/3....

Really? Because the few meetup groups I've been involved in seemed to get better than 50% turnout. There must be some hidden variables....

@Gord - the quite newly formed CVOC's entire online presence is a Meetup group - see http://www.centralvaorienteering.com/. It seems to be working reasonably well for them.

ROC has two meetup groups - one is main group to announce meet schedule, second is for those who want to do little bit extra and do some O-training activities. I did not set them up and I have not studied impact of meetup for ROC however as end user I do like reminders that meetup group sends me via Email. In a past I would have tendency of missing couple regularly scheduled meets throughout the year because ether I'd make scheduling conflict or just forgot about it.

Therefore I would not consider meetup just as a marketing tool to get word out to new audiences. Having said that I'd probably not use meetup if attackpoint had an option to turn on/off Email notification feature that sends out reminders about upcoming events.... :) Nothing against meetup personally but when I can I try consolidating tools I use and I only use meetup for ROC meet reminders.

Regarding original topic.

I'd focus on targeting competitive minded individuals to lure, coerce, bribe, etc. into orienteering and promote orienteering as competitive sport, not as an entertainment activity until "orienteering" as sport and name becomes recognized the same way as "equestrian" for masses and it is not mixed up as "orientation" or "treasure hunt" or "geocaching" or "guys who run and drink water from marshes".

Competitive minded folks who got orienteering bug tend to become most consistent regulars and volunteers vs. entertainment seekers pop-in and pop-out maybe once or twice per year or sometimes just once in their lifetime. There are exceptions from the rule but overall that's my general observation.

Different story is for regions or countries where orienteering has recognition. But even then there is no need to advertize sport to masses since people tend to gravitate towards something that is popular.

Similar experience here in Western Australia to what has been discussed above - lots of effort to promote events to schools, newcomers via metropolitan events, scatter events with minimal volunteer burden, forest events scheduled close to the city etc. The largest balancing act is to also satisfy the inertia of a large proportion of members who still want and expect high-standard (almost) individualised courses, even to the point of being the sole entry in certain classes. These people tend not to be as keen to embrace newcomers. A further conflict is the significant change to casual attendance or 'user pay' these days - an issue that has hit OAWA far later than some other sports. E.g. Triathlon went through hell and back in the mid-90s here as volunteers dried up. Now, 20 years later it's booming under the stewardship of private operators. Note, not a situation that will work for forest orienteering.

It's booming under the stewardship of private operators. Note, not a situation that will work for forest orienteering.

Why not?

Triathlon is an Olympic sport so everyone knows what it is and wants to tell their friends they did one. Who cares about orienteering?

@pink socks. (Iexpected that to stimulate some more sharing, thanks). Here in WA at least if you set up as a private promoter you'd be required to radically alter the 'standard' orienteering fare we've become used to, not an insurmountable task if you forget that $ would be needed to promote, gear would need to hired or purchased and.... a demographic of participants found! The State association has done extremely good things to attract people - and arguably failed... In that membership/participation has not increased.

Give a motivated cashed-up private promoter operating with 3rd World labour pay rates and having top-notch setting, checking, insurance, risk management etc the mandate to change the sport offered to 'orienteering' that is NOT constrained by existing structures... and it would still struggle.

It's hard to be optimistic when the State body has been so proactive outside of forest orienteering and not got the numbers to the forest. Metro is a different story.

If I were a private sports event operator trying to make a profit, I'm pretty sure it would be easier to do so putting on some kind of event other than orienteering races. Something with a bigger already existing pool of eager participants and no need to make and maintain extremely detailed topographic maps.

Well, no, the big pool isn't a prerequisite. Trail running operators created the pool out here back in the early 2000s, and that was before Facebook and Yelp. The need to make and maintain maps is a borderline show-stopper. The real show-stopper is the cheapie culture of the dedicatedfolk, many of whom seem to think that labor, and in most cases supplies and rent/permits, ought to be contributed free for their recreational pleasure. There isn't a for-profit operator that can handle that.

A guy I knew who made a foray into being a professional crossword puzzle designer said, "It's a bad idea to try to make a living doing something that other people are willing to do for free".

Yes, but orienteering is an aberration. I bet people will be creating crossword puzzles for free for a while, because it's fun and mostly involves sitting in a chair and thinking. However, just about nobody puts on trail runs or triathlons for free, at least in this area; but people did it as late as the late 1990s.

I wonder how T/D would fill in his day if people didn't keep starting up new threads on promotion??

He'd create crossword puzzles, duh.

Well, no, the big pool isn't a prerequisite. Trail running operators created the pool out here back in the early 2000s, and that was before Facebook and Yelp.

I didn't say it was just that pitching events at a big pool of people who already are interested in taking part in the sport in question is a path of lesser resistance than building such a pool from scratch or nearly so for a sport most people aren't familiar with and lack the skills to do successfully. And, with due respect for the achievements of Bay Area trail race organisers in the early 2000s, it's not as though they built up a trail running clientele in an area with no previous competitive running, even trail running, tradition - the Dipsea trail race has been running since 1905.

The real show-stopper is the cheapie culture of the dedicatedfolk, many of whom seem to think that labor, and in most cases supplies and rent/permits, ought to be contributed free for their recreational pleasure. There isn't a for-profit operator that can handle that.

I thought we went thru these arguments a few years ago, said ok, maybe you are right, opened the wallet and jacked race fees to pay $100K+ for paid staff, allowed professional operators in, and so forth, yet the threads, and the state of the sport continue, just like before. It just costs more (at least around here), with no other material differences or improvements in both the quality or availability of the product. As it will 10 years from now. (Just one consumer's observation; no doubt Vlad will show me a spreadsheet that demonstrates that I'm wrong (even for consumers here in Chester County, PA), but consumers don't look at spreadsheets, they look at the quality and the quantity of the product available to them).

I still contend it is a product problem. not a marketing problem. Produce a product that consumers actually wish to consume (especially in today's insta information sharing age), and make it readily available, and your "marketing" problem will vanish overnight. I've seen it happen with 2 products that target the same market (recreational outdoors is the market I define, tho y'all could argue that if y'all want), that didn't even exist before I started orienteering, and now dwarf it in both participation and availability by at least 2 orders of magnitude; no $100K+ marketing wizards required, and for-profit operators, as well as volunteers, content.

Or, be content with the realization that long drives (or flights to stay in Motel 6's on the interstate), for short, non-social experiences, volunteer guilt trips as a material and hidden consumer cost, cliquish organizations, and, most of all, interval starts with no social interaction, are not the traits of successful products in this (or most), markets, and thus be content with its niche status, stop whining about it, and press on with the content glow of consuming/producing a product you love, but realise, objectively, that most won't unless it is fixed.

There, free market research feedback, FWIW.

I've seen it happen with 2 products that target the same market (recreational outdoors), that didn't even exist before I started orienteering, and now dwarf it in both participation and availability by at least 2 orders of magnitude

Randy, what are these two products? It seems like there's something to be learned from them.

geocache?

mud running?

Those would have been my first two guesses. Although, I wonder if both reached millions of people without having $100,000 and marketing wizards. Even in an insta-sharing age, there are a lot of marketing dollars spent on social networking sites, etc.

Shee. There isn't a self-respecting mudder out there without at least 6 digits of funding, and no organizer at the top level of a mudder works for free.

Jon—yes the Dipsea has been around for over a century. (BAOC has been around since 1978.) The situation in which there's the equivalent of a Dipsea in terms of attendance every several weeks, a 400+ trail run two or three times a month, and some kind of trail run almost every Saturday and Sunday is very recent.

Randy, I agree with the emphasis on the product problem. BAOC is working hard on this angle, having launched one product and about ready to launch two more, addressing some of the exact points you bring up. Unfortunately the fees that club members are used to are insufficient to support some of these products even if there is zero spent on promotion, and there is certainly zero spent on compensating club personnel. Experiences that non-clique people would actually want aren't free to create, and cost a lot more than what the mapper was paid, amortized over 7 years.

Can some of the mass start, social interaction be handled by training activities? I see lots of triathletes at the local parks meeting up to practice their swim and bike. Maybe more informal trail runs, map exercises, etc.?

The situation in which there's the equivalent of a Dipsea in terms of attendance every several weeks, a 400+ trail run two or three times a month, and some kind of trail run almost every Saturday and Sunday is very recent.

No denying, that's a very active trail running scene. The DC area has nothing remotely comparable which I think is a big part of why QOC, with no track record of organising races that non-orienteers are aware of, can put on a trail race and get hundreds of participants. And if I were a for-profit sports event organiser surveying the opportunities in the DC market, I'd definitely conclude that reducing the deficit of trail races relative to the Bay Area was a more promising opportunity with less work involved and lower barriers to entry than offering any kind of race involving meaningfully challenging navigation. So I think it's good that OUSA now allows non-clubs to organise sanctioned events and generally wish private event operators well but I don't think we can expect very many of them to pop up and fully expect that those that do will be primarily motivated by a love of navigation sports with profit a secondary concern.

Reading through Randy's latest, did we jack race fees a few years ago or since? Maybe DVOA or SVO has and I've forgotten or wasn't paying sufficient attention. QOC certainly hasn't, at least not as a response to the financial realities resulting from OUSA having a paid executive director. Or is Randy thinking of A meet fees, which I haven't been keeping meticulous track of either and which certainly may have gone up somewhat, on average, during that time frame for all I know.

If we did, maybe that's a good thing, although we clearly still haven't got fees high enough to support promotion and event management in the style Vlad would like to be accustomed to.

QOC, with no track record of organising races that non-orienteers are aware of, can put on a trail race and get hundreds of participants. And if I were a for-profit sports event organiser surveying the opportunities in the DC market, I'd definitely conclude that reducing the deficit of trail races relative to the Bay Area was a more promising opportunity with less work involved and lower barriers to entry than offering any kind of race involving meaningfully challenging navigation.

No kidding—note that the heads of the two leading Pacific Northwest trail running series are both orienteers/rogainers/adventure racers. [The lead of the second-largest California trail-run operation is also a rogainer, although as more of a side hobby, not first sport.] That's why Randy is on to something with the product angle. He's also proving my point with a jacked-fee complaint when the fees are far less than what trail runners would pay for a few ribbons on a trail, a gel at an aid station, and some candy and chips at the finish.

...and thus be content with its niche status, stop whining about it, and press on with the content glow of consuming/producing a product you love, but realise, objectively, that most won't unless it is fixed.

Personally, niche status is fine - I don't need or even want most people to orienteer. But there's a lot of room between our current participation numbers and "most people" for the niche to be larger with more people participating and working to put on the events and therefore more events and as long as I continue to commonly get blank looks when I say the word orienteering, it seems foolish to assume that we've already recruited every person in the world who would like orienteering as it is currently practiced. Hence the potential usefulness of discussing what marketing/promotion efforts have worked and haven't or might be expected to work or not. I must have missed the "whining' Randy mentions, since I assume he wasn't referring to his own dissatisfaction with the orienteering events available to him.

I think he was referring to Vlad's whining about the rest of us being cheap.

Isn't whining as much as an explanation of why operators aren't exactly springing up to spruce up the offerings in Chester County, PA, or elsewhere, with a handful of exceptions.