A big dose of Rider Pride was injected into the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce President's Banquet Tuesday.
Steve Mazurak, vice-president of sales and marketing for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, was the guest speaker of the event at Tropical Inn.
Mazurak has a long history with the Riders, starting out as a wide receiver and slotback with the team. At Tuesday's event, he focused not on the team's glories on the field, but on a topic that resonated with many of the businesspeople in the room: the marketing success of the club over the past several years.
A key to those branding campaigns, said Mazurak, was their focus on the fan and Rider Pride.
Marketing surveys done in the late 1980s pointed to the pride and passion of the fans as a major ingredient for the club. He and team president Jim Hopson recognized that and built their marketing campaign around that in the mid-2000s.
Other clubs also had pride and passion, but the Riders "took that to a different level," said Mazurak.
"We really wanted to take that pride and passion and develop all our marketing schemes around that."
He noted it was difficult to market a team around a great catch, a great play, great players or teams. It "just doesn't work," he said, because "sometimes you absolutely suck on the football field."
Football players were not a constant element that could be relied upon in marketing the club, because players get cut, traded or even go to jail.
"The only thing really constant with the Saskatchewan Roughriders is the fan," said Mazurak.
He showed off commercials for the club from 2005 on, where fans were given prominence showing off their Rider Pride, wearing outlandish green outfits with the "S" logo figuring prominently.
Mazurak said the club didn't need an advertising agency to invent this person. "They were staring us right in the eyes."
He took the audience through the marketing campaigns the club embarked on over the past decades to promote the Roughrider brand. Those included the 100th anniversary campaign that included the successful Where is Riderville contest, and last year's Rider Oath campaign, which Mazurak said tapped into the use of social media including Facebook and Twitter.
Commercials never dwelled on wins and losses or specific players. "We really wanted to embrace this concept called 'fan,'" said Mazurak.
He also talked about a particularly fan-focused campaign: the 13th Man campaign of 2006. The idea of the 13th Man was adapted, said Mazurak, from the promotion by the Texas A & M Aggies football team of their "12th Man" in the stands.
The whole notion of the 13th Man caught on in a big way.
"Our players talked about it, our coaches talked about it," said Mazurak.
Rider green was also featured, and worn prominently, by Brent Butt and the cast of Corner Gas in an episode devoted entirely to the Riders around this same time.
The branding efforts have been wildly successful. By 2011 the club was selling out regularly and merchandise sales were at NFL levels, said Mazurak.
Mazurak also talked about plans for a new stadium in Regina, which would transform the Riders from being a "mom and pop" operation to a "major league" level.
The presentation by Mazurak left a big impression on the audience including the newly-inducted Chamber president Pat Smith.
"You see the commercials and when you hear how they put it together and their focus on the fans, and the strategies they implemented, it's an incredible success," said Smith.
"He is definitely taking this marketing campaign with the Roughriders to another level. And that relates to all of us in the business community and how effective marketing can be, if we put our effort into it and focus on the marketing of our business."
