This past weekend the Professional Bull Riders Inc. hosted an Olympic-style competion that was met with mixed reviews. Upon reading comments from fans on stories posted about the event I saw a surprising amount of negative feedback. The main concern being the time at which the event aired. Due to contractual obligations that the network airing the event had with another sport organizaiton the airing of the event was postponed to eastern standard time.
The main mistake here was not thinking about the audience of the event. Fans of the PBR are mainly men and women in their late 20s or above. Most of these people have been working all day and just do not wish to stay up to such a late hour to see an event. This weekend the PBR is battling the contractual obligations again but this time is dealing with it in a better way by airing the event in the late afternoon.
Another issue that I noticed was a lack of interest in the event. For the past years of this event the schedule has been relatively stable occuring in mid to late August. Due to scheduling issues the event had to be pushed up months. This upset the majority of the fans who live in the United States because the short notice made it impossible for many of them to work the event into their work schedules. This caused many of them to just be not excited about the event in general and also returned many negative reviews.
One last review that I had seen, and from a public relations standpoint would have to disagree with, is the comments saying things to the effect of "why should I care about this event?" As public relations specialist we look for that new exciting angle and take off running when it comes our way. The general public in this day and age are concerned with the issue of "what makes this so special that I should spend my time or money on it?" The answer in this siutation is: This kind of event only happens once a year and it is the only chance in the sport of bull riding for the riders to compete for something larger than themselves: a team and their country. This year the PBR lost sight of that and went off the angle of drama. Drama sells, but you can only push the limit so much before the audience pushes back and rejects you. This year there was a lot of speculation on who was going to make the team for the two most competitive teams of the events past three years. Both team captains were constantly making public declarations that they would not hesitate to cut some fan favorite from the team if they were not performing. This lead to most of the discussion of the event to be over who made the team, as opposed to what it should have been about, the competition. Hype can take you so far, but you need to be able to draw back and not lose sight of what the event is really about.
Another issue that I noticed was a lack of interest in the event. For the past years of this event the schedule has been relatively stable occuring in mid to late August. Due to scheduling issues the event had to be pushed up months. This upset the majority of the fans who live in the United States because the short notice made it impossible for many of them to work the event into their work schedules. This caused many of them to just be not excited about the event in general and also returned many negative reviews.
One last review that I had seen, and from a public relations standpoint would have to disagree with, is the comments saying things to the effect of "why should I care about this event?" As public relations specialist we look for that new exciting angle and take off running when it comes our way. The general public in this day and age are concerned with the issue of "what makes this so special that I should spend my time or money on it?" The answer in this siutation is: This kind of event only happens once a year and it is the only chance in the sport of bull riding for the riders to compete for something larger than themselves: a team and their country. This year the PBR lost sight of that and went off the angle of drama. Drama sells, but you can only push the limit so much before the audience pushes back and rejects you. This year there was a lot of speculation on who was going to make the team for the two most competitive teams of the events past three years. Both team captains were constantly making public declarations that they would not hesitate to cut some fan favorite from the team if they were not performing. This lead to most of the discussion of the event to be over who made the team, as opposed to what it should have been about, the competition. Hype can take you so far, but you need to be able to draw back and not lose sight of what the event is really about.
If I had been in the public relations department when all this was occuring I would have been trying to keep these comments from taking over the commentary about the event. The best way to do this is to make sure that the people making these comments somehow always get back around to the team, national pride aspect of the event. Most of these comments were made in on-air telecasts. The best way to handle this is to talk to the broadcast team and tell them that if someone is going off on the hype too much reel them back in. The media, here the broadcasters and the writers, are on your team. They want to tell a story people want to hear about. At a certain point the audience is going to stop reading all these team speculations because they know something new will be said tomorrow that contradicts what is being read today. You need to work with the news. If you want to play the hype card have the media do a weekly team update. Have someone talk to the team captain and find out where there team is right now and what they are looking to do before the event.
The level of prestige the riders place on this event is amazing. The riders love getting to ride for something bigger than themselves, they want to ride for their friends and their country. This event is about something fans and riders alike can relate to and that is national pride. In the past years of the event the discussions and promotions had always been about that but this year got lost in all the hype.
The level of prestige the riders place on this event is amazing. The riders love getting to ride for something bigger than themselves, they want to ride for their friends and their country. This event is about something fans and riders alike can relate to and that is national pride. In the past years of the event the discussions and promotions had always been about that but this year got lost in all the hype.
So the message to take out of this discussion is that when promoting large events, don't get lost in the hype factor, always remember to pull it back to what makes the event special and the public relations will be set for success.
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