Vodafone Dumps Saints For Roos

[stinger]

It was actually the service they were promised by the president and the board. None of it came to much at all. The players was a smaller issue.

At some functions people from the Saints who should know better did not behave in a great way. I will leave it at that.

and if some people keep putting sh!t on grant thomas , it might not stay in house.......and i will leave it at that...for the time being.....

[HSVKing]

They expected our star players to go to whatever ebents and pluig whatever crap they wanted.

That's what sponsorship is Ric.

They pay the club to put their name out into the community. They do this by not only paying to have their name on our guernseys, merchandise, advertising boards etc etc but using our players to promote their products.

The players are virtually the face of the products when they advertise them. This also means the players are getting their faces out there for other advertisements they may be able to gather (ie: Roo and Toyota, Bally and Telstra).

It's the corporate game, St Kilda is a business, Vodafone is a business, all advertisement is good advertisement.

I'd hate to see a company come in and sponsor us and say, "Nah, stuff ya's, we just want our name on TV during your games, anywhere you advertise, media conferences etc... But we don't want the players involved."

Keep the sponsors happy and they'll keep us happy... It's a partnership.

[RBnW]

They expected our star players to go to whatever ebents and pluig whatever crap they wanted.

That's what sponsorship is Ric.

They pay the club to put their name out into the community. They do this by not only paying to have their name on our guernseys, merchandise, advertising boards etc etc but using our players to promote their products.

The players are virtually the face of the products when they advertise them. This also means the players are getting their faces out there for other advertisements they may be able to gather (ie: Roo and Toyota, Bally and Telstra).

It's the corporate game, St Kilda is a business, Vodafone is a business, all advertisement is good advertisement.

I'd hate to see a company come in and sponsor us and say, "Nah, stuff ya's, we just want our name on TV during your games, anywhere you advertise, media conferences etc... But we don't want the players involved."

Keep the sponsors happy and they'll keep us happy... It's a partnership.

Don't be side tracked by anything other than this is about the local Mr Vodafones ego, he is just new to Vodafone this year, he has befriended Brayshaw, Brayshaw had him on 3MMM Radio during the year and mentioned his name on the Footy Show....
Thats what he gets off on....
No business moves to North Melbourne to grow thier business through thier supporters or members - Vodafone were telling the Saints to help them grow thier business sales and the club did do high profile business introductions to Vodafone...but the Network is crap in Melbourne and non existant in Tassie - so they didnt get much business
Mr Vodafone thought he had a deal done at Carlton.....all done, which is what he sold to his HO people, so they dumped the Saints for Carlton....then when Carlton fell over he went to Brayshaw.....it is the worst business decision of the decade and the people in Vodafone HO know this....
This is not about the Saints not servicing Vodafone....he got cute and now he has to take second best, well 16th best.....
My source at Vodafone is saying if he doesnt grow the local business customers in Victoria and get his head out of the social pages there will be no Mr Vodafone and no North Melbourne sponsorship.....its a one year deal for a maximum of $1m which has strings attached......so its a deal of $700,000 which will include extra $ in they make the finals, and a Flag.... No chance of that..........in 2008.......
the second year is only an option.....they will be out of this in 1 year, Head office will push that and they will not grow their business in Melbourne because the service is still crap....but Mr Vodafone will be happy because Brayshaw will memtion his name on radio and TV and that is what this is all about....
Our club is not perfect at looking after sponsors over the years but this is not one of the times they have stuffed up.....my source at Vodafone has confirmed this, and it sounds like that has been confirmed by plugger66.....

[Winmarvellous]

So, if I'm too get my head around this properly, St Kilda endorsed a crap product to their supporters and members for the love of the almighty dollar. If Vodaphone is really so crap, why do we want them as a sponsor. Or is that just the taste of sour grapes in our mouths? Let's move on. They no longer endorse St Kildsa, so who cares where they take their money. If they weren't happy with the service and switched providers, that's what their customers should do. Sponsorship works both ways.

[plugger66]

They expected our star players to go to whatever ebents and pluig whatever crap they wanted.

That's what sponsorship is Ric.

They pay the club to put their name out into the community. They do this by not only paying to have their name on our guernseys, merchandise, advertising boards etc etc but using our players to promote their products.

The players are virtually the face of the products when they advertise them. This also means the players are getting their faces out there for other advertisements they may be able to gather (ie: Roo and Toyota, Bally and Telstra).

It's the corporate game, St Kilda is a business, Vodafone is a business, all advertisement is good advertisement.

I'd hate to see a company come in and sponsor us and say, "Nah, stuff ya's, we just want our name on TV during your games, anywhere you advertise, media conferences etc... But we don't want the players involved."

Keep the sponsors happy and they'll keep us happy... It's a partnership.

Don't be side tracked by anything other than this is about the local Mr Vodafones ego, he is just new to Vodafone this year, he has befriended Brayshaw, Brayshaw had him on 3MMM Radio during the year and mentioned his name on the Footy Show....
Thats what he gets off on....
No business moves to North Melbourne to grow thier business through thier supporters or members - Vodafone were telling the Saints to help them grow thier business sales and the club did do high profile business introductions to Vodafone...but the Network is crap in Melbourne and non existant in Tassie - so they didnt get much business
Mr Vodafone thought he had a deal done at Carlton.....all done, which is what he sold to his HO people, so they dumped the Saints for Carlton....then when Carlton fell over he went to Brayshaw.....it is the worst business decision of the decade and the people in Vodafone HO know this....
This is not about the Saints not servicing Vodafone....he got cute and now he has to take second best, well 16th best.....
My source at Vodafone is saying if he doesnt grow the local business customers in Victoria and get his head out of the social pages there will be no Mr Vodafone and no North Melbourne sponsorship.....its a one year deal for a maximum of $1m which has strings attached......so its a deal of $700,000 which will include extra $ in they make the finals, and a Flag.... No chance of that..........in 2008.......
the second year is only an option.....they will be out of this in 1 year, Head office will push that and they will not grow their business in Melbourne because the service is still crap....but Mr Vodafone will be happy because Brayshaw will memtion his name on radio and TV and that is what this is all about....
Our club is not perfect at looking after sponsors over the years but this is not one of the times they have stuffed up.....my source at Vodafone has confirmed this, and it sounds like that has been confirmed by plugger66.....

I actually am confirming the exact oposite of what you are saying. We stuffed around the sponsor big time.

[RBnW]

They expected our star players to go to whatever ebents and pluig whatever crap they wanted.

That's what sponsorship is Ric.

They pay the club to put their name out into the community. They do this by not only paying to have their name on our guernseys, merchandise, advertising boards etc etc but using our players to promote their products.

The players are virtually the face of the products when they advertise them. This also means the players are getting their faces out there for other advertisements they may be able to gather (ie: Roo and Toyota, Bally and Telstra).

It's the corporate game, St Kilda is a business, Vodafone is a business, all advertisement is good advertisement.

I'd hate to see a company come in and sponsor us and say, "Nah, stuff ya's, we just want our name on TV during your games, anywhere you advertise, media conferences etc... But we don't want the players involved."

Keep the sponsors happy and they'll keep us happy... It's a partnership.

Don't be side tracked by anything other than this is about the local Mr Vodafones ego, he is just new to Vodafone this year, he has befriended Brayshaw, Brayshaw had him on 3MMM Radio during the year and mentioned his name on the Footy Show....
Thats what he gets off on....
No business moves to North Melbourne to grow thier business through thier supporters or members - Vodafone were telling the Saints to help them grow thier business sales and the club did do high profile business introductions to Vodafone...but the Network is crap in Melbourne and non existant in Tassie - so they didnt get much business
Mr Vodafone thought he had a deal done at Carlton.....all done, which is what he sold to his HO people, so they dumped the Saints for Carlton....then when Carlton fell over he went to Brayshaw.....it is the worst business decision of the decade and the people in Vodafone HO know this....
This is not about the Saints not servicing Vodafone....he got cute and now he has to take second best, well 16th best.....
My source at Vodafone is saying if he doesnt grow the local business customers in Victoria and get his head out of the social pages there will be no Mr Vodafone and no North Melbourne sponsorship.....its a one year deal for a maximum of $1m which has strings attached......so its a deal of $700,000 which will include extra $ in they make the finals, and a Flag.... No chance of that..........in 2008.......
the second year is only an option.....they will be out of this in 1 year, Head office will push that and they will not grow their business in Melbourne because the service is still crap....but Mr Vodafone will be happy because Brayshaw will memtion his name on radio and TV and that is what this is all about....
Our club is not perfect at looking after sponsors over the years but this is not one of the times they have stuffed up.....my source at Vodafone has confirmed this, and it sounds like that has been confirmed by plugger66.....

I actually am confirming the exact oposite of what you are saying. We stuffed around the sponsor big time.

not according to my contacts at Vodafone.........lets wait a year and see what happens, he wont there.......what did we do to stuff them around that was so bad...

[plugger66]

They expected our star players to go to whatever ebents and pluig whatever crap they wanted.

That's what sponsorship is Ric.

They pay the club to put their name out into the community. They do this by not only paying to have their name on our guernseys, merchandise, advertising boards etc etc but using our players to promote their products.

The players are virtually the face of the products when they advertise them. This also means the players are getting their faces out there for other advertisements they may be able to gather (ie: Roo and Toyota, Bally and Telstra).

It's the corporate game, St Kilda is a business, Vodafone is a business, all advertisement is good advertisement.

I'd hate to see a company come in and sponsor us and say, "Nah, stuff ya's, we just want our name on TV during your games, anywhere you advertise, media conferences etc... But we don't want the players involved."

Keep the sponsors happy and they'll keep us happy... It's a partnership.

Don't be side tracked by anything other than this is about the local Mr Vodafones ego, he is just new to Vodafone this year, he has befriended Brayshaw, Brayshaw had him on 3MMM Radio during the year and mentioned his name on the Footy Show....
Thats what he gets off on....
No business moves to North Melbourne to grow thier business through thier supporters or members - Vodafone were telling the Saints to help them grow thier business sales and the club did do high profile business introductions to Vodafone...but the Network is crap in Melbourne and non existant in Tassie - so they didnt get much business
Mr Vodafone thought he had a deal done at Carlton.....all done, which is what he sold to his HO people, so they dumped the Saints for Carlton....then when Carlton fell over he went to Brayshaw.....it is the worst business decision of the decade and the people in Vodafone HO know this....
This is not about the Saints not servicing Vodafone....he got cute and now he has to take second best, well 16th best.....
My source at Vodafone is saying if he doesnt grow the local business customers in Victoria and get his head out of the social pages there will be no Mr Vodafone and no North Melbourne sponsorship.....its a one year deal for a maximum of $1m which has strings attached......so its a deal of $700,000 which will include extra $ in they make the finals, and a Flag.... No chance of that..........in 2008.......
the second year is only an option.....they will be out of this in 1 year, Head office will push that and they will not grow their business in Melbourne because the service is still crap....but Mr Vodafone will be happy because Brayshaw will memtion his name on radio and TV and that is what this is all about....
Our club is not perfect at looking after sponsors over the years but this is not one of the times they have stuffed up.....my source at Vodafone has confirmed this, and it sounds like that has been confirmed by plugger66.....

I actually am confirming the exact oposite of what you are saying. We stuffed around the sponsor big time.

not according to my contacts at Vodafone.........lets wait a year and see what happens, he wont there.......what did we do to stuff them around that was so bad...

I mentioned it in an earlier post.

[RBnW]

so what did the president and the board promise...

[BAM! (shhhh)]

Can I suggest that amongst all the rumour and allegation in this thread that the main thing I'm gathering is that St. Kilda did not provide results to Vodafone over teh course of their sponsorship?

Player access including the Luke Ball saga doesn't fly, we've got more marketable stars than North Melbourne OR Carlton at this stage, and while the Blues are one of the big 3 Melbourne clubs, with the numbers we ought have been able to provide, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Similarly, while the previous board is much rumoured to have overindulged in the hospitality of the corporate functions, if/when you're succeeding in providing value, this is considered colourful. When you're not, you're just a drunk on a free ride... the former is annoying but somewhat enviable, the latter pathetic (and my how often this seems to come up at this time of year...). If something like this becomes a deal breaker for a deal in place, it means there's nothing holding together the deal in the first place.

If Paul Guerra (Vodafone Melbourne GM) is playing social games... well, sometimes that's how business is done. For all the talk of the possibility of Guerra being dumped by Voda, and no more social pages, the same goes the other way, Guerra's Vodafone deal is propping up North Melbourne and Brayshaw's ambitions right now. Given the above, we aren't in any better position to paly the social business game with a board of teetotallers than a board of drunks.

St. Kilda clearly has a lot of potential value to provide to sponsors, but the question I'm coming to is whether anyone's got some insight into whether it's just potential, or we actually can demonstrate with numbers value we've provided to the likes of past sponsors?

[Huzzad]

A club with a smaller supporter base, smaller membership, fewer games in Melbourne, fewer Friday night games, fewer matches on FTA television, fewer perceived "star" players and less success over the past five years.


WTF was going through Vodafone's mind when they did this deal?

We gave them crap service.

Have you tried using a phone on thier network? Talk about crap service.

Dumped them myself for Telstra. I know they are evil, but the service is second to none.

You serious? I got off Telstra and went back to Vodafone because of the poor service. I mean most of the time it was good, but they stuffed up my account and after a month they still blamed me for the problem (they blacklisted my credit card even though it was the same one, got them to take it off and it went straight back on, and yes there was money in the account and everything) even though it was their fault. I couldn't believe it. Gave em a month to fix it, so a month with practically no phone at all and they still couldn't get their act together. Went to Vodafone and said give me a good deal and I have not been happier. Service has been was better than Telstra's. And I'm using the same account details too! So screw Telstra.

[Huzzad]

Yeah I agree. Looks like we screwed Voda over a bit (thanks to old board) but yeah, what can you do? Besides, they opted out and are now stuck with the Roos, which someone pointed out, are a far lesser team than we are (in terms of star players, potential, tv time, reputation and fan base), so it is their loss as much as ours I guess. When we kick their arse next year it will be great!

[Mr Magic]

St. Kilda clearly has a lot of potential value to provide to sponsors, but the question I'm coming to is whether anyone's got some insight into whether it's just potential, or we actually can demonstrate with numbers value we've provided to the likes of past sponsors?

When the story about the 'Sponsorship Ad in the Age' broke, there was a poster claiming to be in the advertising industry, who detailed that the figures quoted about number of people having watched us play on TV was a significant number to potential sponsors.

Sponsors seek different forms of value depending on their awn particular situations.

BillExpress have claimed publicly that they achieved what they wanted to achieve out of their sponsorship with us and therefore are moving to a new area of advertising/marketing in line with where their position is now. Their publicly stated aim (after the fact) of their sponsorship with us was to increase 'brand recognition' of themselves and their brands.

On the other hand, Vodafone have publicly claimed that they didn't get what they were looking for out of sponsoring us. What that was unfortunately we don't know as no-one has publicly said what it was they were looking for?

Mortgage House dropped us very quickly after getting huge exposure in 2004, both good and bad (2004 Pre-season premiership, Milne/Montagna, winning streak). It may well be that they also achieved their desired increased 'brand recognition' and decided to move to another form of advertising/marketing? Again we don't really know because nothing has been stated publicly.

In terms of minor sponsors, ther have been a number of posts on here about how badly we have treated these sponsors and yet there doesn't seem to be any real proof of this?

British Paints seems to have been well satisfied with their deal as they have kept coming back year after year.

I know 1 of our medium sponsors personally and they sponsor 4 AFL Clubs (for business reasons). He tells me that the Saints, and Archie in particular, are by far the most professional club to deal with and he has been sponsoring for the last 2 seasons.

We did lose a Crazy John's sponsorship but again I wonder why? Did we do something wrong or was it just an internal decision by a company that was suffering huge financial issues at the time and decided to 'cut back' on some of their advertising/sponsorships?

[The Peanut]

St. Kilda clearly has a lot of potential value to provide to sponsors, but the question I'm coming to is whether anyone's got some insight into whether it's just potential, or we actually can demonstrate with numbers value we've provided to the likes of past sponsors?

When the story about the 'Sponsorship Ad in the Age' broke, there was a poster claiming to be in the advertising industry, who detailed that the figures quoted about number of people having watched us play on TV was a significant number to potential sponsors.

Sponsors seek different forms of value depending on their awn particular situations.

BillExpress have claimed publicly that they achieved what they wanted to achieve out of their sponsorship with us and therefore are moving to a new area of advertising/marketing in line with where their position is now. Their publicly stated aim (after the fact) of their sponsorship with us was to increase 'brand recognition' of themselves and their brands.

On the other hand, Vodafone have publicly claimed that they didn't get what they were looking for out of sponsoring us. What that was unfortunately we don't know as no-one has publicly said what it was they were looking for?

Mortgage House dropped us very quickly after getting huge exposure in 2004, both good and bad (2004 Pre-season premiership, Milne/Montagna, winning streak). It may well be that they also achieved their desired increased 'brand recognition' and decided to move to another form of advertising/marketing? Again we don't really know because nothing has been stated publicly.

In terms of minor sponsors, ther have been a number of posts on here about how badly we have treated these sponsors and yet there doesn't seem to be any real proof of this?

British Paints seems to have been well satisfied with their deal as they have kept coming back year after year.

I know 1 of our medium sponsors personally and they sponsor 4 AFL Clubs (for business reasons). He tells me that the Saints, and Archie in particular, are by far the most professional club to deal with and he has been sponsoring for the last 2 seasons.

We did lose a Crazy John's sponsorship but again I wonder why? Did we do something wrong or was it just an internal decision by a company that was suffering huge financial issues at the time and decided to 'cut back' on some of their advertising/sponsorships?

GW said that he knows of businesses thst have been sponsoring at a lower level and they say their dollars spent were virtually a donation as no servicing done - and wasn't there someone threateneing to sue us a while back because we didn't provide the service we promised? - lower level sponsor again though.

When GW and NB stated that due to lack of staff resources, sponsors were not fully serviced I don't really know whether that was through promised 'exposure', 'knock-on-the-door' or 'the-chicken-and-the-beef', but general exposure to the major sponsors would have been excellent value for money with our Friday night games, regular training images etc IMHO.

[saintsRrising]

Interesting reading in light of tonights AGM...and what was revealed about our Vodafone sponsorship.

[Scoop]

Interesting reading in light of tonights AGM...and what was revealed about our Vodafone sponsorship.

....and RBnW was spot on in describing the reality of the situation.

[Huzzad]

Interesting reading in light of tonights AGM...and what was revealed about our Vodafone sponsorship.

yeah does shed some light and definatly a surprise. I wonder what we would have got if we had stuck with vodafone compared to jeldwen...

[saintsRrising]

It was actually the service they were promised by the president and the board. None of it came to much at all. The players was a smaller issue.

At some functions people from the Saints who should know better did not behave in a great way. I will leave it at that.

Thanks for the info.

In light of the AGM....was this info actual facts....or just second hand via the FF spin??