For St. John’s the 2009 Stormfest was a pretty successful day having nearly 1,200 students in attendance. I say, “for St. John’s” because 1,200 students is a lot for a student body who has been largely apathetic towards school spirit for the past few years. However that 1,200 students only makes up about 7% of the student body. To be fair its hard to draw interest from the commuters and that same 1,200 would make up about 20% of the students living on campus.

Joining Johnny Jungle’s efforts to improve student interest, the school has done a lot of work recently to the campus from improving facilities to increasing underclassman residents which has provided the University with a better college atmosphere. The team has also played more Big East games on campus to draw more to the students to the games (there are other financial motives behind it too, I know).

With the team poised to be on the verge of having its most successful season in the past decade, the school could really make strides on building student interest for the athletic program. The school has made some efforts by creating a stimulus program where students can earn “MVP” points for attending school functions. Much like a carnival the students can earn points to redeem for selected prizes.

It’s a pretty cool concept to win free stuff for attending game especially when there are prizes like XBox-360’s available. To my understanding an XBox-360 is somewhere within the 800 point range. Students can earn anywhere from 3-4 points per game which would require them to attend approximately 200+ games to earn a game system. During the course of the 8 months that the students are in school, it would require them to attend more than 6 games a week in order to win an XBox-360. Looks like getting a part time job on campus earning $7.35 an hour is a more realistic option.

So St. John’s is at least giving students an incentive to come but what about making them aware of these things even existing? I was on campus this past week and decided to do a little investigating as I heard there were posters everywhere which made me skeptical. Take a look at what I found in Marillac Hall on my way to the cafeteria. Can you find the St. John’s Stormfest poster? Would you stop on your way to class to look at this board?

So there is three 8×12 sheets of paper promoting the Stormfest event in the midst of the clutter of that bulletin board. Most students put this board into their mental spam folder and either disregard or completely ignore it.

So what can St. John’s do to improve? The aim here isn’t to point the finger and say shame on you, St. John’s but rather look for solutions to help push them further into the right direction.

So here are some suggestions to St. John’s to help lure student interest.

-Work on new incentives for your MVP program: Make the prizes functional yet attainable. Instead of gaming systems, why not games for the system? Other reasonable object suitable for college students. Dorm Furniture? Gift Certificates? Sporting/Concert Tickets? DVDs? If students reach goals quicker than they will be more inclined to keep coming back.

-Adjusted Scale: When we play the Dukes/UConns etc. people are going to show up to the games no matter what. It’s the other games where we need more support. Throw some +10 points for Stony Brook or other OOC games. Also extra points to go to Garden games which requires more of an effort to get to. Beyond basketball give more points to Volleyball, Lax, and Baseball because no one goes to these games but they should all are fun to watch.

-Direct Mailing: Every student on campus has a mailbox and we have our own post office on campus so why not use it? It’s something every student checks. If not go around to every door in the dorms and tape a poster on their door. This will force them to see it and read it rather than passing it up on the bulletin boards in the hall ways.

-Text it: One positive we learned from the almost school shooting we had last year was St. John’s had an awesome safety plan by sending out mass text messages. So if we can send out safety messages why not alert them about the big game?

-Embrace New York: Start reaching out to older basketball players and notable alumni. Every other big time school has notable alumni in the stands for every game. Plus we live in New York there are a ton of celebrities that you can reach out to and invite them to games. It might sound lame but if Jay-Z was sitting on our sideline we’d get 30 more seconds of airtime on ESPN no matter what the outcome.

-What would Turtle do?: For those of you who don’t watch entourage, Turtle, is one of the members of the entourage who is always scheming to make things happen. One episode they were over budget for throwing Vince a birthday party and he managed to get Playboy, Absolute, and other large companies to sponsor the party to bring down the cost. We need to get more promotional events and give-a-ways which will make students want to come to games. Pizza and T-Shirts can’t be the go-to method of luring students to come to games. Do a free semester of tuition contest, book store discounts, movie passes, or heritage nights. What if the MVP points earned you a half court shot for FREE year of tuition? There are plenty of ideas out there but just keep asking yourself what would Turtle do?

-Where do people hang out?: All of signage is in hallways or in staircases. Generally people are always on the go in these areas and not really inclined to stop to read a flyer. Why not put signage outside of the dorms and/or classrooms. People hang outside, smoke cigs, talk before/after class, and it would be more noticeable to them in these areas.

One Poster Isn’t Enough: Putting one poster up a week or few days before isn’t enough. Put one out there for initial and another day of game. Keep everyone on their toes and get a day of game poster. “GAME TONIGHT” “GONE TO THE GAME” Make it the thing to do on campus.

These are just a few ideas that I had to help improve the marketing. The lack of student interest doesn’t only fall on the marketing department’s shoulders. It’s a team effort and everyone needs to be on board from Student Life, Residence Life, Public Safety, Ticket Sales, Coaching Staff, etc. St. John’s has done a lot to improve in the past few years and we’re all pushing them to keep raising the bar and making St. John’s a better institution of higher education. At the end of the day though the best marketing plan is having a winning team and that is something we all hope is in the immediate future.

Other News: St. John’s just announced it’s corporate marketing partnership with ISP Sports. ISP currently works with Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Villanova, and South Florida. Hopefully they bring to the table some of the things we are looking for.

If you have any ideas or suggestions please feel free to post a comment here or in our forums. Go St. John’s!

St. John’s flyer courtesy of Redstormsports.