As we near the madness that is grand final season, we thought it only fitting that we feature an article written by our CD, Bruce Williams on AFL memberships and predictions as to what next year may hold.

RECENTLY, the AFL completed its official membership audit, following the June 30 deadline for member numbers to be submitted by clubs.

Officially, the AFL has smashed yet another record with the results. Total membership was up on last year’s record of 614,251 members, to weigh in at 650,373, an overall increase of 5.5 per cent.

Even with an extra club adding to the mix, it’s an increase of 24,981, which is a great achievement for the AFL, which has experienced a rise nearly every year since 1999, and testament to the ability of clubs to convert supporters into members.

Some do it better than others, including Collingwood, which not surprisingly has once again smashed yet another AFL record, registering a phenomenal 71,271 members for season 2011. This time last year it also broke the record, registering 57,408 members. So this year represents a 13,863 jump, or nearly a 20 per cent increase.
The figure itself doesn’t appear to be much (or actually as good as last year’s increase) given it won the premiership and could be heading for two in a row. But what is remarkable is the divide it represents over the other clubs.

Last year, Hawthorn proudly boasted it was only 3430 members behind Collingwood. This year it is a staggering 15,047 in arrears, even though it has added nearly 3000 new members.

Apart from Hawthorn, no other team even looks like cracking the 60,000 mark, and when the gulf between first and second goes beyond 20,000, you have to think what that sort of revenue can do for the club’s fortunes on the field. Then again, good membership doesn’t always equate to great success.

As the Collingwood Magpies continue to enjoy it, the former Port Adelaide Magpies are at the other end of the spectrum.

Despite ironically recording the second highest membership increase of 12 per cent (a figure up 3489 to 32,581, largely through the merger with the SANFL Port Adelaide Magpies, the club now faces a financial crisis — and an uphill marketing battle that membership increases alone can’t fix.

Collingwood, Hawthorn and Port aside, seven other clubs also recorded increases on their 2010 membership tally including Richmond (up 4224 to 40,184), Melbourne (up 3579 to 36,937), Carlton (up 3311 to 43,791), Fremantle (up 2908 to 42,762), Essendon (up 1970 to 42,559), North Melbourne (up 1808 to 28,761), and St Kilda (up 255 to 39,276).

Seven clubs boast membership bases beyond 40,000 — Adelaide, Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn, Richmond and West Coast.

The big drops were to Brisbane (down 5987 to 20,792), Bulldogs (down 2367 to 29,710), Sydney (down 1565 to 27,106), Geelong (down 983 to 39,343), West Coast (down 944 to 43,216) and Adelaide (down 826 to 44,719).
Of course for Gold Coast, the only way was up, and to register 11,141 members in an inaugural year in an area where AFL is not favoured isn’t bad considering some of the NRL heavyweights attract less in terms of paid-up members and even numbers on game day.

But it’s scary to think they are 60,000 members short of the competition heavyweights, even with 119 years of history, last year’s flag and 14 other premiership cups separating the teams.

You have to wonder that even with all the money, equalisation schemes, and measures the AFL keeps throwing at the game to keep the playing field level, there is still the fact that it can’t buy instant support. As the numbers show in this year more than others it’s the clubs with the strongest cultures — and the ability to make these cultures resonate with supporters on a marketing level — that ultimately leads to their engagement as members. And that is a powerful resource for clubs as the competition tightens.

Next year I imagine the AFL would be expecting yet another increase in the total numbers, and who knows if Collingwood can get more than 80,000 then maybe the AFL will.

One thing I doubt is whether GWS will trouble the auditors that much, but for the sake of competition, I’d like to be proven wrong.

A movie that has a painfully slow build. War and peace. A baguette filled with a wonderful assortment of deli flavours. No one like the crusty ends, right?

You can avoid being a crusty end by taking advantage of the University of Ballarat’s mid-year enrolments drive. Because why wouldn’t you want to get a head start on your career?

For this campaign we used some creative media placement for press, a chomping banner ad (hence the reference to baguettes and crusty ends), TVC and radio.

You can check out the TVC here:

They say babies experience phenomenal growth and learning in their first year of life. I suppose the same concept applies to juniors in the advertising industry. It has been just 2 months since Tim and I joined the creative Team at CUBED.

Each baby step we have taken in the advertising industry has felt like a leap. It’s true they say there’s only so much they can teach you from books. The rest comes down to experience. In our first week, we treated every brief like a final semester assessment piece. Every line written worth a mark out of 10.

The hectic reality of it soon set in, learning process, working on multiple jobs at once, and of course learning that my love of puns needs to be stamped out of me immediately. (However I may have the sneaky support of the creative director on the puns)

From where we stand now it’s incredible to see how far we’ve come. Tim now owns his first ever v-neck and cardigan and wears them like a true art director. We also have seen nothing but each other for the past two months. I must say advertising gives a pretty good insight into marriage. We’re possibly the most unlikely couple imaginable, but we make it work.

We’ve learned that while great ads start with big ideas, great creatives know their craft. Being juniors in a small agency has been incredible because we’ve had the opportunity to be giant sponges and soak up the knowledge from the experienced team at CUBED.

When we started here we didn’t really know what to expect, which is lucky because this industry brings something new everyday. Apart from learning how to art direct and write copy, Tim and I have become experts on everything from real estate, to mortgages and in my case even football (an unlikely case for someone who until this year had never seen a game).

This job is anything but monotonous. After two months the only thing we can predict is that next month will bring something entirely different.

Last week in the space of 24hrs*, CUBED developed an emotive eDM campaign to inspire Carlton fans to get on board and become a member in 2011.

With a compelling email message from Juddy beginning, “It’s time to have a serious chat”, fans were drawn into a spirited video message from the team.

Using a combination of a personalised SMS, eDM and video the proposition was clear; it’s never been better value to become a member of the Carlton Football Club.

Resulting in a spike of online memberships and a new club record, we hope that all Carlton supporters get on board to support the mighty Blues!

See what the boys had to say:

* a very special one off turn around at this speed!

Last Saturday some dedicated fundraisers (Mike, Kim, Lily and Primrose) headed out to East Malvern Auskick to sell some babies. No, we’re not talking human trafficking for charity, but rather some jelly babies in the name of finding a cure for juvenile diabetes.

As the kids devoured their bags of goodies, the smart parents sat back and let them rampage around the oval and harass (just a little!) the big green jelly baby until they were tired out again.  Hot tip – the JDRF jelly babies are the perfect threethirtyitis pick me up.

We’ve been busy creating some deliciously lovely adverts on behalf of TRUenergy.

These press ads were targeted at bakers with the aim of gaining new small to medium enterprise accounts. With lines such as “it costs money to make dough” and a compelling offer of 19.5% off your electricity bill, it’s no surprise that we’ve already secured over a dozen new accounts as a result…. a bakers dozen that is!

Ask most successful businesses to let you in on their secrets and they’ll tell you it’s about having a clear objective, a simple plan and sticking to it.

Such is its importance, management spend a lot of time behind closed doors getting their “mission” or “vision” statements just right, knowing they help define the direction of a business and provide the foundation for success.

There’s also a less formal but altogether more important statement to be set – after factors such as history, past performance, personnel and position in the marketplace have been flagged and analysed – known as the BHAG. The Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

The very point of the BHAG is to push past “reality” and seek a goal that in the “perfect” world would be the ideal achievement. By its nature, the BHAG should be difficult to actually attain, but could actually become possible because it’s been thought possible.

Towards the end of 2009, Collingwood FC sat down and etched a plan that led Eddie McGuire to boldly state the club’s sole purpose was to win a premiership within the next five years.

Many believed it was more a post-rationalisation for the Malthouse/Buckley deal he’d just orchestrated; perhaps the supreme confidence and sheer audacity of the statement was exactly what the club needed to kick-start its meteoric rise to the top.

The fact the Magpies achieved their BHAG within a year might have left the president wondering why they didn’t go Bigger and Hairier. On latest form, the Pies are kicking Big Hairy Audacious Goals with both feet, from impossible angles, on any ground, against most opponents. But the point is that once the club had declared a clear and concise direction, everyone involved adjusted culturally to achieve that goal.

Once everyone had bought into the idea, it was as though nothing could stop them. The dice had been rolled and it was their destiny, the classic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, born from a common goal they dared not only to dream, but publicly decree.

Of course it wasn’t as easy as that. There was the little matter of playing a full season, winning finals and surviving a draw before that final triumph.

David Smorgon wishes it were as easy as simply saying so. The Bulldogs president came out at the start of this year declaring nothing short of premiership success was acceptable. Strong words from an individual sick of finding his club “thereabouts” season after season.

Unfortunately his team has so far let him down. So while his wish is indeed Big, Hairy and Audacious, it’s also a Bloody Huge Ask.

On the other hand, teams like Geelong, Essendon and even West Coast are clearly “over-performing”, well above where experts had envisaged them. The question is, are they playing towards a greater goal, or long-term belief or simply “taking it one week at a time”?

They haven’t been public about any “grand plans” they may have for achieving the ultimate success, unlike Carlton.

The Blues’ form has impressed even the staunchest critics, with the team now holding its nerve to win the close games it would have been expected to lose a year earlier.

But there’s more to the team than just good form. There feels a determined purpose and a true belief in their abilities. The Blues have actually gone a step beyond the Bulldogs, and even Collingwood, in that it’s more than just words from the president that are helping hone the team culture into one of success.

They have put their mission into print a Blue Print to be precise.

Available on their website, the Blue Print clearly outlines their five-year plan, and their BHAG is there on Page 11 for all to see, under the heading Strategic Objective 1: Premierships. Sustained success, “winning our 17th premiership” and “leading to winning two premierships by 2015″.

Time will tell if the Blues’ BHAG becomes reality. But whether they achieve the ultimate success isn’t really the point. What matters is that it’s given the club a common goal, from board, to playing group, to fans.

Everyone now has a role in achieving a long-term goal.

Just last night, one of CUBED’s early clients, Futuris was inducted in to the Manufacturing Hall of Fame. With their design and engineering locally based (in Port Melbourne), Futuris has quickly expanded to the rest of the world, with emerging markets in China, Thailand, South Africa and North America. In fact, their’s was the first website that we built in Chinese!

You’ll be happy to know that Futuris are focussed on developing green technologies – their green thinking includes recycled PET floor carpet material (not to be confused with recycled domestic animals) to replace Nylon. Recycled fibres have also been used in interior trim moulding for weight and noise reduction. Smart thinking we reckon. So we’d like to extend a big congratulations to all of the team at Futuris. Well done!

Sounds a bit like a dish from the local Chinese takeaway, doesn’t it?

Last night the team at CUBED gathered for our quarterly meeting. We covered off the agency’s creative highlights and finished off with a ping pong tournament. Shanley surprised the men (and equally impressed the female colleagues) with her ping pong prowess. But the boss (Mike) claimed the big win, defeating Troy and Marty to take out the championship. He may have won, but he didn’t look quite as elegant as Kim and Anita in the process.

We also learnt that a picture of a chicken is a visual of challenging the norm. Think about it. It’s the source of all thinking and debate.

We’ll finish with a great little motto our new creative team (Hannah and Tim) came up with “we believe passion is contagious and that positive energy makes anything possible”. We hope that inspires you to go and have a fantastic weekend. Much love, CUBED.

We’ve all heard the saying – you always get what you pay for. And whilst sometimes it’s great to nab a bargain, there are certain services and items that are best not decided upon based on their price.

CUBED’s challenge was to convince employers that price shouldn’t form the basis of their decision when choosing appropriate training for their staff. Rather that the ‘value’ was based on the credentials of the organisation.

We drew a parallel based on a simple insight. What’s the first thing that employers look at when considering candidates for the job? Check the curriculum vitae.

This insight resulted in a DM pack which included a personalised letter outlining the reasons that the University of Ballarat’s qualifications would help their organisation to succeed. A lengthy (literally!) CV was also included, having a fun take on the Universities date of birth, and their never ending list of qualifications.

TAFE enrolments increased by 22.6% from March 2010 to March 2011. That’s over double the objective. A great result that also contributed to increased revenue for the client.