For all the teams whom haven’t ever chosen to atttend the Arizona Regional,
we’re looking for some feedback.
What has kept your team from attending the Arizona Regional this year or in the past?
We are always looking for was to improve your experience, so let us know what you think we are missing!
We know its not our great weather, or the great volunteer crew, or the fact we still have an awesome team social thats keeping you away, so please let us know?
We don’t necessarily want to be the biggest, just one of the best!
I visit regionals besides the ones my team attends, and I’ve thought about attending a californian regional.
This is more a personal thing, but I don’t know that many people from that area, I don’t hear as much about the regional as I do about regionals like BAE or Midwest. The more publicity you have, the more people will make it out to your event. I heard a lot of good stuff about it from a member of an Indiana team, so I was interested.
To shed a little light on it, after some calculations it could be that the 2005 Arizona Regional has teams traveling an average of 419 miles, or 7 hours, to visit the regional.
After a bit of further research, if you look at it from a Porter’s Five Forces perspective (a tool used to define competition within an industry so that it can be tackled easier), you’re running into the huge issues of “Power of the Buyer” and “Threat of Substitutes”.
Power of the Buyer:
There’s practically zero switching costs for teams to decide on their regionals to attend, thus the team really has the power over the regional in this aspect. There may be some indirect costs that include missing out on the savings at one regional in the areas of hotel, food, and other stuff, but this is really minimal, especially with THS running their own negotiations for teams on hotels, which is a huge percentage of costs for teams.
Threat of Substitutes:
Arizona is flanked in the timeline by Sacramento and Portland, of which there are 6 teams skipping the Arizona weekend and going to both Sacramento and Portland. Because of this, teams that may normally go to AZ have some other reason to go to both regionals, or they may have good reason to go to one of the two, and skipping a weekend and going to the other makes sense on the team level.
Suggestions:
My main suggestion is a change in marketing. It’s obvious that all the planning committees care about putting on a good regional, and thus they’re going to all try their hardest to have a great volunteer crew and an awesome team social. The key here is differentiation. Find someone to put in a little extra money (especially a company that thrives on targeting the 14-18 market, such as colleges…a good team social means a captive audience) and do something for the team social that none of the other regionals are offering.
Compared to the rest of the regionals, AZ sits on the higher end of average mileage traveled by teams, so much so that it can fall into the category of “vacation regionals”. Capitalize on that vacation aspect by including incentives for teams to travel long distances by giving discounts to local hot spots, restaurants, or flight deals.
I would also suggest to forget about those teams that are close that are traveling to both Sacramento & Portland, but instead build up on the aspect that you have a similar scheduling connection going on between yourself and San Jose, of which there is an overlap of only 2 teams. It benefits both regionals by getting teams to buy into coming to both, so try to work out a deal between both committees to offer discounts that only kick in when a team decides to attend both.
I enjoyed Jessica’s marketing analysis quite a bit. Nice work.
Let me throw in a few more suggestions if you are looking at increasing the attendance at your regional. Let’s use Marketing 101 and the four Ps: The ancient standards of marketing say that your strategy needs to include four items: price, distribution/place, product and promotion.
**Price: ** The tournament entry fee is fixed, so what can you do with other costs? Is there a way you could package great accomodations at a reasonable cost? Would America West offer a special FIRST discount? Let’s face it – once you make the decision to get on an airplane, there isn’t much real difference where you go within the contiguous US. I can fly from Seattle to Miami for around $225 round trip. Flying round trip to Salt Lake City is only $60 cheaper. Interestingly, flying round trip from Seattle to Portland, OR is around $185, while I can fly to Portland, Maine, for $365. You should be able to effectively market to any team that has to fly to get to their regional. You will have a hard time competing on travel cost with teams that have a short drive to a regional. We can drive from here to Portland in less than 3 hours.
**Place: ** This normally covers product or service distribution, but in this case it is more about location. Why would someone prefer to visit Arizona in early spring (or late winter) instead of some cold, damp place? If you can’t figure this one out, you should just move to Minnesota. Could you package some outdoor activities or benefits? Golf? Hotels with big pool complexes? Horseback riding? Sell sunshine – it’s worked for Florida, Southern California, and Arizona for decades. (On second thought, do any of us really want to see folks from New Hampshire, Illinois, or Washington in bathing suits with their winter “tans?” It’s pretty scary to contemplate.)
**Product: **What does your tournament offer that others cannot? You mention that it is a smaller event. Does this increase the chance for rookie or poorly-financed teams to compete in the absence of teams with $50,000 budgets? Maybe you can sell it as, “Arizona Regionals – The Best Start Here!” or something similar. Could you even structure it as “FIRST Choice for Rookie Teams!”? Since you have disadvantages in natural (driving distance) market size, you need some competitive advantage. Think of what yours is, or could be.
**Promotions: ** PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE! Send (e)mailings to teams worldwide inviting them to Arizona. Subtly promote it on these boards. Does your .sig on this bbs promote your event? Have a drawing for a door prize for everyone on this board who promotes your regional in their .sig. Hire blimps, have dancing geckos, put your tournament on coffee cups, whatever. If teams haven’t heard of the amazing benefits of your event, they sure aren’t going to attend. Remember – six features, three benefits, two reasons to buy today.
This was kind of a supersonic 10,000-foot view. Hope it helps.
Rick Tyler
Mentor, Team 1294
MBA '83, Professional Marketing Guy
If you can afford to travel from the East Coast to Arizona; I say DO IT!
This is a really good trip especially if you are not going to Nationals on a given year.
In 2003 when Arizona was a first year regional our team, 222 The TIGERTRONS, went to this regional simply because we were not eligible to attend Nationals that year. We planned this trip because we figured we would not be going to Nationals and wanted a trip to somewhere off the East Coast. We also like going to first year regionals! Instead of going to Nationals we wanted to try our best to become eligible, so that year we only planned on attending Arizona, Philadelphia, and NJ Regionals that year.
We ended up becoming eligible and went to Nationals that year anyway because of our accomplishments. However, due to our last minute travel plans we were not there to receive our Team Spirit award. Good thing we did not compete in the final matches. :ahh:
If in doubt which regional to attend next year pick Arizona!
There are many things there to see and do. While we were there in 2003 we took a long bus trip to the Grand Canyon and saw fog, but we got to see many cool sights anyway! Arizona is really just a cool place to go!
If you get the chance go, go there as an educational trip as well as a sight seeing trip, you will not regret it!
The Arizona regional is one of the favorites of both my students and myself. Unfortunately, time and money did not allow us to attend this year. I love the sense of community that you get at the smaller regional and the way that it is run! Best of luck Don!!! Hopefully, we’ll be there next year.
Man, I am really regretting not going with my team this year. But in years past, there have been some “long commuters to AZ” including Canada (was it 388?), Indiana (234), Massachusetts (190), and PA (222). Last year AZ was the first 3-nation regional, as well. BTW, I thought the social was cool last year, and I really enjoyed the mini-golf as well.
We’ve been to Phoenix before, Los Angeles and I think Sacramento, not sure, but Phoenix has been our favorite, and that’s why we plan to go again this year. I hope Vegas is as good as Phoenix.
Arizona is the best planned and executed regional that I’ve been to. There is still a video feed for teams to tap into, the pit areas are well organized and nobody infringes on space/aisles, and there will never be a better team social than the one thrown at the Arizona Science Center. They really take care of us.
Thanks to Don Knight, Carol Popovich, and the entire planning committee for doing it right. Those of us who live here are very lucky, and those who don’t should give AZ a try next year.
This was an awesome regional. Action packed nonetheless… Great competition there.
Don, there’s nothing at all wrong with the Arizona regionals. Just not so many people see the talent there like we do. Maybe there will be more teams there next year.
Distance- Flying across the country is expensive (for Richmond) and very hard for a team. We also can get green lighted to go to Houston for Champs since it’s champs, but when we want to go to Arizona, it’s just a regional, just like the ones at VCU, Annapolis, NJ, Philly, and South Carolina, all less than a day drive from Richmond.
Psychological- The idea of shipping your kids off to the desert (I know, it’s not a desert in Phoenix, but still, it’s the VA mindset) is not a good one.
School System- Why go to Arizona when you can go to VCU, Annapolis, South Carolina, NJ, Philly, or Cleveland?
This was once again a great regional this year. Last year we attended the Arizona Regional and Nationals, and I personally thought Arizona was better. You get to know every single team here with the smaller numbers we have, and get tons of matches in still. We also tend to get a number of long distance/international teams, though I think we lost a few to Vegas this year. The excitement here is great also, we do a have a few teams who tend to do good year to year, but there are always major upsets, and I don’t recall the #1 alliance having ever won the Arizona Regional.
Don, thanks again for another great regional. For most of the students on our team who only get to attend the one local regional, I couldn’t think of a better one I would want them to be a part of.
Maybe there will be more teams there next year. 