Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Baseball Hall of Fame Needs Help

When did the Baseball Hall of Fame become a CD Music Club?

On Monday, I received Inning #1 of the Ken Burns baseball documentary along with a postage paid return envelope. Basically, I can:
- Keep the DVD and pay the Hall of Fame to get more, or
- I can use the envelope provided and send it back.

Who is doing the marketing over there? Why are they following college CD club marketing tactics which only captured the guy who lived down the dorm hall from you because he actually believed he would received 100 CDs for a penny! In my dorm, that was the same guy who thought the Dorm RA was cool.

This is the worst marketing I've seen by the Baseball Hall of Fame. They are sitting on the greatest collection of sports history and memorabilia and they best they can do is send me one part of a 15 year old DVD! Are you kidding me? Hasn't every baseball fan on the planet seen this at least 100 times on PBS or already bought the DVD collection? I admit, I own it and I love it. I watch it every spring before the season begins.

The Baseball Hall of Fame can gain membership in better ways than following the Columbia House or BMG marketing playbook. Here are some of my ideas.

  • How about a web cast with a Hall of Fame player. Have a host ask questions and then let participants over the internet ask questions via chat or audio.
  • This is the 20 year anniversary of the Giants/A's Earthquake World Series. Let me hear some audio commentary from Roger Craig, Dave Stewart, Jose Canseco and Will Clark. Bring them to Cooperstown to talk about the World Series and acts of bravery that followed the Bay Area 6.9 earthquake.
  • Let me participate in a baseball Hall of Fame blog.
  • Run a baseball Hall of Fame online trivia tournament. Set it up like Jeopardy has the prescreening and run it all year. The winner gets two tickets to the World Series or something.
  • YouTube some behind the scenes footage of the Hall of Fame. Imagine what is in the basement of that great place!?

I think every baseball fan would love to part of some of these activities.

Baseball Hall of Fame: You can do better than sending me part of a 15 year old documentary series and hoping I subscribe for more. I know someone at the Baseball Hall of Fame reads this blog - I love baseball, please take my suggestions and move the museum into the 21st century.

http://web.baseballhalloffame.org/index.jsp

2 comments:

deal said...

Good Points all. I have a HOF rant about an unrelated item scheduled for Thursday.

James said...

deal - it just amazes me how they can screw up marketing the HOF. I know it's a museum and budgets are limited, but still... CD Club marketing? Come on.