Today was our last day of presentations and I think today's presenters ended on a good note. In one of the earlier presentation days, a classmate presented on the Minnesota Twins and said he believed they were a very effective organization and he did not really have any recommendations for them. It was very interesting to hear a completely different perspective by Andrew today in the first presentation about the Twins. Andrew raised good points about the Twins' comparatively low revenue, low team value (solely in terms of money), and their lack of a World Series appearance since 1991. When considering these factors the Twins don't appear to be as effective of an organization as originally presented. I think the move to Target Field will help the Twins greatly with the first two points Andrew mentioned.
Although I focused on Andrew's presentation, the rest of today's presentations were good too. I found it especially interesting that the leadership in the Chicago Blackhawks organization was able to raise season ticket sales from about 3,000 to 14,000 in a year! One thing I also learned today was that the YMCA was an international organization; I am not sure why, but I had just never thought of that as a possibility.
Rebecca Picha: December 2009 Archives
I really liked the variety in today's presentations. It was nice to see professional teams, local teams, national governing bodies, youth programs, a corporate fitness chain, and an association. The presentation quality was fairly good today; everyone seemed well-versed in their respective organization. One fact I found intriguing was from the presentation on the U.S. Olympic Committee; they have had six different CEOs in a very short period of time. For such a large and important organization, you would think their CEO would be around for a long time. It is surprising the turnover rate is so high and it seems to suggest there are deeper problems within the organization that need to be addressed. I was also fascinated that the First Tee organization Chris presented on relies on over 3,000 volunteers. I imagine that there must be very strong leaders in the organization to recruit and retain so many volunteers, year after year.
Today's presentations were overall pretty good. Some of the presentations ran long and the PowerPoint presentations were heavily loaded with text. Beyond that small complaint, I think they all presented good information about their respective organizations. The Steelers presentation brought up a very interesting point that they are choosing not to utilize social media. I have spent most of the semester in my public relations class discussing the role of social media in society. It is a very useful public relations tool for organizations to utilize, for free! I think Nathan was right in suggesting that as an opportunity for the Steelers to enhance their public image and widen their fan base even more. I think Alyssa and Emily also offered great recommendations for their organizations. The Lunkers have the opportunity to increase ticket sales by targeting tourists and Under Armour has the opportunity to increase their market share by increasing the amount of advertising for their women's clothing. These recommendations are both realistic and appropriate suggestions to improve the organizations.
