My name is Charlotte Lynch and I am currently three months into my twelve-month Placement at Aberdeen Football Club. Studying BA (Hons) Management with Marketing at Robert Gordon University provided me with the opportunity for a Placement as my third year at university. This means I now work a Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm, job in the Marketing Department at AFC.

The team in the marketing office are very supportive as I start my Placement in this forever-evolving market. There are a number of people in the Marketing and Communications office, however I work closely with only four: the Marketing Manager, Senior Marketing Co-ordinator, Graphic Designer, and Insights Manager.

The office is never boring with every day being different – comings and goings, new projects and guests appearing, especially on matchdays, creating a fun working atmosphere.

In meetings, my opinions and ideas have always been listened to, especially regarding the Student Ambassador project, which was developed mid-August, encouraging more students to be aware of the club and attend games. Recently, I have been given the responsibility of this student ambassadors scheme which is very exciting as I am able to help shape the student experience at Pittodrie and as a student myself I am aware of student needs and expectations with a project like this.

The responsibility of the ticket bulletin has now been passed onto myself, which provides information on upcoming fixtures’ tickets and details regarding price, entry and/or travel. This is posted every Monday morning.

As the marketing of a football club is often based around the results of games, the marketing department regularly works at different speeds and intensities. For example after a win, the social media channels and emails will be full, on top of all the behind the scenes work including matchday activity preparation, hospitality, retail, website updates, email updates, sending text reminders and organising and planning new ideas to better the matchday experience for supporters.

Although not fully confident in conducting my own Facebook Adverts yet, I have been shown how to upload a successful advert on social media, being provided with the Ads Manager tool on Facebook. Adverts are fully dependent on the time of year and matchday results, especially regarding Club Shop products; the Back 2 School range as an example.

My biggest achievement in the first month involved the Aberdeen FC Community Trust’s Coast to Coast Walk. Within my first week of starting at AFC I was tasked with attending meetings myself with AFCCT to gather information, liaising with the volunteers to grasp their concept of the idea and understand the purpose of the event. From this, I summarised my knowledge into a website article and promoted this on AFC’s and AFCCT’s social media channels to help increase awareness and consequently funds.

The website article can be found here.

Another great project I was involved in was the marketing aspect of the Period Poverty Vinyl; the next big step in Scottish football, where Aberdeen FC are now providing all female toilets in Pittodrie Stadium with free sanitary products. In order to market this venture correctly, I met with the Supporter Liaison Officer to gain a better understanding of the scheme before drafting a website article and social media posts.

The website article can be found here.

Although still coming to terms with the terminology and language used, I am slowly adapting my social media and website phrasing to suit that of the club. When possible reflecting on work completed, looking at what models and theories were used, perhaps subconsciously, that I learnt at Robert Gordon University prior to my Placement.

My prioritisation skills have improved greatly since starting my Placement. This is due to there being many small projects on the go at one time. This has also developed my time management, as I try to avoid spending lengthy amounts of time on one task to ensure perfection, as often ideas change.

To this date I’ve now worked 4 matchdays: Hearts, HNK Rijeka, St Johnstone and Hibernian. Each time my role has developed, and I can now say I can confidently organise my tasks.

Such responsibilities include:

Pre match day

• Print staff lists, half-time winner’s sheets, Dons Day Out seat reservation signs
• Create Dons Day Out goodie bags and ensuring there are enough items for kids attending
• Ensure the Supporter Engagement Team have certificates for Dons Debut printed

Match day

• Ensuring mascots are where they’re meant to be prior to kick-off
• Label Dons Day Out seats in stadium
• Ensure complimentary tickets are at the correct doors and provide car parking passes to wardens on correct gates
• Look after Little Gus
• Being witness to the Half Time draw for the £1000 cheque and match ball
• Find half-time winners at full time
• Put mascots back

Each matchday my responsibilities have increased which is amazing as I know I am trusted to complete them and to a high standard. The best part of the pre match work is looking after Little Gus. Little Gus is a child who gets to experience the players’ lounge, the boot room and gets to play football with Angus on the pitch while the first team warm up. Seeing the look on Little Gus’ face when he bumped into Derek McInnes coming out the boot room at the St Johnstone game made my day.

Words cannot express my excitement and nerves for the coming matchdays (can’t believe I just admitted to being excited about working…), with my next working match being against Kilmarnock on the 2^nd November as we have launched some exciting half time content which I have been involved in planning. To see these ideas come to life was amazing as I can say I successfully contributed to the improvement and success in fan engagement on matchdays.

The Marketing Manager tasked me with a research project into memberships and season ticket prices of U12/youths of the 2019/20 season amongst clubs in the Scottish Premiership, English Premier League and the English Championship. (Thankfully he didn’t ask me to reference my sources like university do as I would have been there a while.) 26 pages later and this document has been passed onto the Ticket Office Manager, Memberships Executive and the Supporter Engagement Team Leader. This should allow these crucial decision-making people to collate their thoughts thoroughly for the coming season.

Weekly retail meetings now have progressive positive structure where we can point out ‘new in’ items, and ‘reduced’ items, allowing them to go out on social media faster, providing a better customer experience for supporters. Now taking the role as notetaker in these meetings, a weekly summary is published to all attendees to ensure we are all aware of upcoming plans.

In order to make the matchday experience more memorable for children, myself along with my colleagues are slowly working together on a new project (all to be revealed soon, sorry). I have been working closely with the Partnerships Manager to provide a better insight into the BOA partners and what routes this project could take depending on our partnerships and other businesses in Aberdeen. Although it is only in the early development stage, I can confidently say that it will be up and running by the time I finish my Placement. Watch this space!

Since starting at Pittodrie, the Dons Debut scheme has been launched, which is also improving the matchday experience for children. This scheme is aimed at children who have never experienced an Aberdeen game before at Pittodrie, where they can access the stadium before the rest of the supporters, meet Angus at pitch side and receive a certificate for their day. Now that this idea has been established, the responsibility has been passed on to the Ticket Office and the Supporter Engagement Team.

Recently, the Marketing Manager and Senior Marketing Co-ordinator have been out of office, where only 2/3 of us were in the office. This meant my workload and responsibilities increased which I have thoroughly enjoyed, along with increasing my knowledge of more departments.

I am looking forward to the next 3 months as new ideas are starting to take shape for future matches at Pittodrie which you will see shortly.

Until January…

Charlotte