An Offer of Help to the Morgan Center

- Bumped. BN Eds.

[Happy New Year, everyone]

The Morgan Center has taken a lot of heat for its poor marketing. Fan enthusiasm is low; attendance is poor; prospects for better futures are cloudy. Well, I decided that I would be part of the solution, rather than being just one more disgruntled, disenfranchised, squeaky-wheel alumnus.

We look around and see other Division-I programs trumpeting their programs; we see fanbases all fired up; we see ticket sales rising. Why not at UCLA? Well, it is obvious that the Morgan Center, what with conducting coaching changes, managing PR crises, and planning wine-tours, simply has not had time to devote to marketing UCLA's revenue sports.

This is where I come in. I put together a kind of starter marketing campaign that I will make available to the Morgan Center, absolutely free of charge. I'm doing it simply out of love for my alma mater, and, as I said, to be part of the solution.

Now, I'm not a marketing person by profession or by training. I have no special artistic or advertising skills. Fortunately, though, excellence is not required of marketing at UCLA; nor is it required of several other disciplines. As Dan Guerrero, himself, has professed and Bellerophon has cited, "pretty good" is plenty good enough. So, my amateurish efforts were designed to meet this goal.

Moreover, given that the MC has held the marketing of its product with such low valuation, I wanted to capture their mindset in my suggested campaign. I figured that, if I rode in and demanded a contemporary, aggressive campaign similar to those we see for the really successful Division-I programs, the MC would not be able to handle such a radical change in gears.

So, my suggested campaign is reality based, designed to fit in with the MC's ongoing ethos. Without further ado, here are a set of potential marketing posters:

Epilogue (h/t to gbruin):

The preceding ad campaign, amateurish as it is, was actually "the winner" over another. Initially, I was going to go with a campaign that would have a fixed slogan, superimposed over various photographs involving UCLA's revenue sports. The slogan was "Less Is Mora." The slogan would be placed over photos of mostly empty Rose Bowls, Sports Arenas, etc., illustrating the sorry decline of UCLA's major sports.

However, in a rare example of self-containment and, possibly, maturity, I realized that Jim Mora is not the problem. Catchy as the slogan may be, it is not fair to credit Jim Mora with the current state of UCLA's revenue sports. No, credit where credit is due. The Morgan Center deserves all the credit.