We have momentum thanks to two legends from Coach Wooden's teams. Now we are trying out something new. It is clear by now that members of traditional media have no interest in covering the story on student seating boondoggle beyond cutting and pasting of talking points from Morgan Center and its designated cronies. Since no other traditional and new media outlets have not shown much interest in telling the story about why it is important to preserve a 40+ year old UCLA basketball tradition of court-side student seating at Pauley.
We have keep the drumbeat going here which thankfully is a significant platform. We have also supplemented our efforts by engaging our friends through our Twitter and Facebook channels. Thankfully members such as Mexi has taken the initiative to launch petition drive that also added another dimension to this effort. We are now pursuing another avenue to communicate with our students.
Starting today, at around 9 am PST, we are launching targeted advertisements on Facebook to reach out to folks in Westwood, Los Angeles. The following ad will be showing up on the profile pages of those Facebook users, who one way or another is connected to UCLA basketball:
The ad points directly to Facebook event asking students to vote to restore court-side seating. As you all know by now, we need students to vote NO to stop Morgan Center's plan to banish them behind the basket.
We are not doing this out of the blue. We actually ran a stealth campaign on Facebook late last week with some success that we believe played a role in the petition - to return students to sidelines - catching fire.
Late last week we ran the following the advertisement on Facebook, micro-targeting folks showing interest in UCLA athletics in Westwood:
That ad pointing Facebook users to the petition page generated thousands of views, which correlated with a noticeable uptick in those petition numbers. All of this gave more momentum to the overall effort, putting us in a position where we are today.
But keep in mind this tactic is not some kind of silver bullet. There is the matter of talking to all students friends of yours both on and offline. If you have not talked to them, please remain persistent. Help us get the message out to restore students' court-side seating at Pauley.
This is still an uphill climb. We have seen how the athletic department has no problem with using deceptive tactics and misleading information to get their spin out to justify boneheaded decisions. Unfortunately the infrastructure geared towards students on campus is also position to aid and to justify those bone headed decisions. So - we still need everyone to keep the pressure on. Let's get ours students to VOTE NO on the Pauley student seating question and STOP Morgan Center's effort to destroy a 40+ year old tradition around Coach Wooden's program.