Marketing Lessons from a Cubs Game
My family recently went to a Chicago Cubs game.
Being a Chicago “North-Side family”, we have been huge fans for many, many years now.
In fact, November 2, 2016, when the Cubs ended their 108-year World Series drought by beating the Cleveland Indians was one of the most memorable, amazing and emotional evenings our family has ever spent together on the couch!
So, when the opportunity to purchase tickets to see our favorite team in-person after a 20-month hiatus, we jumped at the chance.
Because the #Cubs were still limiting capacity, we didn’t know what to expect in terms of Covid restrictions etc.
I gotta say, the Cubs organization hit it out of the park! (Dad joke pun intended)
Open seats were zip tied to allow for social distancing:
Signage was great to control the flow of directional foot traffic:
Mobile hand wash and sanitization stations were in abundance.
The Cubs even managed to squeeze sponsorship opportunities from these locations!
But I think, by far the coolest pandemic-induced change that I noticed that the ballpark was the system for ordering food and drink concessions.
The back of each seat was marked with the decal that had a QR code that walked you through each step for mobile ordering.
There was even an option for having someone bring your food and drink order directly to your seat! A true concierge experience :-)
The initial set up of an online account was a bit cumbersome (including manually entering your credit card information…an OCR, camera or Apple Pay link up would have been much easier).
In the end, the cashless transaction went smoothly enough that I would not be surprised if the Cubs keep some iteration of this ordering system in place when they return to full capacity.
My business takeaways?
Signage really plays an important role in a customer or user experience.
In fact, so much so, that my neighbor works for an architecture firm and his primary job responsibility is planning and executing the directional signage for any new project his firm designs and builds
Make the purchasing process for your customers and targets as frictionless as possible
Here at Printable Promotions, we have monthly full team meetings to discuss ways to eliminate all friction from our customer-facing processes
This includes adding approval buttons and pay buttons to customer sales orders and invoices
We have also developed a good, better, best system of product recommendations so that clients aren’t overwhelmed with product choices when selecting swag
We also have invested significantly in software that allows clients to comment directly in idea presentations and share their comments with colleagues for their input as well.
All in all, our family felt like the Cubs did an amazing job providing a safe and fun experience for our first return to Wrigley in…way too long!
Hey, Chicago, what do you say?!
By the way, the Cubs won 3-2 that day.
