On Dec. 29, the Daily Bruin broke news online that Rick Neuheisel would be named the new coach of UCLA football. Just in case you didn’t catch that scoop however, the Athletic Department fired off a broadcast telephone message to members of the UCLA community ““ myself included.
Now, I’ve never met Neuheisel. But from the 10 seconds I gave him on my cell phone during the winter holiday break and from his in-game interview during the Rose Bowl, he sounds like a pretty nice guy who appears genuinely stoked to be coaching football next year. But all I could think was: “Why is he calling me?”
According to Scott Mitchell, assistant athletic director, the message was sent by UCLA Athletics to all single game and season ticket holders, Bruin Den members, donors and all alumni living in Southern California. It was the first mass telephone message to be sent from the Athletic Department in a long time, possibly ever.
The message may have resonated positively with less-connected alumni, and it may end up generating a lot of season ticket sales, but automated telemarketing is a poor choice of medium through which to sell football tickets to currently enrolled students. The confusing timing of the message ““ coming just after the newly debuted BruinAlert system ““ is just plain bad.
Essentially, Neuheisel introduces himself and states how excited he is to be coaching, encouraging Bruins to come to games next season. About halfway through the message, Chris Roberts, “voice of the UCLA Bruins,” chimes in with the hard sell, asking listeners to put down $100 for 2008 season tickets.
If your answering machine intervened, the recording lasts a minute and 44 seconds. If you picked up and listened to the whole message, a series of prompts follow that route you to Ticketmaster or allow you to not receive future phone recordings. That option occurs at the 1:46 mark, thus clocking total time at 1:53.
Mitchell reports that the “overall response to the message has been positive … (with) some people wanting to be taken off the (call) list.” The informal responses I’ve gathered from students range from “What message?” to apathetic to outraged. Graduate student Amy Liu is of the latter opinion.
“I find it very inappropriate that the university is placing telemarketing calls to its students via a broadcast message system,” said Liu, who was most disturbed by not knowing why she received the message. “The only place I have ever registered my cell phone is with the BruinAlert system, so I have no idea how my cell phone number got on some list. I’ve never been to a single sporting event at UCLA, nor have I ever purchased any athletic tickets.”
On Nov. 6, a campus-wide e-mail was sent from the chancellor’s office encouraging students to register their cell phone number on the new BruinAlert system, supposedly reserved for emergencies, as one of many post-Virginia Tech safety measures being instituted on campuses nationwide.
“Solicitations to spend money on university athletics … does not qualify as an emergency,” said Liu. “Why doesn’t the university encourage (people) to give $100 to a financial aid fund to help low-income students or donate it to the university outreach department for underrepresented students?”
Liu brings up an interesting point, which is why, out of all the causes and events in the history of UCLA, athletics would take such an unprecedented and intrusive marketing approach for the hiring of a football coach. It seems arrogant. The most significant hire for any university is its president, or in our case, chancellor, and yet Gene Block didn’t eat up my minutes to announce his arrival.
Would the engineering department call if they hired a Nobel Prize-winning faculty member? Probably not. Automated phone messages are annoying, and in my book, this puts Neuheisel in a league with dental appointment reminders and the Blockbuster Video robot.
President Clinton came to campus last quarter and I only learned about it through Facebook. Maybe Neuheisel should start up a Facebook page. Heck, I’d friend him. E-mail seems good enough for UCLA’s Dance Marathon to fight pediatric AIDS, and I’d say that’s pretty notification-worthy.
Telemarketing may arouse a booster or two, but if Rick Neuheisel and Chris Roberts danced and did color commentary respectively for 26 hours for AIDS research, I’d buy season tickets instantly.
Don’t call; e-mail Ross at raikins@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.