Selling the Sizzle : Saints See Ticket Sales Rise Quickly Due to Instant Credibility of Ditka

Greg Suit knows about tough sales. As the New Orleans Saints’ marketing director, Suit is in charge of selling season tickets for a team that hasn’t had a winning record in four years, never won a playoff game, and finished 3-13 last season.

And when you don’t win, you don’t sell many tickets. That’s where new coach “Iron” Mike Ditka comes in.

Since he was hired in January, more people are buying tickets and more businesses are using the team’s name and players in ads. The Hall of Fame tight end and Super Bowl winning coach has given the Saints instant credibility.

“We’ve had a tough couple of years,” Suit said. “Based on early returns, I think Mike is going to stop the bleeding.”

Next week the Saints will begin a three-week radio and TV ad campaign featuring their new slogan: “This year, we’re made of Iron.” A second media blitz is planned for mid-July when the Saints open training camp.

“He’s really the linchpin for getting people back in the Superdome,” Suit said of Ditka. “We want to get back to those days when we filled the Dome and everybody felt good about this team. What better way to convince people we’re on that track than selling Mike Ditka. He’s a proven winner and a national celebrity.”

As the Saints fell from 12-4 in 1992 to 8-8 in ‘93, 7-9 the next two seasons, and finally watched the bottom fall out last year, interest in the team plummeted.

Jim Mora, the coach who had taken the Saints to the playoffs four times, quit halfway into his 10th season as coach. Fans who wore paper bags over their heads during the 1-15 season in 1980, barely bothered this time. Apathy had replaced pain.

Home attendance slipped to 302,000, down from more than 540,000 in the early ‘90s. Attendance in the 72,000-seat Superdome averaged 37,750 a game.

Ditka is trying to put fans back in the seats and, of course, win some ballgames. He hopes the new ad campaign helps.

“We’re going to do a lot better and that will mean selling tickets is easy,” Ditka said. “This is not brain surgery. It’s simple--get the right people put them in the right place.

“It’s not going to be business as usual. The players aren’t going to be the same as usual,” he said. “If they don’t put out 100% on the field, if they don’t bust their butts, they’re not going to be here. It’s as simple as that. That’s what they’re selling, really.”

Dr. Edward Strong, associate professor of marketing at the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, said the Saints don’t have much choice in their attempt to sell tickets because of bad records and a lack of superstars.

“So what they’re doing is following the old idea of selling the sizzle,” he said.

An NBC commentator in the four years after leaving the Chicago Bears, Ditka is outspoken and decisive. He also has a reputation as a winner and a tough guy.

Surveys of Saints fans found that most felt that Ditka could make a difference. Asked to describe the coach, fans used words like “aggressive,” “strong” and “tough.”

“Those are all words that describe football,” Suit said. “It only makes sense to combine his image with the image we want to project for the team.”

Bob Thompson, whose company, Thompson Marketing of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., specializes in event marketing, agrees with the strategy but does not like the approach.

“It might be hard to convince someone the team is made of iron after last year,” he said. “They would have done better to focus on Ditka’s reputation as a disciplinarian.”

Nonetheless, season-ticket sales have already increased. The Saints took orders for more than 3,000 new season tickets within 10 days of Ditka’s hiring. They sold only 6,000 new season tickets during the entire off-season last year.

Sales representatives will be contacting former season-ticket holders this spring, asking them to give the Saints another chance, Suit said.

The increased interest also helps the city and region.

“The big difference is that out of town fans will travel to New Orleans for games,” said Tim Ryan, an economist at the University of New Orleans. “That means they stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, buy souvenirs. . . . It means millions of dollars to the city.”

Team owner Tom Benson said the slide in attendance last year made it the worst year ever for the team financially.

A full stadium would offer the additional benefit of allowing home games to be televised, which in turn would spark more opportunities for advertising and interest in season-ticket purchases. A Saints home game has not sold out in time to be televised since a Monday night game against the Dallas Cowboys on Dec. 19, 1995.

“We understand that the bottom line is winning,” Suit said. “We know that unless we do that, all of this will disappear.”