SCADjacket
Damn Good Rat
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2003
- Messages
- 1,478
Tech\'s identity crisis
I noticed the post “How can Tech capture the imaginations of Atlanta?” awhile back and by the time I had gotten around to responding the point had somehow been lost.
So, here are a few basic points that I’d like to make and see if how everyone else feels.
Overall it seems that Tech has a major problem with its marketing. I’m constantly amazed how many people in the State of Georgia I run into who think our mascot is a BEE, or colors are BLACK and YELLOW and we are called THE GEORGIA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY.
I’d expect this from someone from Seattle, but I get this in our own backyard.
There seems to be no uniformity to the marketing and no standards to what can carry the GT name. Honestly it’s difficult to buy a GT t-shirt that is gold and not yellow, blue and not black. What are we, the Pittsburgh Steelers? Only recently have I noticed a push towards the OLD GOLD that is Georgia Tech. And it’s really only around campus and with the items sold at the bookstore. Even ESPN can’t figure out what our colors are. How difficult is it for the Buzz logo to be gold, white and blue just like on the cap I were all the time. I tell someone our colors are gold, white and blue and the first question I get is, “why is the logo yellow and black?”
Like I said, there seems to have been a few changes lately, the new signs are starting to use the entire school name, and the old gold is coming back around. But we are far from being where we need to be.
We are at a HUGE disadvantage to UGA from the start. We are half the size in students and geography, and we have even fewer alumni. This means there are fewer friends, neighbors and family members that have a connection to our school through someone they know. And there are fewer “family traditions” of Tech fans. Besides that we have a smaller list of majors to study. I’ve often said that UGA fans are usually fans because they just don’t know any better, and it is surprisingly true. UGA is such marketing machine that these people, their friends and family grow up not knowing much about Tech.
Our inherit disadvantages should mean we have a much more aggressive marketing plan just to make up the difference, but for some reason we seem to sit by and do nothing.
It has been said many times that the best way to “capture the imaginations of Atlanta” or the rest of the country for that matter is to WIN and WIN OFTEN. I noticed a slight jump in people wearing Tech after the Final Four. So this idea is true, but is it so hard for everyone to wear the same color to a home game?
Can’t we fix this identity crisis?
I noticed the post “How can Tech capture the imaginations of Atlanta?” awhile back and by the time I had gotten around to responding the point had somehow been lost.
So, here are a few basic points that I’d like to make and see if how everyone else feels.
Overall it seems that Tech has a major problem with its marketing. I’m constantly amazed how many people in the State of Georgia I run into who think our mascot is a BEE, or colors are BLACK and YELLOW and we are called THE GEORGIA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY.
I’d expect this from someone from Seattle, but I get this in our own backyard.
There seems to be no uniformity to the marketing and no standards to what can carry the GT name. Honestly it’s difficult to buy a GT t-shirt that is gold and not yellow, blue and not black. What are we, the Pittsburgh Steelers? Only recently have I noticed a push towards the OLD GOLD that is Georgia Tech. And it’s really only around campus and with the items sold at the bookstore. Even ESPN can’t figure out what our colors are. How difficult is it for the Buzz logo to be gold, white and blue just like on the cap I were all the time. I tell someone our colors are gold, white and blue and the first question I get is, “why is the logo yellow and black?”
Like I said, there seems to have been a few changes lately, the new signs are starting to use the entire school name, and the old gold is coming back around. But we are far from being where we need to be.
We are at a HUGE disadvantage to UGA from the start. We are half the size in students and geography, and we have even fewer alumni. This means there are fewer friends, neighbors and family members that have a connection to our school through someone they know. And there are fewer “family traditions” of Tech fans. Besides that we have a smaller list of majors to study. I’ve often said that UGA fans are usually fans because they just don’t know any better, and it is surprisingly true. UGA is such marketing machine that these people, their friends and family grow up not knowing much about Tech.
Our inherit disadvantages should mean we have a much more aggressive marketing plan just to make up the difference, but for some reason we seem to sit by and do nothing.
It has been said many times that the best way to “capture the imaginations of Atlanta” or the rest of the country for that matter is to WIN and WIN OFTEN. I noticed a slight jump in people wearing Tech after the Final Four. So this idea is true, but is it so hard for everyone to wear the same color to a home game?
Can’t we fix this identity crisis?