Selling the Stingers Story

Concordia Athletics to Launch Collaboration with Students

SportsMichelle Pucci — Published February 20, 2015 | Updated February 20, 2015 at 5:03am

In order to build a strong reputation and student interest, a number of things are essential, including improving the mindsets of players.

“Attitude starts with the perceived support that the teams have,” the former Habs director of operations said. “When those expectations aren’t met, then the perception becomes that they’re not necessarily supported and frustration builds.”

This sort of mood takes a hit on the less public reputation because members are criticizing their teams.

“You can’t change that overnight,” said Boivin.

On the surface, the Stingers need help marketing their brand and promoting a 40-year history.

Boivin says the department has been working with marketing agency Cossette for half a year to create a “Stingers identity” and develop a strategy to engage others.

This essentially means getting more seats filled at games, building a reputation for Concordia’s sports teams and attracting financial support.

“We could do a hell of a better job talking about not just sporting successes, but the lifestyle stories behind that,” he said about the direction of the project.

Specifically, telling stories about the challenges of being a student athlete.

Boivin says he’s on the verge of announcing a fairly big collaboration project with the student body: a for-credit project involving students interested in film production, photography, creative design and music, which will be launched in the next weeks to produce these lifestyle stories through a web series. The series will be the backbone to the Stingers’ “creative visual re-branding.”

“There’s a need for a shift in the image to appeal to today’s demographic, and we need to be more attractive,” Boivin said. “You can’t just put a new logo on a t-shirt and ask if [students] like it.”

A couple of dozen students will be involved in the creation of either a seminar class or internship, and Boivin is hoping to generate community support. He says he already has the Fine Arts department on board.

Part of enticing the Concordia community means also getting students in residence to come out to homecoming games during Frosh and Orientation Week. The idea is to figure out a way to sustain the culture around university sports that often exists in the United States in the form of rowdy games.

Boivin says the quality of the facilities and the level of competition is high enough to keep fans coming back, if they can secure that audience base.