A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

David Gallop ruined football.

You really want to go in depth as to why this marketing gimmick is frustrating?

You know why it's frustrating? It's easy. It's lazy. It's exactly like the FFA. This year we didn't even get a new marketing campaign after their whole spiel about it being a big focus. Instead we got the same recycled material from last year, a new logo ( great use of resources) and a season launch in Port Melbourne. 

What happened to this? 

“We’ll be optimising our spend throughout the year on this campaign rather than spending an unbalanced amount of our resources on some big, flashy thing at the start of the year.

“That would look good for a couple of days but we want to build a sustained campaign that starts to bring people to the game. We want to bring people to watch games, and use our resources to do that for 27 rounds.”

That's from the head of the A-League. 

What have we had since then? AFAIK nothing until this Star Wars round, and then we'll probably get a recycled icy pole promotion when it heats up in summer. 

This. Just let it happen, once and see what happens.

Goalkeepers in Wookie suits would be awesome in fairness

Rugby League does this many times a year. As long as we don't have jerseys with Star Wars all over them I have no problem with it . Its called advertising ..... which most on here have complained about a distinct lack of....If they suddenly brought Lionel Messi and Ronaldo to our league those same people would find a negative in it . I am sure the kids will love it . They do at the Rugby League.

What jlm8695 said

FFA Marketing need to be friggin normalised as well.

Cant stand star wars and can totally agree with the sentiment that it just looks like another easy thing for the ffa but if i am in the stands and look at the game and see nothing with star wars on it, than im ok with it. As long as it affects nothing on the field go for it. Do not do what the nrl do.

Otherwise go ahead and do it. It won't work. 

So this marketing scheme sees "character appearances, big screen content, themed activities and giveaways at Round 10 A-League matches."

Exactly what is tacky about that??

I don't believe they are even changing their playing strips for the round (there will be Stars Wars based merchandise for clubs but nothing about the playing strip is mentioned).

So they should be looking at difficult and risky marketing strategies??

Why all the salt over something positive?.

No, they should look at developing long term campaigns that engage anyof the multitude of markets ignored in Australia. 

Not quick fix band aid campaigns like the past 10 years.

I wish they had a disney round, then we coukd trully call it the micky mouse league lol

Looking forward to the walkout Music

Y'know,  just to see the Kiddies happy

Just makes you appreciate how awesome the first campaign was back in season 1

And how well is Rugby League going with attendances? 

Tbh normally I wouldn't be too bothered by this stuff, however considering the timing and the fact that the game has so many important issues to resolve, throwing this out there as some genius marketing idea is just embarrassing. Perhaps if it were included at a time when everything was rosy ie at the start of 2015, then it wouldn't be such a bad thing, but this gimmick will have surely cost the ffa money and imo it could have waited or been better spent. Perhaps spending money on building up the personalities "stars" of our game would actually help kids feel connected with clubs. 

Ad has dropped on Youtube



If they muted Speedy and just had the narration and crowd noise, it'd be an alright ad ffs

:laugh::laugh:

I'm actually enjoying it despite the backlash towards micro transactions.

Anyone know what the payment arrangement is.

FFA paying Disney hoping to get a few more through the gate ?

Or Disney paying FFA to get a few more down the aisle ? 

lol 

Surely not the latter - Star Wars is enough of a juggernaught on its own to not need to rely on the Eff Eff Ayyyy to market the film.

Totally disagree. The A League would be getting money for this, the flow effect of getting kids to the movies (which cost more than attending the A-League), buying their lego, their action figures, computer games etc. would outweigh any money Disney poured into the A League.

I cant wait now till "Wolf Creek 2" round next Feb.

Easy cash from Disney - never look a gifthorse in the mouth.  Harmless.  Bigger things to worry about.  Take the money and run.

Fucking desperately lazy shit from FFA.

-PB

This is almost as bad as when AFL/NRL teams wear camoflauge for anzac/war propoganda round

Funny as it would be I'm pretty sure Besart Berisha wont be playing in a Princess Leia outfit. Nor was there any mention of the players changing kits.

Try to also remember that not all of us here started as serious, purist football supporters. If a few kids go to the game because of this and end up life-long fans its not a bad thing.

And on the flip-side - If a few football 'purists' want to turn their back on it because of a light-hearted marketing tie-in. It's not a bad thing. They clearly don't care that much.

While I can sort of agree to some extent, the timing looks horrible and like they have totally run out of ideas. Also dedicating the entire round to it is rather odd

Do it every week then.

I think that's what has so many people frustrated.

I normally wouldn't even blink at this as it's pretty harmless (maybe one game on the release date if it coincided would be less weird) but the fact they built this up as an exciting announcement like "something big is coming to the league" (Like Perth's Italian marquee announcement) days out from FIFA taking over just sends out a message of being out of touch with reality and public sentiment.

It's just setting themselves up to be ridiculed publicly. I get that it had to be this week coz of the film's release but to be honest more bad publicity will come from this than whatever good the $$ in could achieve.