Students profit from new Lancer marketing

The University of Windsor Lancers are looking to the student body to fill newly created intern positions which are designed to give the Lancers a promotional shot in the arm for each game.

The Lancers are looking to hire an intern for each of their varsity teams in the future, but for now are piloting their efforts towards just their major Winter Semester sports, in basketball, volleyball, hockey and track and field.

Marketing Manager for the Department of Athletics and Recreational Services, Eric Vandenbroucke, said “Our goal is to have these students in place who will be looking directly after one team or sport, for them to bring ideas for promotional plans to us on ways to market these teams.”

Windsor is willing to dish out up to $1,000 per intern, depending on the team they’re working with. Vandenbroucke said, “I want the best and most highly motivated students who want to make a difference in marketing and promotions.”

The program itself is very new. “We’re looking, right now, to hire for basketball, volleyball, hockey and track and field for the winter. We’re going to pilot it right now and if we need to expand it and change it up, we will accordingly. I want to get four or five real committed people and develop a strategy,” said Vandenbroucke. “We’ll pilot this in this semester and have a real solid plan for next fall for all our teams,” he continued.

He envisions these kinds of internships as a great addition to an undergrad’s resume. “It would be great work experience, if you have any interest in sports marketing or promotion or advertising side of things, this is great hands-on experience you may not get with another student job.”

The internships for the winter semester will run for the duration of the length of the season of the particular sports team that the intern will be working with. The football season, for example, would begin in September and last eight weeks through the regular season, and possibly into the playoffs for a few more weeks.

Vandenbroucke said, “We’re looking to hire enthusiastic, motivated students to help us market and promote our various varsity teams… I’m not limiting this to business students, or HK students, if there’s someone on campus that has a love of sports and an interest in the marketing fields, we hope they’ll apply.”

“We have 19 varsity teams, it’s difficult to focus … on one particular team,” said Vandenbroucke. “This was a way to give each of our teams somebody dedicated to promote their teams in the community and also on campus. I think there’s a lot of growth here in terms of generating more excitement,” he said. While the position wouldn’t warrant another full-time employee around the office, the department felt that it could better utilize the 15,000 students around the university.

“Over the last number of years, there’s been an increase in the interest of the community, we’ve seen that in or crowds at football and basketball, and it flags the CIS in general,” he said. “I’d say there’s quite a bit left in terms in interest in the student body in varsity sports in Canadian athletics.”

One of the challenges the interns will face will be operating with a very small budget. “It will be very grassroots. A lot of the stuff we do is done through sponsorships and partnerships and stuff like that. The budget money we do have we use for our programming,” said Vandenbroucke. “The budget money we do spend is through bartering and partnerships or sponsorships. The interns will have to be creative and have ideas on how to find ways to promote our teams in a very grassroots ways.”

The internships are expected to fluctuate between 10 and 15 hours of work per week.

Vandenbroucke said, “Funding for stuff like this comes right out of the sponsorship money we raise, it comes right from the marketing area.”

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