SHANE HARMON INTERVIEW
Australia and New Zealand as you know Christine culturally are relatively similar countries. The move over initially for Rugby World Cup was smooth. It was an opportunity to work and live in another country while my family was young.
We took advantage of that and traveled the entire country during our vacations. New Zealand is an amazing place. We also knew that it was for a four-year project and that it would come to an end and we'd be going back to Sydney.
But the Rugby World Cup experience in 2011 was a career highlight. The Rugby World Cup itself had grown up significantly since 2003. My role was much broader also as included not just marketing but also ticket operations, media and communications, ceremony and VIP program. I was part of a four-person senior management team for the local organizing committee.
Not really. I was fortunate then to transition into the General Manager Marketing role for Australian Rugby immediately after that tournament. There was quite an important marketing legacy programme immediately after hosting such a big event.
We gained an enormous number of new rugby fans as a result of the Rugby World Cup, and the major focus from a marketing perspective was engaging these new fans. There was a strong focus on customer relationship management and we became the first team to establish a CRM that captured all customers that that code dealt with, from participants and those that play, coach or volunteer in the game, to members and ticket purchasers.
It's really interesting that you mentioned that because I was going to ask you, what are some of the types of the marketing transitions did you see at the ARU. How much change did you see from the time you started that and started building that CRM, to when you left there?
We now had a vast database of interested and engaged fans. The biggest initial change was a shift from relying on large scale marketing campaigns to sell tickets for rugby matches to selling the vast majority of our tickets direct to our customers.
Wow. That was probably all-consuming for you, did you have a chance to take a vacation or step away for a bit?
You moved from Australia, then New Zealand, and Australia, kind of going back and forth. How were those transitions for you and your family?
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