The Western Bulldogs Give Fans a Vote of Confidence

The Western Bulldogs of the Australian Football League (AFL) recently turned to their online fanbase to decide which jersey (referred to as a guernsey) design their team will wear during the 2011-12 season. The Bulldogs created a fan-centric promotion on their team website that provided fans with an opportunity to vote for their favorite style jersey based on four options available.

The promotion also served as a terrific way for the team to collect consumer data. Nearly 3,000 fans submitted online entry forms with their votes, providing the team with an instant database to reach out to to drive merchandise sales in the future. The team created the simple survey using Survey Monkey and posted the promotion over a 2-3 week time period.

Check out the simple, yet effective merchandise promotion below and consider new ways that you can truly put fans in charge!

A special thanks to Nick Truelson for his insights and contributions to this column!

Cercle Bruges Turns to Student Designers for Jersey Style

As featured on Wouter de Jonckheere's blog, Belgian soccer club Cercle Bruges is currently running a tremendous promotion that enables children from 216 participating schools to create and submit a jersey design for the team.

Cercle Bruges is offering to wear the winning jersey for the 2011 and 2012 seasons, which will draw plenty of interest and attention to the winning design. The only paramaters given to the student participants was that the submitted jersey designs must be green and black (representing the team's colors) and feature the names and team logo in a very visible fashion.

Cercle Bruges executed a similar promotional initiative in 2007 that proved to be very popular amongst the team's young fanbase and the local community. On November 15th, the team is expected to have a panel of judges, representing fashion and design, the team's outfitter, and some members of the organization choose the winning entry.