In the
Tir Asleen model, I propose that there are four barriers to be overcome to attract
new fighters and create long-term realm members: trying Belegarth for the first
time, coming back to a second practice, becoming a regular attender, and
attending a national event. In this post
I will discuss the first barrier, which is basically an advertising and sales
challenge. First you need to make people
aware of generally what Belegarth is, and then you have to convince them to
give it a try.
There
are many, many ways to approach advertising, but by far the most effective is
just to fight in a location where people can watch. Holding your regular practice in a place that
has good foot traffic by your target demographic means you can recruit every
week during your regular practice for little additional effort. Your realm is constantly undergoing attrition
in members and you can’t count on a handful of special recruiting events to
make up for what you are constantly losing to school, work, and other
pursuits. Fighting in a public place with
good foot traffic is absolutely essential to the Tir Asleen model of
recruiting. Tir Asleen fights twice a
week on the Iowa State University campus.
Our week night practice is our more heavily attended practice, but we
also get a good showing on the weekend during the school year. Our week night practice spot is on the lawn
right in front of the campus library. It
is one of the better lit public spaces on campus and has a steady stream of
undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, faculty, and even some high school
students constantly passing by, seeing us and often stopping to watch or try it
out. Our weekend practice is on campus
in a location with less foot traffic, but is more scenic and with more room to
fight, representing a compromise between the needs of our current fighters and
potentially attracting future fighters.
At either practice location, we are constantly in ‘recruitment mode’ and
will typically get between four and twenty walk-ups on a week night, depending
on the time of year.
In addition to locating our
practices in a public space with good foot traffic, we also have a professional
looking sign sitting out front that identifies who we are, what we are doing,
and communicates that new members are welcome.
The sign we use whenever we fight outside is a Plasticade A-frame sign
with 2’x3’ laminated full color posters on each side. This sign looks very clean and professional
and represents a significant step up from our old sign, which was a homemade
A-frame sign with spray paint lettering that was not terribly professional
looking. The difference in people’s
reactions to the two signs is noticeable.
People will stop to read the nicely printed sign and watch what we are
doing, where the amateur looking sign only warranted a quick glance as people
walked by. It is not enough just to have
‘a sign.’ The sign has to communicate
that you an organized group and that new members are welcome to participate.
Double-sided A Frame sign with printed posters.
In addition to having a
professional looking sign, the rest of your practice should look presentable as
well. Remember, even at a regular weekly
practice you are Belegarth to people that know nothing about the game, but who
may become members in the future. If all
of your members are wearing shoddy-looking garb and swearing loudly at each
other, it will turn off many potential recruits. You should run your practices like you are on
display to the public, because you are.
I believe that an effort should be made to have your veterans in garb
every week. Tir Asleen does not require garb at most practices, but if a
veteran consistently shows up without it, one of the realm leaders will
politely remind them that it is an expectation that most veterans be in garb
most weeks. That said, I also feel that
it is beneficial if passerbys can see that not everyone is in garb. Maintaining a spectrum of garb from no-garb
new fighters to fancy-garb veterans will help make practices feel more
accessible to walk-ups because they won’t be the only person without garb.
Fighting in a high-visibility
location and looking like an organized group won’t do you any good if you don’t
capitalize on the attention you receive.
Tir Asleen has a small number of veteran fighters who are responsible
for approaching interested passerbys. It
is very important to note that not everyone is well suited to this task. Realm leadership should approach and ask a
few friendly, outgoing realm members with nice garb to undertake this
responsibility. During the height of the recruiting season we will have a
designated person who is doing nothing other than approaching people,
explaining rules, and answering questions.
Later in the season one of the heralds will pull double duty running the
field and watching the sidelines or one of the fighters will come off the field
to approach someone who looks interested.
It is worth saying that often times having a female realm member
responsible for approaching people may be more effective at getting people to
try fighting than her male counterparts.
As it turns out, many guys are as interested or more in girls as they are
in sword fighting, and if you can demonstrate that you have both, you will be
that much more likely to convince them to at least give it a try.
So how do you know if a passerby
may be interested in fighting? Most
people will walk past without paying too much attention- these people are
probably not worth approaching unless you are a very good recruiter. A large number of people will watch what you
are doing while they walk by. Pay
attention to these people and note if they are smiling and laughing or slowing
down. If you have a recruiter nearby, these
people are worth asking, “Would you like to try it out?” Sometimes they will stop to have a
conversation with you or maybe even try it out, and sometimes they will
politely say “No” and keep going. Don’t
press the issue, they are probably not long-term recruit material and you
should focus your energy on more promising recruits. Some people will stop to watch or maybe take
pictures or video with their phone. You
should always approach someone who stops, even if they don’t fit your image of
who might be interested in trying Belegarth.
You never know who might be a closet nerd (or have a friend who will
come out) and you should have a pretty good success rate with anyone who shows
that much initial interest.
So what do you say to someone who
is interested in fighting? It is
important not to overwhelm people with rules or stories. Get them the rules quickly and get them
fighting. All the other stuff can come
later. The spiel I give is very fast and
goes something like this-
“Have you ever done anything like this before?
[No]. Okay, it is pretty much what it
looks like- if you get hit in the arm, you lose the arm and put it behind your
back. If you get hit in the leg, you
lose it and must kneel on it. Keep the
dead leg on the ground and leave the other up so your opponent knows which is
which. If you lose two limbs, you are
dead- you bleed to death. Do not hit in
the head or neck. [Optional brief explanation
of missile weapons if they are in use].
One hit to the torso kills. Torso
includes your shoulders down to and including your butt and groin. [Optional explanation of reds if in use]. Most of our loaner swords don’t have stabbing
tips on them, so please don’t poke people with them. You can use any equipment you like from this
area, but generally I recommend a shield and a one-handed weapon for new
fighters. When you have selected what
you want to fight with, go talk to the guy in yellow and he will put you on a
team.”
There are of course some
situational variations, but typically I aim to get someone the rules and some
weapons and get them fighting in 2-4 minutes.
Tir Asleen is totally geared toward
recruiting during the first six weeks of the fall semester, and in addition to
the recruiting we do at regular practices, we also run a number of special
recruiting events during the week before the fall semester starts. At Iowa State University the students all move
in to the dorms throughout the week before classes start. These students are typically underclassmen
who don’t know anyone, aren’t involved in any clubs, and don’t have anything to
do between move-in and the first day of classes- the perfect recruits! To target these golden recruits, we set up a
small fighting field directly outside the dorms in the afternoon/early evening
of move-in days. Our fighting demos are
visible from the windows of the dorms, the sidewalks between running between
them, and from the dining center. For
these special recruiting days, we put out all of our signage, wear our best
looking garb, and make sure there is always some fighting happening for people
to watch. During slow periods, we often king-of-the
hill one-on-one battles that provide fast, hard fighting for people to watch,
but also allows everyone not on the hill to have breaks between fights. Also during these special recruiting events,
the realm members responsible for approaching passerbys are somewhat more
outgoing at approaching people, often pitching to large groups that have shown
no particular interest. The goal is to
get as many people as possible to fight in at least one battle so that even if
they don’t become regular members, they are at least familiar with us and may
talk to their friends about their experience or give it a try later in the semester
if they see us again.
For the past two years, Tir Asleen
has also been invited to participate in the official University welcome
activities for incoming freshman, dubbed “Destination Iowa State.” Participating in these activities has been an
absolute gold mine for us, and a large number of our new recruits that make it
to Oktoberfest have come out of them. We
participate in two DIS activities. The
first is an outdoor bazaar of university clubs and community organizations
called “Center of exCYtment.” There are
club demonstrations, bouncy castles, and swag to be collected, but our fighting
field definitely draws the biggest crowd.
This is a high-throughput, go-go-go kind of recruiting event, but by the
end of the night we have had several hundred new people fight in at least one
battle. Because of the sheer scale of
this event, we treat it as a high priority for veteran members to be present,
in garb, and with gear that new people can use and always make sure the realm
loaner arsenal is full and in good repair.
We have two or three members work the crowd and funnel interested people
to one or two different members who explain a very basic rule set (blue damage
only) and get them some equipment. They
then go to a field herald who assigns them a team. We run constant two-team battles for the
entire event (2-3 hours). During the
rules explanation, people are encouraged to take one of our flyers that has our
contact info and practice times on them and sign up for our email list. We hand out something like 100 flyers and get
30-40 email addresses from this event.
The second DIS event we participate
in is called “Late Night at the Memorial Union.” It is an evening hang-out type event for new students
to come check out more university clubs and play games and generally stay out
of trouble before classes start. We run
this event similar to the Center of exCYtment event, but at a smaller
scale. We have usually have fewer new
people fighting, so we have a little more time to explain some more of the rules
and maybe run a couple of different kinds of games. A large number of people that come to this
event tried fighting the night before at the Center of exCYtment event and want
to try fighting again and maybe get their friends to try it, too. That allows us to use this event to “set the
hook” and get people that are already interested to really commit to coming out
again in the future. We get a chance to
talk them up a little more and hint at different kinds of games, events, and
all the rest of the glory of Belegarth.
In addition to the dorm recruitment
fighting and the welcome student events, we also get asked to participate in other
clubs’ and organizations’ events throughout the year. These are typically less lucrative for us in
terms of attracting new recruits, but they are very useful for the purpose of
familiarizing a diverse body of students with who we are and what we do, and
help to establish us as a campus institution.
Many of these events are sponsored by the residence halls or Greek
houses that want to have some sort of battle between groups and would like to
use our equipment to do that. We are
happy to help, but we do insist that we use Belegarth rules (sometimes with
negotiated changes) and that our members run the field to create a smooth, safe
fighting experience. We often are repaid
for our efforts in pizza and always generate good will with other clubs and
organizations and sometimes with faculty and staff as well.
If you are still with me, you must
be interested in learning more about the Tir Asleen model of recruiting and
realm building! In this post I discussed
some of our strategies for overcoming the first barrier in recruiting, getting
people to try Belegarth for the first time.
Upcoming posts will feature in-depth breakdowns of the strategies we use
to overcome the second, third, and fourth barriers to gaining and keeping new members.
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