6.10am Arnos Grove flat. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds ‘Easy Money’

I picked up a few boxes of fruit mince pies from my local Tescos for all the departments who have helped me out this week by giving me work to do and showing me a lot of respect by treating me as part of the team. Thought Vegemite wouldn’t have gone down quite as well!

I started the day by picking up where I left off yesterday in that I was researching all of the Premier League clubs membership and loyalty schemes to see what interesting merchandise items, loyalty schemes and incentives each of the teams had. The research I did into fan engagement is invaluable stuff and really needs to be actioned by some A-League clubs back home. I absolutely love checking out the various membership packs of sports teams as some can be jam packed with amazing items and creative ideas whereas like I found today some are just plain bland and boring with no real idea of their demographic or with cheap generic items. For instance, a pen for a 5 year olds pack…. Be a bit more creative. How about a giant club logo branded pencil or a stylus for a tablet device? From teaching kids I know that the majority don’t even write, so a pen is kind of redundant.

I researched the club membership packs and in my opinion the best value for money was either Crystal Palace or Liverpool who both really clearly identified  their membership markets and added heaps of merchandise.

Feeling a bit flat today, possibly as a result of boxing last night however it has been a very busy week at QPR.

Fired off a few emails and set up meetings with support liaison and fan engagement officers with Southampton, Everton, West Ham and Vero Communications, the latter of which helped strategically plan major events like the FIFA World Cup.

I’ve had such a great first week, everyone has seen how passionate, enthusiastic and self motivated I am so its been great to get stuck into some work and really open my ears and eyes to everything that goes on at a major football club.

I got a copy of the match day program at 3pm and don’t these just look amazing. The English football clubs have really got these down to a fine art. 80+ pages of beautiful writing and images really drives home the value and experience in coming to the football here and picking up a match day program.

I had a bit of time to check out what FA Cup games I’m going to head to over the weekend of the 4/5 of January and it looks like I’ll head to Charlton vs Oxford on the Saturday and Nottingham vs West Ham on the Sunday. Should make for another big weekend of football trekking over England.

Final preparations were organized with the Sky broadcast trucks being organised around cars that had parked in their way outside the stadium. The big match which is 1 vs 3 or QPR vs Leicester is broadcast live across the country on Sky Sports tomorrow and as its a huge match everyone in the office is buzzing.

The more I think about what I’ve done in the past, the skills and life experience I have from traveling and working abroad and having worked as a teacher and in event management in the music industry as well as the fact that I have easily slotted in at a major sports club really drives home to me that I don’t need to go back to Uni to study these fields. I know I’m more than capable of showcasing my skills at a major club so my goals really need to be to start applying for jobs now.

One thing I have been doing has been to use the creative fan engagement ideas I have been collating on my Pinterest page to contact Australian clubs from my QPR email and give them a pat on the back for their creative CRM and fan engagement ideas while at the same time getting my name and brand into their heads.

Anyway absolutely stuffed so going for a curry and beers with my flatmates to look back on the week.