Today I worked with the promotions/marketing department and spent most of my day with Faith Inman, the promotions director, and Emily Almond, the promotions coordinator.
The morning began with Faith showing me the game operations room, which consists of lots of very cool monitors that control the sound system and all eight of the video boards. Most of her work during game days consists of programming the agenda for pregame, in between innings, and post game into the video boards. The Durham Bulls got a new video board system this past off-season, so they are still learning new operations of the system each week. While Faith was working on programming the video boards for tonight’s game, the board in center-field went out, so we had to reboot the screen manually.
After spending lots of time with Faith, Emily showed me her main tasks, which consists of creating agendas for in between innings, writing the script for the PA announcer, and creating graphics for the video boards. Lots of work goes into each graphic seen on the board as well as the words that the PA announcer is saying.
During pregame set-up, the promotions department helped the sponsorship department set up tables throughout the ballpark as this was a big sponsored night. Unfortunately, there was lots and lots of rain, so a lot of the tables and tents that we set up, we had to take down during the hail storm. Though this may not sound like much fun, it showed me how much the entire Durham Bulls staff care about their clients as well as helping each other because people from every department were running out in the hail to help the sponsorship team keep each sponsor’s station dry.
Overall, I thought today was great despite not seeing much of the promotions team in action during game day due to the rain delay. I thought that the promotions department was super interesting and it showed today how great of an atmosphere all of the Durham Bulls employees have created. The Durham Bulls have an amazing organization with truly amazing people, and that really shined through today.
