Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[TDR V2]

By Heck I'm staying out of this topic

[blandy]

Stay on topic please. If you want to talk about badge changes, rebranding, and all the rest, do it in those threads. It’s fine to talk about Heck and what he’s done or said, but once it goes off into opinions on Badges, Stadium, parking, protests, Hospitality etc. not in here please.

[sidcow]

14 hours ago, CVByrne said:

I think Mr Heck is doing an excellent job. I'd go as far as saying an outstanding job. 

Yeah. We know. 

[punkiller1981]

This bloke needs to stump up the money for a decent online ticketing process because what we have isn’t fit for current demand 

[MrBlack]

He's been very quiet on his twitter the last week and a bit. He's very vocal about the good things,  like the kit launch, the shop opening, and the champions league draw. Then disappears when anything bad is happening.

Uses his personal page to shout about the good things, let's the club take the rap for the bad. Is that's fairly normal for an exec?  Can't say it endears me to him in any way. 

[Robbie09]

57 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

He's been very quiet on his twitter the last week and a bit. He's very vocal about the good things,  like the kit launch, the shop opening, and the champions league draw. Then disappears when anything bad is happening.

Uses his personal page to shout about the good things, let's the club take the rap for the bad. Is that's fairly normal for an exec?  Can't say it endears me to him in any way. 

Krulak lite!! 

[sne]

1 minute ago, Robbie09 said:

Krulak lite!! 

Sergeant Krulak

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

1 hour ago, MrBlack said:

He's been very quiet on his twitter the last week and a bit. He's very vocal about the good things,  like the kit launch, the shop opening, and the champions league draw. Then disappears when anything bad is happening.

Uses his personal page to shout about the good things, let's the club take the rap for the bad. Is that's fairly normal for an exec?  Can't say it endears me to him in any way. 

In fairness it looks like the tickets are going to sell out 

Just because a large chunk of us perceive the prices as bad doesn't mean the club view it as such.

He might pop up again when they've sold out officially

Edited September 10 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

3 minutes ago, Robbie09 said:

Krulak lite!! 

Corporal Krulak ?

[WallisFrizz]

1 hour ago, villa89 said:

Careful what you wish for, it'll be Ticketmaster dynamic pricing before you know it. 

You joke but I seriously think that Heck would introduce this in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it. He’ll be watching closely re the govt enquiry into Ticketmaster.

[MrBlack]

6 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

 

Don't get me wrong lads I get the point.

I'm just trying to enforce as you say, if they sell out they will feel justified and can point to the income and sales to back it up.

Truth is though, all that money benefits the club in the end

Maybe can fund the toilet improvements for a start lol

I got your point. He'll defintely view it as a success if/when it sells out. I'm sure he'll post about it too. 

He'll be misreading the room though if he doesn't acknowledge the level of dissatisfaction. Wouldn't be the first time he's been tone deaf with his comments. 

[CarryOnVilla]

In this uproar about tickets, there has been claims is that Chris Heck is targeting the “day trippers” rather than the “loyal fans”. Like it’s a bad thing.  I’m a “day tripper” I live miles away from Villa park and any away ground to be “loyal”. Me going to see Villa play anywhere is an actual day trip and those extra costs give or take are £200 just for fuel, expenses and accommodation. To me, it’s a rare treat for me and the lad, so it’s worth it. Yet.. getting tickets is almost impossible. STH, members and other fans that meets a criteria have first dibs. Me and the boy have slim pickings at best. Most often not getting tickets seated together. 

so if a few disgruntled STH and members forfeit their dib on CL tickets it gives me (and others like me) a chance to take CarryOnLad to see a meaningful game for the first time ever. 

However, I suspect Chris Heck has priced this correctly enough that the noisy ones will still pay the price and “day trippers” like me have to go without.. again 

No beef to anyone. Just the ticket situation isn’t great for me and the lad Either. You guys may pay too much, but I just can’t get any tickets 

Edited September 10 by CarryOnVilla

[mikeyp102]

Last season I thought Heck had done a decent job especially when you see the increase in commercial deals he’d got. 
But then you see clubs who didn’t finish as high as us getting better deals and you start to question how well Heck did. Then we move onto the summer and the communication from the club (which for me comes from Heck) has been appalling. From the badge decisions, stadium expansion and even ticketing, it’s not been clear. He used his personal Twitter account (I’m not on Twitter as many aren’t) to make announcements and big himself up, not providing this message to non Twitter users. Then ticket pricing has just shown greed (hasn’t stopped me buying, but that’s because I want to see my club in champions league), and more alienation of the fan base, giving the club bad publicity. Whenever there has been bad publicity he’s nowhere to be seen and doesn’t seem to want to galvanise the club and fans together, which contradicts the message from the manager. 

[nick76]

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I'm actually seeing more people moaning about not being able to get tickets and tickets office faf ups with their tickets now.

Yep because Heck hasn’t fixed the interaction with ticketing

[OhioVilla]

I will say, from my point of view, I'm not shocked this is happening and I feel very badly for the people that this is affecting. What's happening to Villa is extremely common place among American sports right now, and I'd even venture to say it's why Chris Heck was brought in. Modernize the whole operation.

 

The problem is that you become a soulless megasports Corp thay no longer allows the diehard supporter go to the game. It's happened over here in all sports, but especially American Football. The teams make billions while the fans get a bland corporate product.

Turning Villa into the consistent top 6 team they want with world class facilities means they have to start raking in money. And unfortunately that'll come at the cost of the fans.

[mrbojangles]

I cant argue with the ticket criteria priority, the pricing is shocking however as others have said Heck will not care. The fact that this has sold out so quick means he will use it to justify himself.

Not wanting to go too far off topic but I don't meet the criteria, me and the lad are members and on the ST waiting list. Went to some league games last season but didn't bother with Europe. Mid week is a faff for me and those who were able to go last season definitely deserve first dibs.

Mid week would still be a faff for me and although I know i will be in the minority I am genuinely not as excited as most about Europe. Happy to watch it on the tv in my local boozer with my Villa top on

[Andy_10]

My biggest issues with Heck is that he seems to have wilful ignorance over his core customer base. Which sort of goes against a few key branding 101 guidelines.

First off, & with his first action, he created a disconnect with the core customer sentiment by ignoring the emotional attachment of normal every day fans with things such as instantly & retroactively dumping the fan voted crest for no reason. Any money saved on the rebranding around the stadium, training ground, etc, will have been offset by the creation of our third crest in two years. Confusing from a brand perspective by having two crests around the club last year from the start, as even though two of them looked similar, to a degree, with both being similarly poor being the reason that we had the circular crest created in the first place, but even when each element is broken down, they are completely different. Different shaped shield, pinstriped shield, different layout, change of text, right down to the ridiculous drop shadow. The only consistent element is the lion, which could have just as easily been thrown into the circular crest & we remove all shield elements from around the stadium, training ground, etc, & just use the standalone lion until we are ready to start placing the circular elements that may cost a little more to manufacture around the stadium & training ground. That would have been a cheaper, easier & most logical choice considering some fans weren't happy with the way the lion was facing anyway. What Heck did here made no sense & attacked something that fans are emotionally attached to, because we helped with its creation. An instant own goal.

And the lack of any logical explanation is just a pattern of Hecks poor communication. Some of the reasons given for some decisions boggle the mind. A "42 year anniversary" single year crest edition? Nonsense. And insulting to the core customers intelligence. The only year we needed an individual crest to celebrate an event was the 150th year anniversary year. But that didn't happen other than that Americana based thing they placed on the back of the shirts in the size of a postage stamp. And with the North Stand upgrade, saying it was cancelled for creating "too many seats too soon?". Utter nonsense. There are plenty of fans on the season ticket waiting list or individuals just waiting for single game tickets. If he thought that was too much ambition too soon, then why is he shooting for the moon trying to attract a global fanbase before making the current local loyal customer base happy first? Some of these "explanations" are infuriating because it shows a lack of respect for the core customer base. Which has not only divided fans, but created uncertainty & mistrust over every single decision & word that comes out of Hecks mouth. It also shows that his research & understanding of that core customer base is extremely poor. Basic branding 101 errors.

If there are genuine reasons, like the circular crest being thought of as too similar to Chelseas, PSR, they have plans to build a new stadium, etc, etc, then be honest & say so. Fans are a lot more forgiving if the club respects & trusts us enough to treat us like adults. By not being honest with us, it creates a lack of clarity for the future of the brand. The goals & strategic roadmap going forward should be shared with the core customer base so that we are all headed in the same direction together.

And the disabled parking debacle was just so ridiculous in its conception that if Heck was involved in that, I wouldn't be unhappy to see him booted out the door. As tone deaf as I have ever seen from a football club. 

 

Im not just complaining about Heck for the sake of it though, & I understand that difficult decisions have to be made that not everybody will be happy with. I accept that, but it's the way he goes about it all. The New York Red Bull people had him clocked & our owners should have listened to that. They take some of the responsibility. Firstly, for hiring him in the first place when his CV had 'that' review from New York Red Bull. But they also allowed him to sell them on the crest debacle, along with the North Stand cancelation.

 

On the positive side, there is some ambition from Heck. I respect that, even if I think his expectations are a little out of sync for how it should be done by making the core customers happy first. I commend him for helping us get out of the Castore deal. A bit of an open goal due to the manufacturing issues, but it could have gone down the legal route & that wasn't needed thanks to Heck. He also gets some recognition for helping Sawiris with the adidas deal. Another open goal, but he has shown himself to be Ronnie Rosenthal in the past, so good job for tapping it into the net. I also like the new route that seems to be at the stadium where we use our boards to advertise ourselves. Having "Daves Hot Pies" flickering across the screen on TV, & the subsequent revenue that brings in, on the advertising boards is all well & good, but by advertising our own products, we are not only pushing our own brand, but also adding to the sales of our own products. It's something I have noticed the likes of Chelsea do for years & wondered why we didn't. Especially when I see the likes of Wrexham doing it, lol. I also liked some of the teaser campaigns that we did with adidas. About time we started with these, especially in collaboration with a brand like adidas. That can only be good for us going forward. And the shirt release was pretty spectacular. By using the likes of Osbourne, Butler, etc, not only was the footballing world talking about Aston Villa Football Club, so were prominent news & music outlets like the New York Times & Kerrang, etc.

 

Some of the stuff that Heck has done has been proper 'adult in the room' stuff. But other things from him have been "arrogant & ignorant". And we were told that before we hired him. 

Edited September 10 by Andy_10

[Pongo Waring]

Tickets sold out. Proven ticket prices were correct. Heck in suckerssss

Edited September 10 by Pongo Waring

[Tomaszk]

Just now, Pongo Waring said:

Tickets sold out. Proven ticket prices were correct. Heck in suckerssss

Thousands stuck online unable to get tickets.

Surely that means they should have been £200?

He's **** up.

[Davkaus]

3 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

He might pop up again when they've sold out officially

Well, you didn't have to be Mystic Meg, but there you go