MSCG takes on New York

By Duncan Wallis

In the fall of 2019, MSCG took on our highest profile client to date at that time: the New York Mets. The Mets had tasked MSCG with exploring new, creative ideas to bring a new demographic to Citi Field. This demographic wasn’t necessarily Mets fans, and not even necessarily baseball fans, but rather people who were looking for a fun time on the weekends to go do something with their friends. While our recommendations remain confidential, I can tell you the project was a major success and I have to credit the Project Managers, Dylan Wittenberg and Thomas Hill, as well as my fellow Executive Board Project Advisor, Connor Daugherty, for all their work on the project.

One of the coolest parts of the project with the Mets was getting to travel to New York and present to them in person. Shane Perlin, the President of MSCG at the time, plus the three people mentioned above—and I—traveled to New York on January 6th 2020 to present to the Mets. So the rest of this blog post will just be taking you through our day in NYC!

We got up extraordinarily early—like 4:45am to be at the airport by 5:45am. I picked everyone up at a central location on campus and drove to DTW where we departed at 7:00am. We got to the airport, parked, went through security where TSA asked if, being dressed in suits, we were U-M hockey players. And then a high school debate team. Not sure which was worse. We boarded the flight and were in NYC by breakfast time.

We caught a Lyft to head to breakfast at the famous Seinfeld Diner (by accident—it’s just rated highly on Google) and had a great breakfast. We didn’t present until 2pm so we went for some sightseeing at Hudson Yards (built with investment from U-M alum Stephen Ross.) Then, as we slowly made our way towards Queens, we walked the streets in search of a food item that was part of our recommendation to the Mets. We grabbed some for a taste test at the presentation, and caught another Lyft to get to Citi Field. We got to the front office and were invited up into a conference room where Ally Futterman, a U-M Sport Management alum, greeted us and other executives filed into the room: VP of Marketing, Director of Marketing, VP of Event Planning, Partnerships, and more were all present.

Thomas and Dylan expertly presented our recommendations (they had practiced for Shane, Connor and I several times previously and had it down cold.) Shortly after Q&A concluded, Ally took us on a tour of the stadium—showing us all the different spaces around the stadium we had just talked about in our recommendations. We even got to step onto the Citi Field dirt and snap a couple pictures—something I’m sure you can find on our website or Maize Pages. We headed back to the airport after an incredibly filling dinner at Chosen Garden (biggest portions I’ve ever seen at a Chinese restaurant) and caught our flight at about 8pm. We drove back to Ann Arbor and successfully made a round trip to NYC in about 18 hours—we felt like some serious businessmen and had come away with an experience that none of us will soon forget, I’m sure!