Richard Sweet’s office is hard to find.
Tucked away behind the will call window of Moody Coliseum is the closet-sized space Sweet is using to plan SMU’s comeback – not on the athletic field, but in the stands.
The SMU graduate is back on campus to tackle a job he says is the biggest challenge of his career: making SMU athletics relevant to the student body and the people of Dallas. Sweet arrived at SMU in November after being hired as the new associate athletic director for Marketing & Public Relations.
Sweet said he had a marketing professor who called SMU “Camelot,” and at the time he did not understand the comparison.
Now he does.
“There’s a moat around this place, plus the bubble of the Park Cities,” Sweet said of the situation he faces in increasing SMU’s profile in the area.
His new job is just down Mockingbird from his old one as Southwest Airlines’ senior director of Marketing and Sales.
In the past SMU Athletics has marketed sports individually. Sweet said to be effective, he will target market segments. He uses a bull’s eye as a marketing analogy; the center is on-campus, the second circle is alumni and the Mustang Club, and the third circle is the Dallas area.
Before Sweet and his team create a comprehensive marketing plan, they will conduct market research. They want to find out what SMU’s awareness level is locally, find out why or why not people attend games and then work on the messaging.
Sweet said a football marketing plan will be developed in April and May, with the logistics worked out in June.
He plans to roll out his first major campaign in July, just in time for individual game ticket sales.
Right now Sweet’s office is working on football season-ticket sales. He credits a core group of season-ticket holders for keeping SMU afloat financially and the dreams of a successful team alive.
“It’s our turn to make those dreams come true,” Sweet said.
SMU President R. Gerald Turner said a marketing expert is necessary in a competitive marketplace like Dallas.
“With pro teams playing year round, you have to have expertise in getting before the public,” said Turner.
Sweet said his time at Southwest has prepared him for what he now faces at SMU.
He spent 22 years at the airline Herb Kelleher turned from regional service to national power. Sweet’s responsibilities for Southwest included sports marketing, corporate sales, pricing and work on the crisis committee.
It was not his first job, though. After graduating he worked for an oil company, but when the oil boom busted in 1985, he decided it would be a good idea to start looking for work elsewhere. His sister worked for Southwest as a flight attendant and told him to think about working for the low-cost carrier.
Sweet got an interview for a marketing job, but the only way he could be hired was to begin at an entry level position. For six months Sweet worked in provisioning, which is loading and unloading the food and beverages onto the planes. He wore a bright orange jumpsuit and got to know the culture and customers of Southwest.
“It was a blessing because I got to learn so much,” Sweet said. “But I dreaded fellow students seeing me on ramp side.”
When the six months were up, Sweet began his ascent through the Southwest ranks, working marketing jobs in Phoenix, Los Angeles and St. Louis before making his way back to Dallas in 1995.
Krissy Sarine-Crabtree worked with Sweet in Dallas. As the emergency response coordinator for Southwest, she and Sweet worked together on the crisis committee. Crabtree described Sweet as “the quiet captain” and very driven, but also as someone with a sense of humor.
She said Sweet and another co-worker would take turns hiding a piece of leftover birthday cake in each other’s offices as a joke. They would often go months at a time before stumbling into the petrified cake in random file cabinets or bookshelves.
“We miss him a lot around here,” Sarine-Crabtree said.
Sweet commuted to his job in Los Angeles by Southwest plane from Phoenix for three years. He would board a 7 a.m. flight and be back in Phoenix by 6 p.m. Sweet said he chose to remain in Phoenix because it was actually easier to commute by plane instead of moving to Los Angeles and driving to work.
“I got to be friends with a lot of people who also commuted, and also learned about our customer base,” Sweet said.
Sweet married his college girlfriend Keri, who graduated from SMU in 1984 and was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. They have two children, son Tyler who is a junior in high school and daughter Kailey who is in eighth grade.
