Makom

Financial Times campaign The Financial Times campaign would leverage the fact Ashley is seen as an outsider in the business world, and the ability of the FT to reach all the places prospective new owners reside, far beyond these shores. Step 1: get a quote from the FT on the price of a full page ad. Step 2: set up a kickstarter fund with that as the target. Step 3: once reached, place an add with the banner "For Sale" - then detail all the plus points owning NUFC brings potential owners (most notably the new TV deal). At the bottom, include a message along the lines of "Available at the right price to anyone with the ability to displace the incumbent owner Mike Ashley of Sports Direct, whose lack of ambition and general contempt for the fans and the club, has forced them to place this advert using their own money. Step 4: make sure all the press/media know about the advert, so as to make it a talking point about whether or not Ashley deserves to own the great institution that is NUFC, or whether it isn't time he stepped aside and handed it over to the first person to offer a fair price and was prepared to run it how it should be run.

Sleeping with the Enemy The sleeping with the enemy campaign (controversial to say the least - not to be attempted half-heartedly or without contemplating all contingencies) - building on the recent goodwill between the two clubs, contact SAFC with a view to them allowing a small group of NUFC fans to attend a designated Sunderland home match in full NUFC clobber, to support their team and protest against Ashley. The point being to highlight the fact that fans find Ashley's approach to running the cub so disagreeable that they would rather support their fiercest rivals than watch any team put out under his tenure. If executed properly (i.e. without making the fans look disloyal or as just glory hunters with absolutely no appreciation financial realities), this particular campaign couldn't fail to achieve national media/press coverage of the worst kind for Ashley as a football club owner.

Puma campaign This campaign would leverage the fact Puma is the only major club sponsor with any kind of reputation to protect from the damage of being associated with Ashley's reign. Step 1: Contact Puma and request a statement on where they stand regarding their company's brand values and business practices being associated with Ashley's lack of ambition, pile it high/sell it cheap model and use of zero hours contracts. Step 2 depends on the reply - if they reply favourably, then use that in future publicity material. If they reply neutrally or indeed just ignore the request, then stage a couple of high profile protests outside Puma locations (fund a trip to London if necessary), with the aim of getting some negative publicity for Puma, and general publicity for the campaign

General election campaign This campaign would leverage the press & media attention on the forthcoming election by informing all the mainstream prospective MPs standing in Newcastle area seats that the campaign plans to take out full page ads in the local papers on the Saturday and Sunday before polling day, and would they like to take that opportunity to have their name and perhaps a personal message included in it, to let prospective voters that they stand with them in sympathy over the current plight of NUFC as a club with a fine tradition and proud supporters being owned by someone with zero ambition, zero connection with the fans, and zero sense of their role in the community and zero intention of providing a football club of which the region can be proud of. Should play particularly well with Labour, given their enmity for zero-hours contracts.

I was on Newcastle-Online the last few days and apparently, simply because I had the temerity to suggest PardewOut was a completely misdirected and poorly executed plan, I was shot with shit and labelled a Mackem troll (apparently Mako is short for mackem, and has no other conceivable meaning - according to one of their brightest members - the rest just generally abused me). I'm fully behind the goal of any Ashley out campaign, I'm just not going to support it if it's as bad as SackPardew was. I stopped going to the match many moons ago, and haven't bought any merchandise for even longer than that. The last time I felt proud to call myself an NUFC fan was ironically during the Championship season. I logged on to N-O today with the goal of posting the various campaign suggestions that had been developing in my head the past few days (largely because I got fed up of them abusing me for daring to criticise people trying to 'do something' without having any ideas of my own, even though that's a really retarded groupthink attitude, and lo and behold, I found I was already banned. So I duly sent the ideas to AshleyOut.com by mail, and have looked around for anywhere else I might post them for discussion. Reading this thread, I see this forum might not be the best place to air them, but I guess it's better than nothing. Unless anyone has any objections, I'll be posting each idea as a separate thread, so as not to clutter up this main thread, and keep discussion of the merits of each idea in one place.