In the 1970s, boxing-great Muhammad Ali prepared for his biggest fights at a training camp in rural Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, called “Fighter’s Heaven.”
Today, after the camp has been preserved and restored, Fighter’s Heaven has become a destination that reminds and educates its visitors about Ali’s life.
This semester, Lehigh students in Professor Laura Smarandescu’s promotional marketing strategy class have partnered with Fighter’s Heaven in an effort to brainstorm promotional strategies and identify target groups who would be interested in attending the camp.
Smarandescu took advantage of the retreat’s close proximity to campus —about an hour away from Lehigh— by creating this project for her students. She said she feels very strongly about her students gaining professional experience and exposure to real projects.
The project has the students create a marketing campaign for the camp, which they contributed to through briefs that explain their ideas for reaching a target audience.
Smarandescu is most fond of her students’ promotional idea to make Fighter’s Heaven a digital detox.
“It is really a brilliant idea, and it’s very close to the meaning of the camp,” Smarandescu said. “Ali wanted to get away from the distractions of Florida and went from a very glitzy life to building a cabin in the woods where he didn’t want to have electricity.”
A digital detox is meant to act as a mental disconnect from society. Applied to the camp, it would encourage new visitors to enjoy its rustic environment. With these promotional efforts, Fighter’s Heaven will become a calm oasis for those stressed with screen addiction.
Mike Madden, the owner of Fighter’s Heaven, said he bought the former training camp with the goal of preserving Ali’s legacy and sharing it with younger generations.
“Part of the challenge was to make sure that Ali was remembered the way that I remember — the way that somebody that grew up in the 70s and 80s would remember him — and pass that on to (a younger) generation,” Madden said.
Madden said he thought the public memory of Ali was being skewed in a direction that wasn’t historically accurate. So, his main priority with Fighter’s Heaven is to spread awareness and attract youthful faces to the camp.
Madden said he values the promotional insight of Lehigh students who are knowledgeable about new technologies.
“It’s a totally different world,” Madden said. “There used to be three channels on TV where you got your news, and everybody read the same newspaper in the morning. Now, in this world, everybody’s holding a device in their pocket that’s as powerful as The New York Times was just 10 years ago.”
Sofia Ferrucci, ‘25, one of Smarandescu’s students, is pursuing a graphic design minor along with a marketing degree. She said she felt specifically inspired by the Fighter’s Heaven logo while working toward the mission of gathering a new crowd.
“I thought it was really interesting to analyze the Fighter’s Heaven social media and their logo design,” Ferrucci said. “In the brief, I went on to actually create some proposed new logo redesigns, as well as some social media posts that they could use using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.”
Ferrucci said she believes Fighter’s Heaven has untapped potential for reaching different audiences ranging from Ali fanatics to Boy Scouts.
Her fellow classmates each have vastly different insights to offer, but this partnership mutually benefits both Fighter’s Heaven and Lehigh students.
“Overall, I am grateful to be able to work on briefs like this with real companies and people that really do appreciate a new kind of marketing proposal and ideas,” Ferrucci said.
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