How the NFL mirrors the changes in marketing

I LOVE both the NFLand marketing.

But football has changed - and so has marketing, before our eyes.  

Witness the following:

Football		Marketing
Yesterday	Today	Yesterday AND Today	Tomorrow
Huddle	No Huddle	Planning Cycles and Large Team Initiatives	Real Time Adaptive Planning and Small Team Empowerment
Receiver shuttles in signals	QB hears signals on headset	Communication via ‘traditional’ channels	Communication via ‘real time’ channels
Predictable play calling:  run, run, pass, punt	Unpredictable play calling:  constant change and mix it up	Predictable mix of campaigns and tactics – ‘we’ve always done it this way, and it worked before’	Responsive, adaptive tactics and programs, which optimize opportunities as they appear
QB tries to read defense	QB studies tendencies, and predicts while still reading	Marketers try to understand competitors and market changes through traditional research methods like focus groups or sales interviews	Marketers use predictive analytics and advanced social listening to understand competitors and market changes … as well as traditional research methods done in a non-traditional way
2 minute offense is strictly for the last 2 minutes in the half/game	2 minute offense is anytime	Speed to market is on hyperdrive only in exceptional, non-routine circumstances	Speed to market is always on hyperdrive, and doesn’t need exceptional circumstances to occur.
Players multi-task and play offense and defense in some cases	Players are specialists	Senior marketers multi-task, and are expected to be experts in all aspects of an increasingly complex marketing field	Senior marketers specialize in terms of technology, insight, communications – less ‘generalists’ and more specialists – and hence structure aligned to having specialisms within the marketing function
Pads made of leather	Pads made of complex polycarbonate mixture	Communications mainly paper based or TV	Communications mainly electronic and real time.
Running back … runs the ball.	Running back might run, catch, throw an option.	Marketers hired for marketing a product or service	Marketers hired for marketing a product or service, specifying innovation and IT requirements, selling partnerships or even directly to major customers

  

The question for marketers is simple:  how adept are you at calling an audible in the heat of battle?  Do you have Manning or Brees in your DNA … or more conventional qualities, like the vast majority of Bears QBs (with the exception of Cutler)?

Campaign tagline 'match n win?'

If you enjoy games where you need to match up two columns of information, then you'll enjoy the following in the spirit of the election season.

Can you match the tagline with the anti-campaigner from these previous Presidential elections? Prize?  Nothing but the honor of knowing your stuff!!

Slogan	Anti-?
1.  Ma, Ma, where’s My Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha	a.  Kerry
2.  Let’s stop the 4th term now	b.  Adams
3.  57,000 ways to tax Americans	c.  Ford
4.  Bargain and Corruption	d.  Cleveland
5.  Bonzo is Back	e.  Bush (GW)
6.  Bozo and the Pineapple	f.  FDR
7.  Compassionate Colonialism	g.  McCain
8.  Don’t settle for peanuts	h.  Reagan
9.  Incontinence meets incompetence	i.  Carter

Answers:  1d, 2f, 3a, 4b, 5h, 6c, 7e, 8i, 9g

(Special thanks to taglineguru.com for the info on these)

And the credit for this tagline goes to ...

Hot news on the communications wire this morning says that Toyota has introduced a new tagline, "Let's Go Places".  According to the report, "Toyota worked with advertising partners Saatchi & Saatchi, Dentsu America, Conill, Burrell, Intertrend and Grieco Research to create the tagline."

Which begs the question:  how did that work?  Did Saatchi come up with "Let Us", then Dentsu pitched in with 'hey we can shorten this let's make it "let's"'?  Did Conill and Burrell then spend hours contemplating words like 'drive', 'jumpstart' (nope, not so good for a car brand) before settling on 'go'?  And was it up to Intertrend and Grieco Research to figure out that "Let's Go" by itself is better suited to a laxative brand, and therefore needed the eponymous "Places" to round out the message?

It's interesting how this approach to giving the whole communication agency team credit for what will assuredly be a long term tagline is a radical change from earlier times when single mainline ad agencies claimed taglines and slogans as being their creative property.  The benefit of the team approach?  Everyone can claim they developed it.  Not just those in the creative departments, but countless freelance creatives who worked at any of those shops can probably put it on their reel or resume.  Of course, if the tagline bombs or is perverted due to some mechanical issues - as in "Let's Go Places as Long as They have the Parts in Stock" - then watch everyone run a million miles from the program. 

Such has it always been in the communications game - success means everyone jumping on the bandwagon and claiming credit; failure means no one did it.  Sort of like asking who voted for Nixon in 1972.  Incidentally, his 1972 campaign slogans were "President Nixon - now more than ever" and "Four More Years".  I heard the latter once or twice at the DNC recently - do you think they were honoring Nixon?  But maybe Nixon's 1968 slogan was better:  "Nixon's the One".  Yep, that's probably what the Watergate prosecutors thought too.

Let's stop the engagement

I've worked in marketing all of my life.  And every so often, I come across a word which is over used by practitioners to the point of it's meaning being lost or confused.  In the 1990s one such word was 'integration', as applied to either your agency services or more often the campaigns you produced.  For some, an integrated campaign was one in which the literal assets of one media (e.g. the TV ad imagery or copy) were zealously duplicated in any other media (e.g. direct mail, email, website, on-pack, etc.).  For others, an integrated campaign was one in which the tone was consistent - each channel could look different, but they had to 'sing off the same hymn sheet'.  Still other pundits took the stance that an integrated campaign was one where everything linked to everything else, even if the tone or imagery differed.  So, for example, as long as you put the website address on the TV spot, or had a click through on your website to the video of the same TV spot, you were integrated.

But that was the 1990's, when Clinton was President, grunge and Britpop played in clubs, MP3 players weren't selling much until that Jobs fella changed it, and direct marketing/CRM was seen as the savior of most companies.  Surely, in the twenty-teens we're about to enter we'll have outgrown such confusion over a word.

Nope.  It's now  in our social world all about 'engagement'.  You know:  10 steps to engagement; how to engage with prospects; how engaging is your brand; are your employees engaged with your brand; etc.  How many emails or postings of content do you receive daily with the word 'engagement' somewhere in the title or description.
    

Diving a little deeper, we find engagement has multiple meanings and raises multiple questions and opportunities for befuddlement and confusion.  If someone 'likes' your brand, are they engaged?  Well, maybe - they were engaged at the time they clicked 'like', so for a nanosecond or two.  Or maybe they were engaged by the offer or funny video you did, but couldn't give a hoot about (or even remember) who they 'liked' to get it.

Does engagement mean they regularly chat about your brand to all their friends?  Sure, that's engaged, although if your brand was Clorox wouldn't you be concerned about the type of people who pontificate about your brand excessively as having a strange personality disorder?  Not sure I want as my brand advocate someone with potentially a screw loose.  I can be loyal to a brand, use a brand, but it doesn't necessarily follow that I want to be engaged by a brand.  Hell, Clorox, I buy it ... isn't that enough?

But the bottom line is at the moment, engagement is so overused that I think some of the meaning is going out of the term.  People aren't really sure what it means anymore, but like 'integration' in the 1990's it must be a good thing to have or why else would everyone be talking about it.

In seeking resolution to this challenge, I took a step back and thought about what most Average Joe and Josephine thinks about the word 'engagement'.  My limited scale research (I talked to the neighbors, Joe and Josephine ... they're thinking of changing their last name, as it hinders job applications for Joe) and found that they don't think they're 'engaged' with a brand, only that they like it, hate it, can't be fussed with it, don't know it, or think it's someone else's.  Some brands they'd like to be engaged with - Porsche, for example.  Problem is Porsche doesn't want to engage with them, at least not where new cars are concerned.  Mr and Mrs Average do not drive a Porsche.



So maybe the trick is to think less about 'engaging' customers, and more about what the original form of engagement stands for.  Tell someone "I'm engaged" and it's a clear signal that marriage is impending.  It's a promise, nothing more.  Doesn't carry much legal weight, it can be short or long or failed or called off.  But it's a promise.  So the question is does your brand elicit a promise with your customers?  Are you breaking your promises (through customer service or through crappy performance) such that the engagement breaks off?  And are you measuring engagement by the metrics of what someone says (ie telling everyone 'we're engaged') or what someone does (ie here's the ring and the wedding is booked)?  In other words, is your engagement meaningful enough to drive actions and get you the ring ... in particular, the ring of the cash register.

Wait a minute - that's another 90's reference - cash registers don't really ring anymore, do they?  That's what I call progress!

Sports Analogies: Part One

Imagine the situation.  You’re leading the client services team pitching a huge new client.  It started with 10 agencies on the pitch, and in round one, your creative director nailed it.  Amazing ideas, terrific presentation – brought tears to the eyes of the client, it was so good.  You breeze through to round two with the field whittled down 5 agencies.  Again, the CD lays it on the line and pulls out amazing work.  Cheers from the client, with post presentation feedback indicating that your CD is the ‘creative spark that fuels your business’.

Now it’s down to the final shootout, all the big guns firing as three agencies vie for this lucrative assignment.  The morning of the pitch, you’re called into the CEO’s office, presumably to discuss the final presentation team or format or iron out some details.  Instead, you’re told the CD will NOT be there or do any further work with this client on the pitch.  Reason:  fatigue brought on by too many hours in the office coming up with ideas, and a determination by the management team that we need to ‘save’ some of the CD’s ideas and energy for the next prospective client. 

How do you feel?  Well, now you know how Washington Nationals fans feel at the moment over Stephen Strasburg.