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)?

Save the Post Office?

 

Okay, time for some charity work.  I know a number of readers of this blog are clever marketing types, who have probably tackled many challenges over the years.  So let’s set up a doozy of a challenge for you, and see what you recommend.  And we promise that the best ideas will be seen by ‘those who decide’!!!!

Let’s start with the positives:

• Brand with one of the highest brand recalls and awareness scores ever, across b2b and b2c.
• Automatic trustworthiness – most trusted ‘federal government institution’.  Well, that’s got to count for something?
• Brand with history – dating back to Benji Franklin, for goodness sakes!
• Employs a ton of people - nearly 600k, second largest in the civilian workforce to Wal-Mart.  Union, of course.  Not a minor issue to encounter, but you’ve got a lot of households you’re responsible for!

Now let’s deal with a few business realities:

• Does not benefit from companies and consumers going to email, web, social media … it cuts out a revenue source, in a big way
• Does not benefit from companies trying to be ‘enviro-friendly’ and encourage paperless billing
• Has failed to enunciate that paperless billing has, based on research, reduced customer relationship scores
• Has a huge retail estate which it has protected but underutilized for years.
• Can raise stamp prices only via Act of Congress, can shut branches only … via Act of Congress, can do almost anything only … via Act of Congress.  So highly flexible (?) approach to running it’s operational side.
• And the kicker … is due to lose $238 billion (yep, that’s nearly a quarter of a trillion) by 2021 based on current trends.  And you thought GM was a huge bailout cost!

So……………….

Let’s make a couple assumptions:

1.  You’ve been named CMO with vast power to change things, shake it up, etc.

2.  The USPS Board of Governors accept this designation, and promise to ‘butt out’ given the precarious state they’ve allowed the USPS to put itself in.

3.  The US Government isn’t about to foot the bill for anything elaborate, given the increasing loss making situation coupled with a few, minor issues like reducing the Federal deficit, staving off the Chinese from assuming financial control of the US, and preventing back-slip into recession.  So forget, at least for a few years, any “Super Bowl” funding requirements.

What would YOU do??  Let’s assemble the best ideas, and maybe save an institution which, by all accounts, should be consigned to the scrapheap of obscurity within a few years, at the current rate …

Ideas from retail specialists and shipping people particularly welcomed!!!