Month: February 2011

Before I get started, I would just like to thank Scott Rolufs for sending me this article; it sparked an idea for my next post: what has happened to the fun in baseball? I don’t literally mean that the professionals don’t find baseball fun, but why have teams chosen to forgo signing a player because of his personality. In a sense, it seems that in this case, the team doesn’t trust the player’s “brand”. Given, at the end of the day, the product that these teams/organizations offer is high quality baseball, but to what degree are players urged to act as time-ticking robots both on and off the field? Perhaps before I carry on, I should pose the question: is it the player’s responsibility to regulate himself, or the teams responsibility to regulate the player?

I am not the first person to bring up Manny Ramirez, and I certainly will not be the last. One of the best hitters that our generation has seen (too bad I can’t say the same for his fielding), has done everything from making a phone call during a game, to high-fiving a fan during the play. Because of his off-beat antics, people attribute his behaviour to the coined phase “Manny being Manny”, but at what point does this become detrimental to the team’s ultimate goal (winning a championship).

One positive aspect is that it’s clear that Manny is having fun while playing. It seems obvious to me, that if you try and govern a player like this, there is no way that he will be as proficient as possible. Is there a need for balance, obviously, but who am I to judge? The flip side of the argument is that if Manny was able to produce while being robot like, he would probably have signed one of the biggest contracts in baseball history, based on his past stats.  One thing’s for sure though, he’s quite popular with the fans.

-Faiz

One of the many ways for sports organizations to reel in additional revenue is by giving the fans an option to purchase sports apparel, or team trademark items –a standard example would be a sports jersey (and if you’re me, a Toronto Blue Jays jersey!).  Arguably, the biggest benefit from the consumer’s point of view is the chance to feel like a part of the team, increasing the chances that the fan will become an advocate.

One of the problems is that organizations must diversify their product to make it relevant to many different types of consumers; not everyone is going to want the exact same jersey, and even if they do, they definitely won’t be the same size.  Some typical segmentation variables sports organizations might use when segmenting their potential target markets may include country/city, age, gender, income, benefits sought, usage rates, and brand loyalty.

Over the last few years, female sports fans have been a great target market for organizations to target; not only do they have significant purchasing power, but the fact that there are more female sports leagues for young females to play in nowadays compared to years ago increases the chances that they will become fans of elite level (professional) sports teams, which then makes them more likely to purchase fan memorabilia.

Sports organizations have come out with female jersey lines to accommodate the female body contour, and some organizations have even changed the jersey colours to pink, so that female fans can get a jersey just the way they want it!

The bond created by “feeling like a part of the team” is one of the main factors that justifies consumer spending, and organizations are able to price higher and capitalize on the value added from having purchasable items.

-Faiz

For this week’s post, I am choosing to respond to my friend Graeme Law’s post called “Controversy as a Selling Point” (of course sticking to my trend of talking about sports, but not baseball this time).  Before we get started, I have to say that Graeme is a fantastic writer.

Here we go now.  So we all know what happened in the Tiger Woods fiasco, and that’s partially my point.  Tiger Woods still remains a social reference figure (whether aspirational or dissociative is up to you to figure) in not just our society, or even continent, but literally our world today.  Graeme also mentioned that pre-fiasco, Woods was endorsed by quite a respectable number of companies, and post-fiasco (I seem to love that word–fiasco and conundrum, both great words), Nike remained the only company that would continue to sponsor him.

It goes without saying, that if companies thought that continuing to sponsor Woods would skew their sales in a harmful way, than it makes sense for them to drop the sponsorship.  But what exactly are they doing by dropping the sponsorship?  From a marketing stretch, the sponsoring companies had built a sustainable competitive advantage by sponsoring Woods–he is the only Tiger Woods in the world (pretty sustainable, huh?), and, who at that time was an aspirational social reference figure for many people, not just golfers. What does that say about the other companies?  That they looked at their sponsorship from a transactional orientation point of view?  Perhaps…

With all the titles he has won, he added a supreme amount of value to his name, and companies’ willingness to pay for his marketing was through the roof.  He helped many companies expand globally, and was an icon for millions of people.  It’s scary how things can change so quickly.

-Faiz