Month: March 2011

Virtually all of the major sports that Canadian cities offer have a hard time recruiting athletes to play; the one exception to this is hockey (I’m not counting the CFL). The Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Blue Jays, Canada’s lone “major league” basketball and baseball teams respectively, suffer, because players forego the opportunity to play in Toronto, making it harder for Toronto sports GM’s and ownership groups to put forth talent worth cheering for. Putting a marketing spin on things, let’s investigate ways to lure players to play in Toronto.

It comes with no surprise that the act of managers trying to sign players is a form of personal selling, but may managers include “consumer promotion” elements, which are referred to as incentives in sports, to players as a value added bonus to signing in Canada? You bet! Teams, often include performance incentives in contracts to motivate players to play well. Also, to motivate players to sign, they may also include shares in team ownership, buy players new cars/watches, or focus advertisements on them.

In a way, teams and managers of Toronto sports teams need to be able to mimic the effects of a pull strategy to entice players to play in Toronto. On top of that, managers and teams must be able to not only grab the attention of the player, but to make the player want to play in Toronto, and then try to seal the deal (signing the contract—nothing’s official until that piece of paper has been signed!). Careful, if managers don’t know that the player is right for their organization, and then plan their contact with, and contract offer to the player, they may never get to the closing and follow up stages!

Jose Bautista is the latest player to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays, after having a monster season last year. Last but not least, and I know this has nothing to do with my blog post, but THE BLUE JAYS SEASON OPENER IS TOMORROW! YESSSS!!! FINALLY!

-Faiz

This blog post was inspired by Sam Gregory’s “Nike, Soccer & Aspiration” (which I believe was inspired by a blog post by Jonathan Cheng).  Sam tailored his blog post to the ability of a renowned company (Nike)’s ability to use aspirational social reference figures from different parts of the world (that have a common feature–the fact that they are professional soccer players) to appeal to various geographically dispersed target markets.  As I have been raving about the start of the Toronto Blue Jays season (now in less than 9 days!!!!), let’s see what they have done in terms of aspirational marketing to build hype for the upcoming season!

This season, the Blue Jays have branded their main product (the physical playing of Baseball) with the following phrase: “Hustle & Heart 2.0”.  The Blue Jays compete in the most competitive division in baseball, the AL East, partly because two of the richest teams in baseball (The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox)’s ability to buy any player at any price on any given day.  Thus, the Blue Jays are basically a write off in many baseball fans’ mind.

The Blue Jays have in fact embraced this view, and positioned themselves as the underdogs of the division.  While embracing this standpoint, they then decided to coin their play based on “Hustle & Heart” (this was last season, thus this season is H&H 2.0) as a tribute to the players that they are shaping their organization around (read the last few blog posts to learn more).

All in all, the underlying message is “Hustle & Heart” is what the Blue Jays think is needed to beat the big market teams in their division, and league for that matter,  and have personalized their organization with sufficient personnel to serve as aspirational social reference figures that embody this strategy through their actions, both on and off the field.

Click here to watch the Hustle & Heart 2.0 season opener video.

-Faiz

I guess you could say that this post is carrying on from the last one, where I blogged about all the great work that Alex Anthopolous, aka “The Silent Assassin” has done to revamp the Blue Jays organization (including the farm system) over the last year and a half.

I wanted to approach this blog post from more of a marketing lens than I usually would, because it’s interesting how marketing can be applied to various aspects of the sporting world.  Where the Blue Jays stand now, they have a young core of athletic position players, some of whom aren’t major league ready, to go along with a young, major league ready starting pitching staff.

To address the position players that are not all ready for the big leagues, the benefit of this situation is that a lot of them are playing together in the minor leagues.  Competitive team sporting success is a result of cohesive team chemistry, and if you are an individual that refuses to work in teams, it’s going to be hard for your team to experience any prolonged success.  Like I said last week, these players are very athletic, and offer more than just an on-field product—relentless work ethic, passion for the game, passion for competition, and desire to be the best.

The fact that there are quite a few players that demonstrate those attributes, all at a similar age, is going to produce a sustainable competitive advantage for the Blue Jays in the years to come.  In sports, sustainable competitive advantages are usually referred to as “depth”.  When a team is deep in a certain aspect, it allows them to trade players from that depth, to acquire players with talent/attributes that the organization needs.  Knowing Alex Anthopolous, he is going to use this depth (that he has created) to push the Blue Jays in a favourable direction for many years to come.

-Faiz

First things first, I’m glad to have my computer back after a long week of repairs.  Seriously, what kind of evil person makes Trojan viruses, ugh.  Dear Trojan maker, if anything happens to you, you don’t have my sympathy.

Second, I know its only Spring Training, but a Blue Jays game was on over the weekend, and I was super psyched to watch it.  Seriously, 5 months without baseball is way too long for any passionate fan to wait; but nonetheless its t-23 days until opening day– can’t wait.

While watching the game, it was a great opportunity to take a look at a bunch of minor league prospects that are deemed to be “our future”.  Most of them looked like they had a solid foundation of talent, but it seemed that there was something more to their game (almost like a value added premium to their skill set).  These players had a tremendous passion for the game, and it definitely showed while they played.

What’s special is that most of these players were not in the Blue Jays organization when  Alex Anthopolous took over as General Manager at the end of the 2009 season (at the time, the Jays also had the 3^rd worst minor league system, and in a year and a half, Anthopolous has pushed the Jays to 4^th best).  When he took over, Anthopolous’s vision statement for the organization was “to be more athletic and diverse”, and everything he has done since has embodied this strategy.

Clearly, his perception of what it takes to win has influenced the transactions that have taken place within the last year and a half.  Across the league, Anthopolous has been marveled for the work he has done, and is on the way to making the Toronto Blue Jays as noted as they were during their glory days of the early 90’s.

Click here for a complete list of transactions while Anthopolous has been boss (talk about a busy man!).

-Faiz