Heading into the one of the best times of year for sports!
As the NFL starts its preseason, college football is only
weeks away, and baseball is really heating up which means in no time it will be
hockey season again! Yes, besides being engrossed in the world of brand and
retail consulting I am a full blown all American sports fan. Yep, I love them all. I’ve been playing around with the parallels
between sports and brands and people in my head for a while now. Not new, I know, but I find this recurring
theme.
If there is anything that frustrates me more about doing
brand work – it’s that we seem to want to skip the hard work. There it is again… brands running parallel
with people tendencies….
Trying to avoid what we all know to be true – you have to do
the hard work to get the rewards. This
reminds me of a recent interview I saw with the rookie QB that was drafted by
the Red Skins who already has a fancy nickname RGIII. It’s not so much what he said about hard work
and pressure… He said all the right things he is supposed to say as a rookie,
but it was what the shirt he was wearing had written on it said:
“NO PRESSURE, NO DIAMONDS”
This statement appealed to me. It is a clever way to say …no hard work no
reward. I have found this to be true in
working with brands and brand owners. Every brand owner wants their retail
space to feel: “inviting, comfortable,
friendly, fun, fresh, add your own generic non descript adjective here…. for
appealing to everyone” I have never met a brand owner who told me that they
wanted their space to be un-inviting, un-comfortable, un-friendly, not fresh,
not fun. Actually, that ‘s not true, I
have had a similar experience when working with 'AND1' before they were sold –
they wanted gritty, in your face, I’ve got skills attitude – but that was once
in 20+ years and it was REFRESHING! They
wanted something else. They knew that they
were not Nike and they didn’t want to be!
AND1 knew their brand was something else entirely. Through a lot of hard work they found a place
in the market that was not 3rd place or maybe more like 4th
place behind giants like Nike, Rebok, Addidas – they found a different
path. They did the hard work, figured
out their true brand personality and what their consumers could identify with
them. They clearly defined the core
values. Within the company employees
were empowered to make decisions based on these core values. The proof it was working? When this brand owner first met with them,
myself and the other members of my team were asked if we knew about the brand
or had heard of the brand… we answered honestly even though it could cost us
the project and said “no” before they reached out to us we had not heard of
them. Their response was quite
unexpected – they could not have been happier!
The AND1 team felt that was a clear indication that their marketing
efforts were effective – we were not their target audience. And they did not want to waste effort in
trying to attract consumers who were not in their target audience. AND1 felt it was more valuable to concentrate
on really winning over like minded consumers, tribe members, or friends than to
try to attract a few people outside of their target group – they gave up the
notion of trying to be all things to all people.
They did the hard work to get there. It takes courage and fortitude to believe in
your brand enough to say “if we get our target audience we’ve won and anyone
else who wants to come along for the ride is welcome but we’re not going to
cater to them”.
Sounds easy, right?
It is easy … you just have to do the hard work.
“NO PRESSURE, NO DIAMONDS”
Julie Dugas
Principal | Partner
studio | H2G