More and more, it seems, professional sports teams are making an effort to brand themselves. We’ve seen a lot of this in Detroit, especially, and I suspect it’s true nationwide. The Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons have been particularly successful in that regard, while other teams…not so much.
The latest effort is that of our beloved Detroit Lions. The team’s new marketing tagline is “Believe in Now.”
Well. Really?
In 2002, the Detroit Pistons developed the team mantra and marketing slogan “Goin’ to Work.” This was an incredibly successful branding initiative in that it both rang true and connected with the team’s audience. No one believed in 2002 that the Pistons were going to outclass the NBA’s elite, but they could buy into the notion that they would outwork their opponents, which they did. That was enough to get customers to want to buy the product. The team’s audience was a city filled with people who share the belief that hard work is rewarded…the much-referenced “blue-collar” work ethic. What followed this launch was the NBA’s longest active streak of sold-out games, a world championship in 2004, and a modern-day dynasty of sorts. In part, this brand totally turned around a struggling franchise.
Contrast this with the Lions’ current message of “Believe in Now.” This fails on both levels where the Piston’s brand succeeded. For one, it rings hollow and false. Judging from the Lions’ track record under the current regime (24-72), there is no compelling reason for fans to believe in now, yesterday or tomorrow. Secondly, the fansaren’tbuyingit. They don’t want to “believe” (just cuz); they want to be shown something. And pie-in-the-sky platitudes offering false hope ain’t it. As a result, their brand message falls flat, and is borderline comical. To me, this is a total branding failure (not to put too fine of a point on it).
What is the overall branding/messaging lesson that we can take from this? Brand messaging needs to be rooted in truth, based in reality, relatable to your core audience, and achievable in product performance. Otherwise, it’s just wishful thinking and false advertising. And it will be received as such.
While Marc did an awesome job highlighting the similarities and differences between the blogs of PR, marketing and social media’s thought leaders, it got me thinking… How do the blogs of metro Detroit firms compare/contrast with each other? What is the conversation like and what are people talking about? While we may share similar practice areas, are we covering the same topics? Or are our posts unique and reflective of our individual firms?
To kick-off my little experiment, I went back the Detroit PR blogs I routinely visit and pasted their URL/blog feeds into Wordle, a program that creates “word clouds” from sources such as website text, blogs or RSS feeds. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
Let’s see the results, shall we?
First - Identity’s word cloud
Awesome. Story, right, message, media, PR, market, words… and a little (John) Edwards.
This word cloud makes me proud. Three of these items were top-of-mind when we started our blog. Now, we are regularly delivering the content that were are passionate about (John Edwards? not so much).
According to this report, social media sites are still growing exponentially, but not in the States.
While the U.S. market has grown slower than last year because of the high saturation of the market, the global market is doubling or more in popularity. For instance Facebook grew 153% this year and only 38% of that was domestic growth.
The global platform offered by these sites may be just another reason to jump on the social networking bandwagon.
We can’t stress enough that when it comes to media relations both the right time and the right message are imperative to ensure a story resonates with the targeted media outlet. If a story isn’t obtaining the “desired” play, the timing may be off, or the message should be tweaked to become more relevant, more timely and have a greater impact on the desired audience. The variables with the media endless.
Quite simply, results are generated with the media when the two are properly aligned. That’s the great part of media relations campaign. The risk is not for the weak of heart, but the reward gained in a meaningful media placement is priceless.
I can’t help but be mildly fascinated with the unfortunate John Edwards scandal, purely from a PR perspective, of course. On the one hand, it’s an interesting case study in crisis communications, with Mr. Edwards scheduling an exclusive interview with ABC News late on a Friday afternoon in order to get the story out on his terms. It had the weekend to germinate and fester, but at least it wasn’t headline news in prime time. (Not that this had any real quelling effect on the story.)
On another hand, it was interesting to watch the timeline as to when this became “news.” For months, the National Enquirer had been beating the drum, but no mainstream media outlet would touch it. Mr. Edwards deftly and predictably discarded the report as “tabloid trash,” which is easy to do when the only outlet reporting the news is The Enquirer. But once indisputable photography showed up and eyewitness accounts began to surface, Mr. Edwards was forced to respond. Now, all mainstream media outlets are falling over each other trying to get the next scoop.
Will the Edwards crisis strategy succeed in laying this story to rest? He lied about it once, and there are still some unresolved issues that The Enquirer is sure to pursue. Did The Enquirer actually scoop the New York Times, et. al.?
In the days of DVR and Tivo when it’s possible to “skip” the commercials, some companies are getting more creative with their advertising budgets and targeting the tech-savvy audiences of this 2.0 world we live in. Last month, I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal introducing Vogue magazine’s Web-based reality series about the fashion industry. Retailer Express LLC paid big bucks to be the lead sponsor of the show. Express will supply clothes to be worn by the models in the series with a link for viewers to click and buy what the models are wearing. In another article from Advertising Age, it is reported that Gap is allocating a portion of its fall budget to online advertising in addition to print and outdoor, with no plans for TV. Unusual for a company known for their TV ads featuring famous people. Advertisers take note: Reaching your target audience may only be a mouse click away!
Identity Marketing & Public Relations is a full-service agency specializing in business-to-business communication strategies and programs. Industry segments serviced by Identity include professional services, insurance, real estate, hospitality, automotive, technology, financial and manufacturing. Identity is headquartered in the Bingham Office Center in Bingham Farms, Mich. For more information, please visit the rest Identitypr.com
