Marketing is intimately involved with sports, well beyond the phenomenon of Air Jordan shoes. Marketing provides the impetus for many team fans to come to the game, watch the game, buy the merchandise. Marketing buys the ads on TV, in the stadiums and on the ticket stubs. Marketing is at the tailgaters and Super Bowl parties, and marketing sponsors the Little League teams and soccer camps.
Let’s take it as a given that sports and marketing are involved – so much so that when sports is in trouble, marketing folks had better be very much in the loop on what is up.
The realization that many of our most treasured sports that include contact and jostling of the head, the NHL and NFL among them, have the unintended but undisputed impact of diminishing the lives of many of the participants is an important moment for all marketers.
This is not just the sport’s problem. You think when your brand appears on the Jumbotron of Sports Stadium PDQ that the average fan thinks the two are disassociated? The fans think its all linked, it IS all linked, and yes, that means the brands have to worry about the health and safety of the players.
Some day there will be “The Hit”. It will be worse than what happened to Sidney Crosby, and it will leave that person permanently damaged. It could be any sport, any athlete. The last thing you want is to be the brand “on the boards” of that game, with your brand forever associated with the tragedy.
So what role does a marketing person play? This is what you do:
- Learn the issues and potential solutions. I just finished this piece, written by Ken Dryden, a legend in the world of hockey. I think it is brilliantly written and lays out many of the next steps that must be considered.
- Get on the phone with the sports you support. Let them know that the athletes deserve to live out their natural life with their brains intact, and that the fans deserve to know that the league/team/ownership is committed to this end. Make it clear that your continued relationship depends on it.
- Get on the phone with the media buys you make in all channels. Make it clear that your brand cares, and that you want to see that station, website, or media company care about player health; and that your buys are contingent on seeing that opinion expressed publicly.
- If appropriate for your brand positioning and strategy, be more active. If you are a painkiller, align with safety and rehabilitation groups that work in the sports of choice. If you are Gatorade, be public with your support of the sport’s changes, and support those stricken with health issues because of their participation. What could be better than the “Powerade Chair for concussion and sports injury research” at a world-renowned medical program? And yes make a big deal of that donation and support!
