Marketing the Goods in Real Time

If there’s one group that regularly tip my cap, helmet, and sweatband to it’s those who do the marketing for professional sports teams.

I may not always agree with them, and sometimes they’re so over the top I just have to laugh out loud. (Major League Baseball caskets, anyone?) And they do have it somewhat easier than those who labor to market obscure, hard to explain technology. After all, most people get what they do. And they have the automatic of people liking to identify with the home town team in a way that they don’t generally identify with the home town widget.

Still, they do a very effective job of pushing those branded goods, something that’s especially obvious in a sports-obsessed city like Boston that is of late blessed with some pretty successful teams.

The latest push in town is Celtics gear.

Even in their glory days, this was never a basketball town. At best, basketball in its Boston hey days played second fiddle to baseball. But the Celtics, after twenty dormant, lackluster years are back in contention.

And, sports marketers being sports marketers, Boston for the last few weeks has been - if not a sea of Celtics green - at least holding its own with the Red Sox fans in terms of the apparel index (my completely arbitrary sense of who’s wearing what, gauged during my daily walks around downtown). I have even forked over $24 for a shamrock covered tee-shirt for my niece Caroline. (We were at North Station, which is where the Boston Garden  - home court of the Celtics - is located; the playoffs were one; the Pro Shop was open…)

After shirts that have the name and number of players, the most popular shirts out there seem to be the Beat LA ones, a phrase that manages to capture the Boston sports fan mentality perfectly.

Deceptively simple - the Celtics played the LA Lakers in the NBA finals - Beat LA sounds fairly obvious and banal. But it resonates with Boston fans for a couple of reasons. In this most history obsessed and sentimental of sports fandoms, the LA vs. Boston basketball rivalry has been through a couple of generations. First there was Bill Russell vs. Jerry West. (A na, na, na, na, na, nah rivalry that the Celtics completely dominated.) Then there was the more even-steven Larry Bird-Magic Johnson years. (Since then, LA has been great; Boston has been not so great.)

Beat LA also speaks to the Boston fan conceit that “we” are the most knowledgeable fans in existence, that we appreciate great plays/teams/players, etc. Its origins are in the early 1980’s when it became apparent late in a game at Boston Garden that the Celtics were going to lose to another key rival, the Philadelphia 76-ers, who would then be going on to face the Lakers in the NBA finals. With a few seconds to go, the Boston fans started chanting “Beat LA.”

The rest is history.

Beat LA.

Nice pick up by the sports marketers.

Which leads me to a very interesting article that appeared during the playoffs in The Boston Globe. The article, “Shot clock ticks fro sloganeers”, described how the NBA merchandising team, along with their “official outfitter” work to come up with the types of merchandise (primarily tee-shirts) that will grab fan attention and wallet. And, of course, they have to do this in near real time, and for two cities. They need to pick the slogan, come up with the design concept, produce the shirts, and get them in the stores while the playoffs are on.

“Catching the playoff zeitgeist at a sprint is a pressurized affair.”

I’ll say.

There’s a lot of money at stake with this, and if “they” get it right, they can score big with merchandise that is directly playoff related (as opposed to generic play and/or team shirts).

The article is definitely worth a read and, while it’s not directly applicable to those of us in B2B tech marketing, there are some insights for us here, as well.

First and foremost, it reminds us that there will be market opportunities that we will want to jump on a.s.a.p.

A major security breech and, if you’ve got security, or compliance, or process related technology, you may want to be able to jump right on that.

Did your data center make it through the brownout that shut down your entire region one a hot day? If you’re a hosting provider, you want to start touting how your back up systems saved the day.

Key customer get some good press for doing something that relates to what you do. Let the world know.

Economic downturn, and you can demonstrate you’ll make your customers money: have at it.

Even (okay, this is a bit nastier) if your arch rival screws something up big time, you may want to be prepared to capitalize on this. No, you don’t have to put a “ha-ha” ad out there. But, even without naming names, you can make sure the world know how you can take care of the problem that your competition couldn’t. (And if ever there’s an opportunity to get a “trade in” or “switch partners” program going.)

The point: even if we don’t need to react in real-time and order a ka-billion shirts, there will be opportunities when we should be prepared to react quickly and appropriately.

As I write this….

Here’s one of the ideas the NBA guys came up with:

“…how about 16 cigars with the 17th being lighted?”

This is a perfect Boston image.

For years, long time coach (and later GM and a bunch of other things for the Celtics) Red Auerbach lit up a cigar when he realized a game was won. (Those were the days, eh? Can you imagine anyone lighting up a cigar in an arena these days?) Red was involved in all 16 of the NBA championships the Celtics won. He died last year, so he’s not around to light it up.

The merchandising team decided to save this idea for if and when the Celtics won the championship.

When!

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