Give your brand a sporting chance

As the western world opens up for summer, Asia, Africa and the east coast of Australia are in the middle of another winter of discontent. Shakespeare would be proud of the storyline. An arc that starts with overconfident politicians patting themselves on the back for staring down the virus, some less than optimal use of game theory in selecting vaccine providers and a happy populous eating at Scomo’s all you can eat JobKeeper buffet. Come from the Saver stay for the Seeker.

Then a limo driver carrying Delta provides the plot twist. Our governments are scrambling and now practising my favourite management consultancy trick, ‘Don’t like the data, change the time horizon’. Let’s hope the outcome is less post-modernist than most stuff in my Netflix feed. I vote for a full old school happy ending replete with wagging puppy tails and a Men at Work soundtrack. 

The 32nd Olympics has provided a wonderful respite from the greyness of another COVID winter and a reminder of why we all love our sunburnt country; (you can download our poster tribute with Laurie Lawrence's rousing words here). Whether it was our women dominating in the pool or Patty ‘downtown’ Mills firing the Boomers to a bronze in the Basketball, the Olympics is the ultimate celebration of individual achievement. But most importantly it also celebrates representing the country you call home. It was also refreshing to see athletes start to talk about the psychological burden placed on them by elite competition.

The most hidden stat in the Olympics is not the difference between professional athletes versus amateurs but the difference between leading programs and followers in the medal count. The top two double the next best which are often made up of the most recent and current host countries who ‘overfunded’ sport as a way to engender national pride. In Tokyo, this was Japan and Great Britain. Then it drops off with a few notable exceptions of countries who are pursuing a strategy to ensure they can compete with the giants. Special mention should go to New Zealand. Thirteenth in the medal count, 126th in total population. The definition of a specialism strategy when compared to the raw size approach of China and the United States of Biden. 

Australia is onto the focused approach as well. We win in the pool, sports that contain jeopardy and we have individual success stories across other sports. We wrote a little bit about this last year when we made the comparison between whales and fish as it’s not just the Olympics where this occurs. 

It is in every sphere of competition from the supermarket aisles to the football fields. At your local IGA there is Cadbury and everyone else, in soccer there is the Premier League and every other league. Rather than play the same game you have to change the rules. No one can beat the Premier League for star power but there are other ways to win. The success of the Major League Soccer (MLS) in America is not about attracting the best talent using a central model of ownership but providing the best environment to be a supporter. It’s also handy that purpose-built stadia are perfect for concerts, which contributes significant revenue to a league based around the stadium, not the superstar. They have found a way to win by creating a new blend of value rather than following someone else’s formula. 

Be big, be different, but choose

Strategic choice theory has one central tenet – show me a changed situation and I change my mind. Unless you jump off a cliff as your first action the theory goes that each choice establishes a decision tree that leads to a better outcome as you establish better facts. Take another Australian success story over these last few weeks not on the sports field but on the stock market, Afterpay. They clearly started differently by building a two-sided marketplace where the consumer got a modern version of layaway and the business owner gained access to another promotional platform. While there are many BNPL brands providing a more modern version of credit, what Afterpay focused on was engagement across the four payments to encourage the next purchase to drive its growth. As the sector continued to evolve and larger payment and credit companies joined the party, competition increased and Afterpay was beginning to be caught in the middle. Too small to dominate and too established to evade competition. The math had changed, so Afterpay changed tact and gave up independent ownership for the bearded embrace of Jack Dorsey and Square. He has billions hidden in that beard. 

The rise of dogma 

With the increasing digitisation of our world, we are becoming increasingly dogmatic. Knowledge has historically been something evergreen and evolving rather than acquired and static. Maybe in a world where our every comment is captured and recorded, we have built our own fences to sit behind rather than sit on. 

In our own backyard of branding, we see this through the rise of the expert whose brands are based on teaching a system or a playbook (which it is) but who believe the system is a finish line rather than a jumping-off point for a journey where you learn through your own experience (which it also is).

We see this time and time again whether it is the battle between long-term brand building and short-term tactical (Binet and Fields prove both matters) or the balance between brand as purpose and brand as a promotional image (Powershop, Patagonia and Unilever prove both matters). The key to creative and thus value creation is to embrace the ambiguity and trust yourself to solve for the undefined variable. There is another option other than x and y, black and white. It is an approach more about combining ideas where new value is created.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the rise of dogma and polarities, of I am right, you are wrong, of a place where there is no middle ground.

The case for both

After all, for every Ariarne Titmus, there is a Chelsea Hodges who swam her home in a relay. We have framed ourselves into a corner with so many things, whereas success is always found in between the compulsion of group norms and your individual choices.

My lasting memory of the Olympics was not a win but someone who was losing. In the Decathlon – Cedric Dubler yelling encouragement at Ashley Moloney as he wins our first-ever medal in the event. Knowing you will lose but still focused on helping someone else win. That’s the real Olympic spirit and one we could all do with remembering in the months ahead as our own race to normality continues.

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Be better to each other.