Brand Spanking New York

The Cultural, Linguistic, and Athletic Origins of the Super Bowl

2012-01-30T18:25:00.034-05:00

DISCLAIMER: NFL® and Super Bowl® are the registered trademarks of the National Football League, and are used herein for informational purposes only. “Super” and “bowl” used individually are property of ancient languages. Word.

At the crossroads of recreation, capitalism, and culture stands the Super Bowl. A brand behemoth on its own, it is a confluence of branded communication unequalled on an annual basis anywhere on earth, bested only every four years by the World Cup in sheer attention level.

So how did we arrive here, where the words “Super” and “Bowl” total so much more — in orders of magnitude — than the sum of their parts? How did a 60-minute competition, held once a year, grow to assume so much importance for so many?

A tangled series of events, set in motion nearly 2,500 years ago, tells the story:

476 BC – AD 220
The game of cuju, or “kick ball,” is invented in China. Its popularity spreads from the military to the royal courts and upper classes. During the Han Dynasty, games are standardized and rules established.

250 BC – AD 600
Romans originate the use of ‘super’ and ‘supra’ (preposition and v. prefix) to signify above, beyond, in addition, to an especially high degree; akin to the Greek hypér and Sanskrit upari.

450 – 1150
‘Bowl,’ derivative of Old English ‘bolla,’ gains usage for cup and pot; hailing from Proto-Germanic bul- as "a round vessel" (Old Norse bolle and Old High German bolla) and from Proto-Indo-European bhl- from “base” and bhel- "to blow, swell."

618 – 907
Cuju is improved during the Tang Dynasty by upgrading the common feather-stuffed ball with an air-filled, double-hulled model. Goals at each end, consisting of two vertical posts with a net between them, become the standard.

828
The earliest account of medieval football in Europe comes from the Historia Brittonum, attributed to Nennius. Played between neighboring villages, this code of football involves an unlimited number of players on opposing teams who clash in a heaving mass to drag an inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of town.

1170
The first description of an actual football match in England is written by William FitzStephen, who records while visiting London that "after dinner all the youths of the city goes out into the fields for the very popular game of ball."

1314
Convinced, accurately, that young people are more interested in playing football than practicing archery in London, King Edward II issues a proclamation banning it on April 13:

Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls (grosses pelotes de pee) from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.

Over the next 300 years, football is officially banned by more than 30 royal and local laws.

1400 – 1450
‘Super’ enters late Middle English lexicon.

1567
Rugby School is founded 85 miles northwest of London as a provision in the will of business magnate Lawrence Sheriff, who made his fortune as a grocer for Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth I. Rugby will become one of the best-known schools in the country, and regarded as an innovator of education as well as “one of the earliest examples of the delight in athleticism.”

1620-1630
‘Super-’ is employed as a prefix to create new English words emphasizing the object.

1747
Football is played at Eton College. Westminster starts two years later, and by the 1750s Harrow, Shrewsbury, Winchester, and Charterhouse all take up the sport.

1800s
Football explodes in popularity among public schools in England.

1823
William Webb Ellis, a student at Rugby School, shows "a fine disregard for the rules of football, as played in his time" by picking up the ball and running to the opposing goal.

1837
‘Super’ is popularized in the United States as a colloquialism for "first-rate, excellent."

1840s
Under the supervision of headmaster Thomas Arnold, Rugby School becomes known for “muscular Christianity,” inventing a derivative of football in which players are able to pick up the ball and run with it. This style of play would later be known as “Rugby Football.”

As British soldiers from schools which played Rugby Football are stationed in Canada, so too is the game imported to North America — and subsequently introduced to Canadian colleges.

1845
Three boys at Rugby School are tasked with detailing the school's unique football rules. It is the first time any form of football is codified.

1855
Manufactured inflatable balls are introduced in the United States. Much more regular in shape than handmade balls, kicking and carrying become more skillful.

1859
Born to Leverett L. and Ellen Cornwell Camp on April 17 in New Haven, Connecticut, son Walter.

1861
The first documented gridiron football match is played at University College, a college of the University of Toronto, on November 9. One of the participants is (Sir) William Mulock, later Chancellor of the school. A football club is formed at the university soon afterward.

That same year, the "Boston game" — a hybrid of Association football (soccer) and the "running" or "carrying game" (Rugby Union) — is played by an organized group known as Oneida Football Club on Boston Common. Under this code of football, a player can run with the ball, pass it or dribble it (known as “babying”).

1863
The Oneidas play a game against a team of non-members in November, which the Oneidas win easily. The game catches the attention of the press, and the "Boston game" spreads rapidly throughout the 1860s.

1864
At Trinity College, also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devise rules based on Rugby Football.

1865
Modern Canadian football begins when British Army officers play local civilians in Montreal. The game soon wins a following.

1868
Montreal Football Club is formed, and is the first recorded non-university football club in Canada.

1869
The first documented game of intercollegiate “football” is played between teams of 25 a-side from Rutgers University and Princeton University (the College of New Jersey at the time) on November 6 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The game is played under soccer-style Association rules, then just six years old. “Association” in this context would later be abbreviated to “Assoc. Football” and ultimately become the American term for English football, “soccer.”

Throwing or running with the ball is not allowed. Each team is comprised of 11 “fielders,” 12 “bulldogs,” and two “peanutters” whose job it was to loiter near the opposing team’s goal and score from unguarded positions. Rutgers wins by a total of 6 “runs” to Princeton’s 4. Despite the contest’s adherence to Association rules, Rutgers will from this point forward refer to itself as The Birthplace of College Football.

1873
Representatives from Yale, Rutgers, Princeton, and Columbia meet on October 20 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to agree to a set of regulations of a form of football essentially Association football (soccer) in character.

Harvard University turns down the invitation — and the sport — in favor of the aggressive physical contact and ball-carrying provisions of "the Boston Game."

1874
On May 14 and 15, Harvard hosts Montreal’s McGill University for a pair of rugby matches — the first of which played by Harvard’s interpretation of the rules, and the second by McGill’s.

The Canadians’ regulations allow not only running the ball, but throwing it laterally and backwards. Most notably, McGill’s rules include the “try,” a provision under which a player may run the ball past his opponent’s goal line and “touch it down,” he is given an opportunity to score again by a free kick.

Harvard wins the first match 3-0; the second ends in a scoreless draw. Afterward, both teams agree the Canadian version is preferable to its American counterpart.

1875
The first intercollegiate football game played under rules which modern audiences would recognize as football takes place between Harvard University and Tufts University on June 4. It is also the first time a football team wears a uniform (Harvard’s white shirts and pants, with crimson trimming and hose). Tufts wins 1-0.

Later that season, Harvard and Yale play for the first time. The Crimson wins this initial meeting, held at Hamilton Field in New Haven, 4-0.

1876
Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Yale meet to adopt England’s Rugby Union rules with one key alteration: no longer would a “touch down” be nullified when the opposing team kicks a field goal.

At Yale, when Captain Eugene V. Baker calls for candidates for the rugby team, freshman standout athlete Walter Camp instantly wins the regular halfback position.

1878
As a junior, Camp attends the game's second "convention,” as the legislative assembly of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale was known, on October 9. He aggressively stakes a position of leadership by moving to reduce the Rugby institution of fifteen players per side to eleven. The convention rejects the proposition.

1879
Camp renews the motion and again it is rejected. Here Walter sets in motion his second reform — to count safeties as scoring plays, but adversely to the side that makes them. This suggestion is also rejected.

1880
Walter Camp, now coach of his alma mater’s team, begins his campaign of several major adjustments to the game — and almost single-handedly transforms English Rugby into American Football: an eleven-player team, a smaller field, and the “scrimmage” — a player handing the ball backward to begin the play — are all instituted.

For the next three years, Camp would make more adjustments, namely: in the occasion the offensive team fails to gain five yards after three downs, it is forced to surrender the ball; and the structure of a seven-man line, a quarterback, two halfbacks, and a fullback is established.

1883
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche states "Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen" ("I will teach you the Superman") in his 1883 work Also sprach Zarathustra. In doing so he coins the term "Übermensch" (“Superman”) to describe the higher state he felt men ought to aspire to achieve.

1889
In association with Caspar Whitney of Harper’s Magazine, Walter Camp picks the nation’s best players at each position and names his list the “All-America Team.” It is recognized as official.

1890
Members of Pasadena’s distinguished Valley Hunt Club meet to brainstorm ways to promote their area as a mid-winter destination for former neighbors from the East Coast and Midwest. They agreed that chariot races, jousting, foot races, polo, and tug-of-war under would be held under the Californian sun. The abundance of fresh flowers, even in winter, prompted the club to add another showcase for Pasadena's charm — a parade would precede the competitions, where entrants decorate carriages with hundreds of blooms. They call it “The Tournament of Roses.”

1892
On November 12, William “Pudge” Walter Heffelinger, a Yale All-American guard, is paid $500 by the Allegheny Athletic Association to play in a game against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, making him the first professional football player.

1895
‘Super’ — slang for ‘superior’ — proliferates American slang.

The first all-professional football game is played in Pennsylvania between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeannette Athletic Club.

The Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association is founded as a non-profit organization to manage their annual festival, which has grown too large for the Valley Hunt Club to handle.

1898
The first known reference to "The Game" occurs in a letter from former Harvard captain A. Holden to Harvard coach Cam Forbes about permanently moving the annual Yale matchup to the end of the season.

1901
The Tournament of Roses Association decides to enhance the following year’s festivities by adding a football game, the first post-season college football game ever held.

1902
The "Tournament East-West football game" is played in Pasadena on January 1 between the University of Michigan team, representing the East, and Stanford University, representing the West.

With the scoreboard at 49–0 in Michigan’s favor during the third quarter, Stanford quits. The game is so lopsided that, for the next 15 years, Tournament of Roses officials take football off the schedule and return to a full complement of chariot races.

1903
Scotland’s oldest football club, Queen’s Park F.C., christen their new home, Hampden Park, in Glasgow’s Mount Florida neighborhood. It is the first modern bowl-shaped stadium, and would be the world’s largest football arena until 1950.

Nietzsche’s term "Übermensch" is brought into English by Irish playwright and London School of Economics co-founder George Bernard Shaw, in the title to his Don Juan-themed play, Man and Superman.

1905
Eighteen players are killed this year due to lack of protective gear and the use of interlocking defensive formations, as well as the practice of dragging ball-carrying players forward to gain extra yards. To reduce injuries, a neutral zone between scrimmage lines is introduced, and it is mandatory that six players from each team be positioned at this neutral zone. The forward pass, a distinct break from Rugby Football, is also legalized. The sport’s popularity soars.

1913
Vincent Thomas Lombardi born to Enrico and Matilda on June 11 in Brooklyn, New York.

1914
The Yale Bowl, the nation’s first bowl-shaped stadium, is completed on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut for a total of $750,000. With a capacity of 61,446, it is the largest stadium built since the Roman Coliseum.

1916
Football returns to The Tournament of Roses schedule, and the crowd of 40,000 in attendance to witness Washington State University beat Brown University 14-0 dwarfs the capacity of the Tournament Park stands.

1919
The Green Bay Packers are founded on August 11 by former high-school football rivals Earl "Curly" Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun. Lambeau solicits funds for uniforms from his employer, the Indian Packing Company, and receives $500 for uniforms and equipment on the condition that the team be named for its sponsor.

Although Lambeau plays halfback, he is both the primary runner and passer, common practice in the single wing offense. He throws the Packers' first official pass, first official touchdown pass, and kicks the team’s first official field goal.

1920
On August 20, representatives of four Ohio football teams — the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles — meet in a Canton, Ohio auto showroom to form a new professional football league.

On September 17, American-Indian Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe — player-coach of the Canton Bulldogs — successfully leads the effort to found the American Professional Football Association (APFA) in Canton. It includes eleven teams from four states.

In Southern California, Tournament of Roses Association president William L. Leishman envisions a stadium similar to the Yale Bowl, the first great modern football stadium, to be built on the dry riverbed of Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco area.

1921
On land purchased by the city of Pasadena, construction begins on a new horseshoe-shaped bowl stadium designed by Myron Hunt to host the Tournament East-West football game. The name of the stadium alternates between "Tournament of Roses Stadium" and "Tournament of Roses Bowl."

On August 27, the Packers are granted a franchise in the new APFA. Financial troubles plague the team and the franchise is forfeited.

1922
On June 24, the APFA is reorganized and renamed The National Football League.

Lambeau finds new financial backers and regains the Packers franchise. These backers, known as the "Hungry Five." form the Green Bay Football Corporation.

1923
Just before the grand new stadium in Pasadena hosts its first New Year’s football game, it is officially named “The Rose Bowl” after its predecessor at Yale.

1924

Harold Edward "Red" Grange, a junior at the University of Illinois, earns national prominence with his October 18 performance against the University of Michigan. The first game ever held in Memorial Stadium — built to honor University of Illinois students and alumni who served in World War I — Grange returns the opening kickoff for a 95-yard touchdown and scores three more touchdowns in the first 12 minutes. After sitting out the second quarter, Grange returns in the second half to run 11 yards for a fifth touchdown and pass for a sixth as Illinois ends Michigan's 20-game unbeaten streak, 39-14.

1925

Red Grange signs with the NFL's Chicago Bears the day after his final college game. Player/manager George Halas agrees to a contract for a 19-game barnstorming tour which earns Grange $100,000 — this, when the typical league salary was $100 per game.

The 67-day tour of Red Grange and the Chicago Bears across the country is credited with legitimizing professional football and the NFL in the United States.

1927
Colonel James M. Thomson, publisher of the New Orleans Item, presents the idea of a New Year's Day football game to sports editor Fred Digby, who comes up with the title "Sugar Bowl” for the proposed exhibition.

1930
Writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster meet at Cleveland Glenville High School as members of the school’s newspaper staff.

1932
Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and wife Lyda give birth to son Lamar on August 2 in El Dorado, Arkansas.

With Miami suffering from the Great Depression and the Florida land bust, George E. Hussey, official greeter of Miami, seeks to boost the local economy by organizing a game similar to Pasadena's Rose Bowl, named the Palm Festival Game. It would pit a local team against an invited opponent.

With two years remaining in his secondary program to enter the Catholic clergy, Vince Lombardi decides not to pursue the priesthood, leaves Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, and enrolls at Brooklyn’s St. Francis Preparatory high school.

1933
On January 2, the first Palm Festival Game takes place at Moore Park in Miami between the University of Miami and Manhattan College. Miami wins 7-0.

Siegel and Shuster create “The Superman,” a bald, telepathic villain bent on dominating the entire world. The character appears in the short story "The Reign of the Super-Man" from Science Fiction #3, a science fiction fanzine published by Jerry Siegel. Later in the school year, the pair re-envision the character as a hero in the mythic tradition to fight for social justice. They dress him in primary colors with shorts over his tights (a typical circus strong-man outfit), an “S” on his chest, and — in unprecedented fashion for fictional heroes of the day — a cape.

1935
For the first time, the Rose Bowl Game is not the only college bowl game to take place on New Year’s Day:

Rose Bowl: University of Alabama 29, Stanford University 13
Sugar Bowl (New Orleans): Tulane University 20, Temple University 14
Orange Bowl (Miami): Bucknell University 26, University of Miami 0

This remarkable day firmly cements the term “bowl game” in the American lexicon.

1936
Fair Park Stadium, located on the grounds of the Texas State Fair in South Dallas, Texas, is officially renamed the “Cotton Bowl.”

1937
Texas Christian University beats Marquette University in the inaugural Cotton Bowl Classic, 16-6. Despite a crowd of more than 17,000, the game loses money.

1938
In June, Superman first appears on newsstands as the lead feature in Action Comics #1.

1939
The first NFL All-Star Game is played at Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field between the 1938 NFL champion New York Giants and an assembly of all-stars from other NFL teams as well as two independent teams, the Los Angeles Bulldogs and the Hollywood Stars.

The self-titled Superman comic book is launched to widespread success.

1940
‘Super’ rhyming reduplication form super-duper is first attested.

1945
Superboy debuts in More Fun Comics #101.

1951
After WWII, the NFL-AFL All-Star Game is revived and re-named the Pro Bowl, in the adherence to post-season college game concept which has steadily gained in popularity.

The Adventures of Superman TV series begins filming in California.

1959
After being rejected once by the NFL for an expansion franchise, and again in an attempt to buy the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals, Lamar Hunt establishes the eight-team American Football League (AFL) as owner of the Dallas Texans.

On February 2, the Green Bay Packers hire New York Giants assistant Vince Lombardi as head coach and general manager.

1962
There are now 12 college bowl games: Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Sun, Gator, Tangerine, Liberty, Bluebonnet, Aviation, Gotham, and Mercy.

1963
Losing the audience battle to crosstown NFL franchise the Dallas Cowboys, Lamar Hunt moves the Texans to Kansas City and renames them the Chiefs.

On September 7, the Pro Football Hall of Fame opens in Canton, Ohio with 17 charter inductees.

1964
Chemist Norman Stingley creates a new toy by compressing a synthetic rubber material under 80 atmospheres of pressure. With the help of Wham-O Manufacturing Company he names it "Super Ball." With its amazingly high coefficient of restitution, it can be made to "leap" three-story buildings and instantly becomes a hit nationwide.

1965
On January 1, for the first time, more people polled in a national survey choose pro football over baseball as their favorite sport.

In December, total sales of Super Balls tops six million. U.S. Presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy has five dozen shipped to the White House for the amusement of the staff.

1966
On June 8, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle announces that the NFL and AFL have reached an agreement to merge into a single league by 1970. In the meantime, the two leagues' champions will meet each January in a new AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

In a July 25 letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Lamar Hunt writes, "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon." He would later say the idea came to him when he saw his children playing with a Super Ball. Though not official, the media gets a hold of and adopts the name instantly.

1967
The first AFL-NFL Championship Game is played on January 15 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum by the NFL Champion Green Bay Packers (14-2) and AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs (12-3-1). The Packers, led by Coach Lombardi, win 35-10. Members of the Packers receive a bonus of $15,000; the Chiefs each receive half that.

Broadcast on both NBC and CBS, the game draws the largest television audience ever for a sporting event. Advertising air time averages $40,000 per 30-second spot.

1968
The second AFL-NFL Championship Game is held at Miami’s Orange Bowl on January 14. Again, Lombardi’s Packers emerge victorious — this time, against the Oakland Raiders. A sellout crowd of 75,546 is on hand to witness the 33-14 drubbing, while an estimated 39 million watch at home.

1969
The third and final AFL-NFL Championship Game kicks off in the Orange Bowl, held there for the second consecutive year. In the week leading up to the game, The New York Jets’ QB Joe Namath brashly guarantees a victory against the Baltimore Colts, who are 18-point favorites. The Jets back him up and win 16-7. Fears that the AFL can’t compete with the more established NFL teams are alleviated.

On March 7, the NFL files trademark application for “Super Bowl” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

December 31 marks the end of the AFL.

1970
On New Year’s Day, the AFL-NFL merger takes full effect; the AFL is officially scuttled and the NFL assumes a two-conference structure: the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference.

Despite being the first time “Super Bowl” is officially used as the name of the NFL’s championship game, Super Bowl IV kicks off at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans before an NFL-record crowd of 80,562. (The three previous championship games are retroactively named Super Bowls.) Kansas City wins their first championship with a score of 13-7 over the Minnesota Vikings.

On September 3, Vince Lombardi passes away of colon cancer at age 57.

1971
Vince Lombardi is posthumously inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The Super Bowl Trophy is renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy by the NFL.

1973
On January 15, The Miami Dolphins defeat the Washington Redskins 14-7 to win Super Bowl VII and cap a perfect 17-0 season.

1982
On January 24, Motown’s own Diana Ross ushers in a new era of elaborately produced halftime entertainment at Super Bowl XVI in Detroit. The San Francisco Forty-Niners beat the Cincinnati Bengals 26-21.

1994
On January 31, Dallas defeats Buffalo in Super Bowl XXVIII for the second straight year to become just the third team in NFL history to win four Super Bowls. The Bills lose their fourth Super Bowl in four years, a record.

2009
On February 1, the Pittsburgh Steelers become the first team to win six Super Bowls. With the tradition of giving Super Bowl rings to the winning team, Steelers fans nickname it "One for the Thumb."

2011
With their 31-25 victory over the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, the Packers hold the most NFL titles with 13 (4 Super Bowls, 9 NFL championships).

It is the most-watched television program in US history, and the most recent of many Super Bowl broadcasts to set an audience record. Eclipsing Super Bowl XLIV by 4.5 million viewers, it ascends to the top where it joins seven other Super Bowls in the top ten largest viewerships of all time (and 20 of the top 45):

Super Bowl XLV -- 111 million viewers (2011)
Super Bowl XLIV -- 106.5 million viewers (2010)
M*A*S*H* series finale -- 106 million viewers (1983)
Super Bowl XLII -- 97.5 million (2008)
Super Bowl XLIII -- 95.4 million (2009)
Super Bowl XXX -- 94.1 million (1996)
Super Bowl XLI -- 93.2 million (2007)
Super Bowl XLII -- 93.2 million (2008)
Cheers 100-minute finale special -- 93.1 million (1993)
Super Bowl XXVII -- 91 million (1993)

2012
Super Bowl XLVI will take place Sunday, February 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. It will be the sixth time a Super Bowl will feature two teams who have played each other in a previous Super Bowl. The event will pit the New York Giants against the New England Patriots, a rematch of Super Bowl XLII, widely considered one of, if not the, most exciting in history.

The air time for the average 30-second TV spot during the broadcast cost $3.5 million — up 13% from 2011 — with the highest-priced slot going for $4 million, a 10,000% increase over 1967.

"Shadowplay" (2009)

2012-01-26T21:35:00.007-05:00

Original oil on canvas, 20" x 16"

Steve Susi (2009)

Made in the USA: Interbrand's 2011 Top 10 Global Brands are All American

2012-01-14T17:20:00.017-05:00

For the first time I can remember, the top 10 entries in Interbrand's Best Global Brands report are American:

Coca-Cola (Atlanta, GA) $71.8B
IBM (Armonk, NY) $69.9B
Microsoft (Redmond, WA) $59B
Google (Mountain View, CA) $55.3B
General Electric (Fairfield, CT) $42.8B
McDonald's (Oak Brook, IL) $35.5B
Intel (Santa Clara, CA) $35.2B
Apple (Cupertino, CA) $33.4B
Disney (Burbank, CA) $29B
Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA) $28.4B

And what's really interesting to me is that five of those are Californian. Hang Ten indeed, dude.

Seems every day we read and hear about how much our world has shrunk since the advent of the web and advances in mobile. But with Nokia's slide from #5 in 2009 to #8 last year, and then down to a worrisome #14 this year — in addition to Toyota's departure from the top 10 in 2010 and ongoing safety woes in 2011 — it's all Star Spangled banners yet waving in that rarified air.

What's behind this year's uniquely Yank complexion? Coincidence? Perhaps, but I subscribe to the belief that due to our worldwide economic plague, the brands best able to claim or retain top rankings are those with a total commitment to nimble innovation and drive to build ever-stronger customer relationships.

When you're running an organization that fits that description, you're the first to abandon the processes, partners, and products that don't fulfill expectations in lieu of something better. The benefits of a short memory and no allegiance to "the way it's always been done," you might say. And that's a uniquely American (or by my posit above, Californian) way of thinking.

Seven of the top 10 brands hail from the technology sector, which might corroborate my point. Or how 'bout this: the shining example in my opinion is Apple, which registered a mind-blowing 58% rise in brand value in 2011 — that on the heels of a 37% increase in 2010 and a 12% jump in '09. To put these impressive numbers in context, the second-largest rise in this report's top 10 was seen by Google, which grew 27% last year. After the search giant, Intel's growth of 10% comes in third as far as year-over-year increases go. And just to showcase the widely reported difference in design/development philosophy between Apple and rival Microsoft, Gates's group actually went minus-3% (yet held on to the #3 spot for the third report in a row).

"By refining digital strategies and strengthening social networks, today's most valuable brands are creating more relevant customer engagements," said Jez Frampton, Interbrand's Global CEO. "These brands have seized opportunities to host richer, more tailored experiences, which, in turn, help drive longer-term loyalty and value among consumers and partners alike."

After two years of down-economy talk and socio-political punditry about the death of American business, I'm elated to see how well our top brands — namely the tech sector's best — are actually improving their ranks and growing in value.

Or to quote Jez: "Consistency, relevance and commitment are imperative if a brand is to keep pace in our rapidly changing world." Sounds oddly familiar.

Penn State: another brand irrevocably changed.

2011-11-10T11:27:00.017-05:00

Naturally, regarding the alleged child abuse events that took place on Penn State's campus more than a decade ago, the lifelong effects on the reported victims are far and away the most important to consider. No one disputes that.

But this is a branding blog, and I'd be substantially remiss to ignore the casualties piling up in a town ironically named Happy Valley. With the rapid cascade of events this week, we've seen how just three 24-hour news cycles is all it takes to undo six decades of generosity, selflessness, and brand stewardship — of not only the Nittany Lions Football program, but the whole of Penn State University, which was known only as a quiet agricultural school before Joseph Vincent Paterno showed up on campus 62 years ago.

Rightfully regarded as one of the gold standards of ethics and honesty in college athletics, Penn State is now the target of national scrutiny for covering up crimes too disturbing to repeat, and perhaps even more stinging to its faithful millions, a punchline to social network tragicomedy (where the prevailing nickname for the vaunted institution has become "State Penn").

We have no idea what exactly was conveyed (or how) by then-grad assistant Mike McQueary to JoePa after eyewitnessing the Lasch Hall shower incident. Was it expressed to the legendary coach in dismay or alarm, with certainty or doubt? I don't think we'll ever know these details. But in those fleeting seconds, somewhere within the nonverbals and furtive glances of shock or embarrassment or pain or even acknowledgement, the fate of multiple immense brands weighed in the balance. JoePa, Nittany Lions Football, Penn State University, Penn State Athletics, Happy Valley, and indeed, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are all thoroughly damaged brands today. And at least one of them, it seems, irreparably.

Photo: Philadelphia Inquirer

There's a lesson here about brand extensions. Penn State is an institution of higher learning. It is a school which enjoys the many financial and brand exposure benefits of a successful football program. And because there are no TV networks devoted 24 hours a day to academics, it's safe to assume that society at large feels the more compelling story about Penn State for the past 40 years has been its athletics. So Penn State Football, the sub-brand, is fed and nurtured and protected and, before you know it, it's so well fostered that it outgrows its parent. In fact, the brand extension can often be found feeding and protecting its parent from harm. However, when the sub-brand is severely tarnished, the parent brand — which is in an altogether different business from its child — is so interdependent that it is nearly killed alongside the entity to which it gave birth.

It is, in both a real and a Shakespearean sense, a tragedy.

Two personal thoughts regarding this case that are peripheral to the brand discussion above:

One of the many facets ignored by the press in this story is JoePa's age at the time of the McQueary conversation. Can a 76 year-old man really even comprehend that a longtime coaching partner of his, himself in his sixties, was even capable of performing such an inhuman act, in a public place, in full view of passersby? I think a person of that generation — JoePa was born in 1926, six years before the Southeastern Conference started, for heaven's sake — who went to the administration with the report the next morning, did what he felt he should do; and with such a sensitive legal and social issue, decided to leave it to those who run the school, not the football program, to dispense its protocol. Maybe after ESPN's done sensationalizing everything for every drop of ratings it can squeeze out of this unfortunate scenario, they'll dig a little deeper and discuss the details too.
What happens if, somehow, Sandusky is found not guilty? From all accounts close to the situation, it's not likely; but legally, it's possible.

Congratulations OSU,

2011-07-27T11:13:00.003-04:00

you've officially dropped to #120 in the Best Brands in College Football.

Starting in just a few weeks you'll begin the long, arduous process of brand recovery. It will be extremely difficult. Ugly. Painful. Rife with embarrassing allusions in the press and mocking punnery on homemade signs in the GameDay crowd. And the country will be rooting even harder against you than ever before (which I previously considered unimaginable).

But rest assured that true brand loyals like myself will be there with you, though it may rarely seem evident for a while.

When those we love most in life falter, well, that's when loved ones are needed most.

As I wrote in the original post last fall, when disaster strikes great brands, they are bowed but unbroken.

Let's see just how great you are.

The Top Nine Brands of College Football

2010-09-09T14:03:00.023-04:00

With the first full spate of NCAA 2010 games in the books, I’d like to celebrate the anticipated return of the world’s greatest sport by combining my professional and personal obsessions: branding and college football.

But why top nine and not ten? Because, as a massive Ohio State fan, it’s only fair I exclude my Buckeyes from the list (otherwise they’d win hands-down and that’s hardly objective). I could extol the virtues of the OSU brand for hours — and I probably will in this blog sometime soon — but it’s also fun and enlightening to discuss other successful programs too.

So instead of replacing Ohio State with another school, I leave one spot vacated in their honor. Kind of like the Heisman Trust is about to do with the 2005 Trophy.

Now then, what makes a brand great? Why are Coca-Cola and IBM always at the top of the list, year in and year out? Because they excel at what we call the Three Cs of Branding: Clarity, Consistency, and Constancy.

Just so we’re on the same page, here are the Three Cs as defined in the Brand Strategy section of my site:

Clarity — In everything you do, internally and externally, be just as clear about what the brand promises as what it doesn’t. Your messages reinforce one idea, stated candidly, with no room for misinterpretation.
Consistency — A different set of Three C’s applies here: compromise + contradiction = confusion. Do not waiver in your plan. Stay the course or the brand will get lost, guaranteeing an uncertain audience. Experiencing the same things time and time again breeds instant recall, and that's what we're here to earn. Translation: if no one remembers you, you never existed. 
Constancy — Otherwise known as frequency. Every other brand (or team), both inside your vertical (or sport) and out, is working hard every moment to take your place. Keep at it no matter what.

This means that a reliably high-quality product (long heritage of winning games and championships — both conference and national — as well as individual player hardware and the behavior of the coaching staff) represented in a unique, memorable way (helmet/uniform design, mascot, colors, traditions) comprise a great college football marque. Remember, it’s not all about wins and losses, or else this would just be a regurgitation of the all-time list of winningest teams.

In short, a brand is merely a story that’s told every time you come in contact with it. So this list is also about reputation, presentation, triumphs, failures, mythology, conflict, perseverance, broken promises, expectations, heartbreaks, and all the countless elements that make up any brand.

And with that, you’ve just elected to receive the Top Nine Brands of College Football as they stand today:

9. University of California, Los Angeles Bruins

Ah, Los Angeles — the blazing sun in an azure sky (smog notwithstanding); golden sand crowning a blue Pacific; blonde-and-blue-eyed surfer girls from Laguna Beach to Santa Monica. And the Bruins’ one-of-a-kind uniforms.

When coach Red Sanders came to UCLA for the 1949 season he changed the navy blue football uniforms to a lighter shade that would be more visible on the field and in the film room. He dubbed his creation "Powderkeg Blue," i.e., a powder blue ready to explode. Officially, UCLA has named this unique shade “True Blue.” (And if you wanna know the company line, the colors “represent blue for the ocean and gold for the California poppy, ‘The Golden State’ motto, and sunsets.” Sounds like a single’s ad.)

UCLA is one of only two programs on my list that don’t count among the top-ten winningest of all time, but as I mentioned above, wins and losses are but one ingredient — albeit an extremely important one — in a century-long recipe. The Bruins currently rank #56 all-time in wins, with a respectable but not mind-blowing .587 win percentage.

But let’s review a few of the other qualities that constitute this brand. Since 1983, their home field has been the Rose Bowl for chrimeny’s sake, home to the oldest post-season classic (and parade) in the sport, the Granddaddy of Them All. Ever been to a game there? It is just so L.A. The most fun I’ve ever had despite my team losing. Bikini tops, kegs, and Frisbees abound in the pre-game parking lot, which every other day of the week is the 18^th fairway of Brookside Golf Club.

The script on their helmet hasn’t changed since 1954. They’ve got a national championship and a Heisman under their belt, an NCAA-record eight consecutive bowl wins (’82 - ‘88, ‘91), and their fair share of first-rounders and hall-of-famers. The True Blue and Gold have four wins over AP number-one-ranked teams, a boast Michigan, Alabama, and Nebraska cannot make.

But in branding, elements such as consistency, differentiation, and presentation can do so much. UCLA does that in spades. They’ve stayed true to their origins and brought a genuinely cool, Californian presence to a game defined long ago by its conservative Northeastern/Midwestern roots. In other words, they’re an advertisement for their surroundings, and thus a distillation of Los Angeles itself.

They’re different from everyone else, and they simply do not deviate. Win or lose, they are to be respected. They have an aura, something which brands from every vertical just wish they had. And that’s why the Bruins come in at #9.

8. University of Miami Hurricanes

Despite coach Randy Shannon’s best efforts, changing The U’s rep from “thugs” to “hugs” will take a good chunk of time. It is possible, particularly with the rapid-fire messaging on social networks, a 24-hour news cycle, and a country known for its penchant for giving second, third, and fourth chances, but it’s gonna require a whole lot of clean wins and an even larger lot of scandal-free headlines to make that happen for good.

A relative youngster as major programs go, the University of Miami fielded its first team in 1926 but didn’t hit its stride until Howard Schnellenberger installed a pro-style, pass-heavy offense, first showcased in freshman QB Jim Kelly’s 280-yard, three-TD performance in a 26-10 upset over Penn State at Happy Valley in 1979.

With that, the American sports powers-that-be were on official notice: “This is a completely new day for you people.”

You people was what my brother, friends, and I were disparagingly called by a dozen-or-so Miami fans while we imbibed at McSorley’s here in New York the day before the Kickoff Classic, which matched the ‘Canes against Ohio State in Giants Stadium to start the ’99 season.

“You’re the establishment,” they yelled, “and we’re here to stay.”

Though it’s taking every fiber of my being at the moment, I won’t go into the epithets hurled back and forth that hazy afternoon. We were twenty-somethings caught up in the moment, and it nearly came to fisticuffs. (And that’s nothing compared to the scene in Sun Devil Stadium at the ’02 national championship, but I digress.)

Suffice it to say, one day from facing a team that’s fifth all-time in wins, has seven national championships, the most Heisman Trophies (tied), invented the helmet sticker and sleeve stripes, blah blah blah, those Miami guys simply didn’t know or care about all that.

All they knew was right now. They were disrupters, just as their team was, intent on intimidating the status quo.

From a branding perspective, that’s often our objective. By the time Miami even fielded a football team, the Buckeyes already had three undefeated seasons in the Big Ten. “Who cares about that?” they wondered aloud.

They were and may always be the definition of swagger. Before Sebastian the Ibis became famous (and I think that’s a really cool mascot, by the way) the world of college football “handed the ball to the official after a touchdown.” The Miami Hurricanes threw it into the stands.

Of course, the rapid acquisition of fame and riches often leads to less savory behavior, for which Miami’s brand is still paying. A wide variety of scandals and controversies were perhaps summarized best by the famous “Catholics vs. Convicts” game, which ended with the ‘Canes 1987 national championship dreams dashed in a 31-30 loss to eventual champ Notre Dame under the gaze of Touchdown Jesus. In true Miami form, the Golden Domers were goaded into a fistfight with their opponents in the tunnel before kickoff.

Five national championships and two Heismans later, the University of Miami is now counted among the establishment, without a doubt. An incredible record and consistent brand reinforcement have turned this little school hidden in the orange trees and green palms — what perfect and representational team colors — into a perennial recruiting and competitive juggernaut. (And I can't omit the "U" helmet design from the conversation. It's absolutely fantastic, with a minimalist composition that runs completely counter to the team's 2 Live Crew-esque reputation.)

As a college football fan, I hate ‘em thoroughly. As a brand manager, the Miami Hurricanes are a dream-come-true. They generate two emotions which translate to lots of cash and even more attention: despise and delight. Oh the marketing opportunities.

If coach Shannon has his way, we may never see the ‘Canes of old; however, as long as anyone born before, say, 1996 is involved, theirs will always be a brand that punches you in the eye, talks about yo momma, and asks no questions later.

Congratulations to the University of Miami from a graduate of Miami University, you’re the #8 best brand in college football. (And for those of you confused by what you just read, do some homework and learn about the original Miami, 116 years The U’s elder. Recognize.)

7. University of Nebraska Cornhuskers

Just how clear and confident is a sans-serif scarlet “N” and helmet stripe on a solid cream helmet? I guess some cheeseball designers out there (or rednecks that don’t understand good, clean design) might see it as boring, to which I say, “bull puckey.” As understated as anything that’s revered from the Midwest, Nebraska has remained a giant of the sport for decades and consistently looks the part.

The record books show 46 conference championships and part or all of five national championships — three of which they earned in four seasons, joining the ’46-’49 Fighting Irish as the only teams to do so. And the rivalry with Oklahoma? The stuff of legends. In the Big Eight’s 89-year history before its transformation into the Big XII, Nebraska or Oklahoma won or shared the conference title 71 times.

With so much consistent success over generations, one might expect Husker Nation to be populated by self-important pricks. On the contrary. Just as in branding, where it’s common to loathe a brand because of its fan base — the BMW and Duke Basketball brands both enjoy millions of loyalists who everyone else hates, not because of the elegant, successful, well-built object of their obsession, but because their enthusiasts actually suck as people — Nebraska fans are universally known as the nicest, most welcoming, knowledgeable folks in the game. Oh, and when the sea of scarlet pours into Lincoln on fall Saturdays, Memorial Stadium itself becomes, literally, the state’s third-largest city.

Also, like all good brands, they’ve properly extended and specialized the core offering with a sub-brand that effectively reinforces the parent brand, in their case, the dread “Blackshirt” defense. The nickname originated in the early ‘60s and continues today as a reference to the black practice jerseys worn by first-string defensive players to contrast with the red jerseys worn by the starting offense in drills. The unit was so widely feared that the name, born in scrimmage, has become synonymous with Nebraska toughness and black-n-blue grit.

The Huskers have had to weather ups and downs with product quality and perception, which happens to every single program (and brand). With Coach Pelini taking the reigns in ’08, their resurgence has been steady, culminating in one of the most exciting Big XII championship games in recent memory, with many saying that Nebraska actually deserved the “W” against Texas due to a missed call by the sideline ref as time expired. With true class, though, the Nebraska program didn’t complain, but rather, merely vowed never again to put themselves in a position such that one call, right or wrong, could lose them a game.

Typical. This is what brands steeped in excellence do — they don’t start whining, they get back to winning. And Nebraska will be back, that I guarantee. Sooner rather than later. And for all that, they claim #7 on my list of the greatest brands in college football.

6. University of Southern California Trojans

There’s a lot to talk about with this power-brand from La La Land — particularly recently — where the W column speaks loudest: #10 all-time in wins, a winning percentage of .706, six Heisman Trophies (soon to be five; we’ll get to that in a bit), 47 bowl appearances (second-most all-time), 37 Pac-10 championships, and 11 national championships.

Straight out of central casting is their recent phalanx of poster-boy quarterbacks. Marcus Allen, Lynn Swann, Charles White, Junior Seau, and the infamous O.J. Simpson have been household names for decades. Their alumni roster is a who’s-who of hall-of-famers. Hell, John Wayne played outside linebacker for the Trojans in the ‘20s (before losing his scholarship to an injury sustained bodysurfing at Newport Beach). Talk about icon power.

Its first team fielded in 1888, USC bore the nickname "Methodists" before morphing into a completely different level of fearsome rage, "Wesleyans." Then, in a turn of early branding genius, they replaced those intimidating monikers with “Trojans” in 1912 after a journalist at the LA Times coined the name due to the “terrific handicaps” suffered by the players and coaches who labored against the “overwhelming odds of better equipped rivals.” Thankfully, this one stuck. Whew, that was a close one.

What didn’t stick were those overwhelming odds against USC football. In the early ‘20s under the guidance of “Gloomy” Gus Henderson, the school’s meteoric rise began and soon placed them aloft in the rarified air of national dominance. Howard Jones (no, not that Howard Jones) took over in 1925 and proceeded to pile up the school’s first four national championships before his departure in 1940.

We all know the script for the ensuing 70 years leading to today — seven more NCAA championships and what seems like a thousand Rose Bowl wins. But there’s much more to it than that. In the short-term memory-land in which we live, the bad times tend to be eschewed in favor of the good. (Oh should the brand managers at BP be so lucky.) In the ‘80s and ‘90s, after the “golden age” under coach John McKay subsided, they dropped 13 in a row to rival Notre Dame and eight straight against cross-town rival UCLA. From 1996 to 2001 the Men of Troy posted a 37-35 overall record and no top-20 finishes for four straight years, the only time they’ve ever done so. To quote that Howard Jones, things could only get better.

Then, cue the heavenly choir. In 2000 coach Paul Hackett was replaced by Pete Carroll, a hip Northern Californian fresh from a mediocre stint in the NFL, and after a few slow seasons the Trojans returned to prominence. Hailed as a master motivator and “player’s coach,” all Carroll did was repeatedly bring the nation’s premier high school talent to Los Angeles to sign on the dotted line.

Everyone says Carroll was the world’s best recruiter, but I beg to differ. Have you ever seen the USC campus and student body on a sunny day? A headless chimpanzee could recruit five-star talent to that school. All he did was roll out the Cardinal carpet and step away from the throngs.

Which brings us to where we are today. Knowing all the above, how could I not bestow upon USC the top spot in my greatest college football brands? Because this is how branding works. They cheated and they knew it. And don’t tell me that Carroll had no idea about the sanctions. How stupid did you really think we were, sir? Saying that was an insult to the intelligence of college football fans everywhere and even more to the integrity of the game.

With all of their success, the thousands of miles of victorious headlines and ticker-tape receptions, it takes just one serious breach of trust and ethics to put a heretofore-bulletproof brand on life support. And they’re going to pay for at least a decade, not just with post-season and recruiting sanctions and possibly Reggie Bush’s Heisman forfeiture, but with parents’ distrust during recruiting visits at kitchen tables across the USA. Oh, and getting stuck with Lame Kiffin.

By naming them sixth, I’m rewarding them for the brand excellence achieved before the violations. I’m rewarding a high level of play that defined the sport, improved their conference, and populated years of Super Bowl rosters. I’m rewarding the 42-21 pasting of Alabama in 1970 that — with all six USC TDs scored by African-Americans — compelled Bear Bryant to beg his university to consider integrating. I’m giving them sixth place for sheer consistency in an elegant, distinct uniform design and a Cardinal and Gold color combination that perfectly complements autumn afternoons. I’m rewarding the Song Girls, the Trojan atop Traveler, the LA Coliseum (did your home field host the Olympics?). And yes, all the clean national championships.

One good way to judge the size and import of a college football brand is to count its rivalries. Just like Microsoft, giant marques have more than one. And while Ohio State-Michigan is widely considered the single-largest rivalry, USC has a whopping four legitimate, stadium-filling, hatred-generating annual enemies: Notre Dame, UCLA, Stanford, and Cal. I’m rewarding that, too.

SC, I know you’re not accustomed to finishing outside the Top 5, but sixth, in my opinion, is generous.

5. University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Arguably the most internationally recognized collegiate athletic program of all, the Fighting Irish finished their first season of American football in 1888 with a 1-3 record. All three losses came at the hands of Michigan (the lone W a resounding 20-0 win over that immovable force Harvard Prep). Coincidentally, that season parallels today’s total of all-time wins: Michigan has the most with 878 and the Irish are next with 846.

A key to great branding, as you can guess, is exposure. Thankfully, the frocked wizards managing the Notre Dame schedule put their heads together and figured out that losing to the same team again and again isn’t the way to build a powerhouse. At the turn of the century, with college football growing in national popularity, the school joined the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States in 1906 — which four years later became the NCAA — and soon began their winning ways, posting a 108-31-13 record by the end of 1912. (Along the way in 1909, they finally got one back against the Maize and Blue, 11-3, after which point Michigan refused to play them for 33 years.)

Jesse Harper took the head coach’s whistle from 1913 to 1917 and put up 34 wins, five losses, and a tie — and in doing so cemented annual rivalries that continue today with Michigan State and Army. What happened next was a stroke of genius that many programs to this day have trouble accepting. Coach Harper scheduled national giants Texas, Penn State, and the aforementioned Army in the same season. Notre Dame stunned Army 35-13 and made headlines across the country with long forward passes from QB Gus Doraine to end Knute Rockne. That one game, a beatdown of the heavily favored Black Knights, is credited with the establishment of the passing game. And that, friends, is the way you launch a brand.

In one season, Notre Dame went from a nowhereville program to national innovator, with a daring offensive scheme and even more audacious barnstorming schedule taking on the big boys from coast to coast.

Next came former Irish player Knute Rockne to coach the Fighting Irish to six national championships, five undefeated seasons, Four Horsemen, and the highest winning percentage of any NCAA football coach in history (.881). So overt was Irish dominance under Rockne that the brand was catalyzed exponentially by two seismic events in relative rapid succession. The first was the coach’s final game, which saw him lead a group of Notre Dame All Stars against a professional team, the New York Giants, in Yankee Stadium to raise funds for the needy of New York City amid the Great Depression. Just think about that for a second: a college team going up against the pros to raise money for charity. If you weren’t a fan of any college team before that day, you were a Notre Dame fanatic afterward.

Then, a decade later came the release of the box-office smash Knute Rockne: All American, which memorialized his “Win one for the Gipper” speech, delivered at halftime before Notre Dame mounted a stunning comeback victory against top-ranked Army. No one knows for sure if those famous words were Rockne’s, or if the speech even happened. In branding, that rarely matters. Perception is reality, and perceived it was, for generations to come. (Ronald Reagan’s two-term presidency helped ensure that; Reagan played the role of “The Gipper” in the movie. A brand can’t PAY for that kind of coincidence. Luck of the Irish in the house.)

One might argue that this was the dawn of branded entertainment. I mean, a whole movie about a brand — in this case, a college football brand — that tugged at heartstrings and permanently entered the American lexicon? It’s as if Rocky were a movie about a Chevy instead of a boxer. How bright the brand equity halo would shine over that bowtie logo.

What couldn’t be argued was that by now, playing football for Notre Dame was the dream of nearly every high school player (and his parents). And because UND is a Catholic university, they enjoyed a direct pipeline from every Catholic high school in the country, which historically manufacture the best prep programs and players.

Not to diminish the value of what followed, but after this point, Notre Dame was expected to win. And they did. Frank Leahy won four national championships in six years, Ara Parseghian two, and Dan Devine and Lou Holtz each left with one national title. They’ve racked up 12 undefeated seasons and another ten with one loss or tie. Numbers that make you dizzy if you look at them long enough.

So why aren’t they the number one college football brand of all time? Because of the last decade and a half, that’s why. As soon as Lou Holtz walked out the door, they’ve been an embarrassing shred of the stalwart brand they once were. And it’s the administration’s fault. They’re the ones who started this carousel of six head coaches since 1996, compiling a 92-68 record (.575 win percentage). While that’s fine for other schools, Notre Dame is not just some other school.

Bob Davie was shown the door after his fifth season and a 35-25 record. The total joke of George O’Leary’s hiring and resignation — he quit five days after accepting the job for admittedly misrepresenting the academic credentials on his résumé — still echoes throughout the halls of the Comedy Cellar and the university. Tyrone Willingham, the school’s first African-American head coach, wasn’t even able to see his own recruits start their junior season; he was booted for having the same winning percentage as Davie (.583) but with two fewer years to prove anything. (This racially tinged incident was dismissed by Willingham because he’s a class act, but I don’t think anyone was satisfied with the school’s lack of response to the matter.) Charlie Weis left a record of Super Bowl-winning offensive coordination in Foxboro only to fall short of expectations in South Bend. He’d never been a head coach, never coached at the university level, and didn’t even play for Notre Dame, his alma mater. And it showed. He racked up a 35-37 record and just one bowl win.

In fact, because the brand has been exaggerated over the years and not been honest with itself, its fans or bowl committees, it continually accepted bids to bowls to get blown out by competition they had no business being on the same field with. Since 1995, the Irish have just that one bowl victory — over Hawai’I in the Hawai’I Bowl last year, putting an end to a nine-bowl losing streak. Since 1981, their post-season record is 6-13.

Notre Dame is a tremendous academic institution, but this article is about football brands. I know you can’t recruit the same kids as the other powerhouse state schools can because your admissions standards are high. You therefore forfeit the license to complain that you don’t win because of academics.

Your football brand has become the butt of jokes. You snubbed the Big Ten and remained independent, which would have required you to play teams you’d rather not lose to every year (but which would have facilitated recruiting dramatically). The last player of any consequence was Jerome Bettis. You schedule service academies, to whom you lose. The line of your seven Heismans ended with Tim Brown 23 years ago.

The real gold in your helmet paint, despite science telling us it’s impossible, has begun to oxidize, and the only thing you seem to do is fire and hire, fire and hire. Are you sure that’s Jesus signalling a touchdown behind Notre Dame stadium, or is he up in arms shouting, “What the heck’s going on here?”

I only write these things because I’m treating you as a client. You need to appreciate crisis management and the value of a reality check if you want to go back to being feared. First stop: being respected.

4. University of Michigan Wolverines

The winningest program in college football has seen better days, but like all major football brands (and brands in general), there are good times and there are bad.

And then there are horrifying nightmares that refuse to end.

The Wolverines kicked off 2007, Lloyd Carr’s final season as head coach, with the unique distinction of becoming the only Division 1 (BCS) team in the AP Top 25 ever to lose to a D-1AA (FCS) school. To add insult to the wound, the 109,218 Big House fans on hand were witness to the first instance of a top-five-ranked team dropping completely out of the AP Top 25 (they were #5) as the result of a single game. Inexplicable.

They sent Carr off on a good note however, beating #9 Florida in the Citrus Bowl (I guess all that SEC speed we hear about took a break that day.) But then another record-setting misstep. Hiring Rich Rodriguez away from West Virginia, the Maize and Blue would endure the worst record in its 129-year history in 2008, winning just three games and losing nine, including their fifth straight to arch-nemesis Ohio State.

Things are never so bad that they can’t get worse, which they did, with back-to-back losing seasons for the first time since ’62-’63 and falling under the scrutiny of the NCAA for violating the off-season eight-hour-per-week and in-season 20-hour-per-week practice limit. Later the NCAA accused the program of failing “to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the football program" under coach Rich Rodriguez, but not before losing their sixth in a row to rival OSU and failing to qualify for a bowl game with just five wins. And hemorrhaging scholarship players who preferred to wait a year to play somewhere else than continue in the Rich-Rod regime.

The above is why they’re #4 in my ranking — otherwise they’d be in the discussion for top brand. The magnificent history of the Michigan Wolverines (which I’ll get to in a few paragraphs) is not in question here. When disaster strikes a truly strong brand, it is bent but unbowed. When a string of mishaps becomes your calling card, turning bad to worse to worser to worst, that’s a cultural problem. I mentioned BP before. They make immense returns for their shareholders, beat Wall Street expectations nearly every quarter, and currently stand as the world’s fourth-largest company by revenue. So what.

After an embarrassing, nauseating display of corporate malpractice, blame-storming, and depraved indifference with their oil spill catastrophe this year, BP is a shadow of the brand it once was. Their arrogant, ill-conceived “beyond petroleum” tagline is a farce. The logo is offensive. Yes, they still make millions of dollars every second, but their executive management has lost total control of the product level where real people make real results happen.

Of course, the Michigan teams’ recent failure to win in a sport played by 19-year-olds is hardly equal to the largest environmental disaster in history. I use the analogy to make the point that every single day, everything you do, internally and externally, has ramifications on your brand. The assistant coach didn’t pay attention to the practice clock; the oil rig inspector ignored the broken drill seal. Neither intended to cause harm. Rather, they were let down by the culture around them, which no longer mandated or enforced the standard of excellence that helped them become giants in their respective fields in the first place.

And exactly as I brought the hammer down on Notre Dame above, I’m bringing it on Michigan. It appears as if, now in his third year, Rodriguez is beginning to right the ship, but oh, what a price they have paid. Only one major bowl win in the BCS era, and just two since ’92.

All of this after becoming arguably the most successful program in college football history. They won the first Rose Bowl in 1902, hold an NCAA-record 878 wins and own first place in all-time winning percentage of .741, also an NCAA record. The Wolverines claim 11 national titles, 42 Big Ten crowns, three Heisman winners, and an absolutely mind-boggling 23 undefeated seasons.

And nothing need be said about the winged helmets, the most recognizable in college football — nor “The Victors,” up there with Notre Dame’s “Victory March” as probably the best-known fight song. Michigan Stadium is the largest in the country, holding 109,901 fans clad head-to-toe in Maize and Blue, the color of corn and fall Midwestern skies, to watch the sport’s biggest rivalry waged every other year when they host neighboring Ohio State. The Notre Dame and Michigan State rivalry games pack the place too.

So prove me wrong, Wolverines. Show us all that you deserve to ascend to your familiar perch at the top of college football’s greatest brands. Win clean and ask the hard, uncomfortable questions at every single turn about what’s going on with your brand and your product, and why. That’s what great brands do.

Remember, I’m an Ohio State fan. I learned the hard way all those John Cooper years. You’ll be back. (I just hope not too soon.)

3. University of Alabama Crimson Tide

Number eight in wins all-time, the University of Alabama is the only SEC team to make the list. That’s odd, no? I’ll tell you what’s even stranger — not one but TWO pairs of teams in the same conference with the same nickname (Auburn and LSU Tigers, Georgia and Mississippi State Bulldogs). So much for brand differentiation.

Disclaimer: Before you email your complaints, I know there was no SEC in the 1890s, and when those teams were first fielded they weren’t in a conference together, so the point is moot. I just can’t resist getting Southern people all riled up.

Okay, back to the brand. When I think “Crimson Tide,” my brain cues up old footage of a stern Bear Bryant prowling the sidelines under a houndstooth fedora. Of course, the Tide also happen to be defending national champions (their 13th, impressively) and holders of the most recent Heisman Trophy (their first, incredibly). So alongside Bryant, I simultaneously see HD video of defensive line giant Marcel Dareus rumbling into the end-zone with a football he stripped from the Texas backup QB and threw against the Rose Bowl backdrop in triumph on his way to a national title.

I think of some of the absolute coolest helmets there ever were, the color of a deep thigh bruise, emblazoned with white block numerals. Sure, that design concept was the standard across the college football landscape from the early days all the way to the ‘70s, but Alabama’s the only major program who kept it alive. A mountain of style points roll your way, Crimson Tide.

So many positive elements can be attributed to this brand. First of which, the name. They dubbed themselves “The Crimson Tide” in 1907, after a Birmingham Age-Herald reporter used the phrase in an article on that season’s Iron Bowl, their annual throwdown with in-state rival Auburn, which even then was one of the great rivalries in the land.

Now let’s stop and just consider this name. I’m sure they had no idea at the time, but how groundbreaking is it? It would be decades before the singular team-name idea proliferated (NC State Wolfpack,1922; Tulane Green Wave, 1964; Dartmouth Big Green, 1974; Stanford Cardinal, 1981). Of course, most teams who changed their nicknames from plural to singular did so under the charge of insensitivity to objectification of Native Americans. Before all that though, the University of Alabama’s brand was a first for major college sports.

Okay, next: Big Al the Elephant. Because you know, when I think of the state of Alabama and a Crimson Tide, the first thing that pops into my head is a pachyderm. Yet somehow it really works. As a kid I always wondered, “What in the world does an elephant have to do with a Crimson Tide?” Then the web was invented, and I discovered two events which reportedly stood behind the name, both of which occurred in 1930. First, an Atlanta Journal reporter called the team a pack of “red elephants” after a game against Ole Miss. Straightforward enough.

Next — and this one’s somewhat dubious — ‘Bama traveled exclusively with luggage manufactured by Rosenberger’s Birmingham Trunk Company; when the team rolled in to Pasadena for their Rose Bowl game versus (and subsequent 24-0 shellacking of) Washington State, reporters remarked the luggage logo depicting an elephant standing on a trunk, and that was all it took. Whichever it was, the program’s association with the elephant was now and forevermore. (College football’s first co-branding initiative perhaps?)

And let’s not overlook the classic, uniquely Southern typeface of the “A” inside their familiar circular logo. A clean design with just enough flair which many schools would do well to follow. If only the Atlanta Braves didn’t shamelessly rip it off, it would surely stand out as one of the most distinctive, singular team logos of all time.

So after all this gushing, you might ask why the Crimson Tide aren’t higher in this list. Brands, just like the people upon whom they’re built to make an impression, can be stained for a long, long time.

I wrote above about USC and its hopes of a short memory span among football fans around the country for their misgivings, but institutional racism wasn’t one of them. Alabama didn’t let a single African-American kid start on the football team until 1971, a full 45 years after Brown University’s Fritz Pollard played in the Rose Bowl (and an astounding 79 years after Harvard’s William H. Lewis became the first African-American named to the College Football All-America Team).

Sorry, but there can be no arguing here. For all of Alabama’s football success, innovation, and vintage design cues, we must understand the shadow that institutional behavior can cast upon a brand. This is how the business of branding works. If you don’t like it, tough. Learn from it and do better next time.

Since it took you 79 years to play a man of color in ‘71, you’re going to wait until the year 2050 before this rule is lifted. And don’t give me the “That was then, this is now” nonsense. Alabama knew exactly what it was doing in denying kids the opportunity to join the team because of their skin. You don’t get to wipe that away just because you’re winning again. Any brand must pay for its wrongdoings. Great brands swiftly admit to, apologize for, and amend their faults with full transparency.

P.S. Anyone with a brain the size of a cashew will not soon forget that your brand CEO, Coach Saban, is a liar. See also: BP, Pete Carroll. Not hating, just stating. Saban will get his own someday, somehow, some way. The brand universe seeks order, and the one surrounding him has yet to find it. Til then, Alabama, celebrate your past and recent laurels. Just know that brand audiences forgive and forget only after real, tangible reasons to do so — and in an arena as competitive as college football, that’s a delicacy rarely enjoyed.

Nonetheless, congratulations on finishing third in the best brands of college football.

2. Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions

Understatement is sheer confidence, nameless jerseys unifying an entire squad, and a single blue stripe dividing a pure white helmet. Consistency is undying loyalty to coach, tradition, and organizational objective. Clarity is never being on probation. Constancy is six undefeated seasons but netting just two national championships (’82, ‘’86) out of them and never, ever complaining about the obvious snubs involved.

This is Penn State, where visitors to a place called ‘Happy Valley’ often leave anything but, and the country’s second-largest home facility (capacity 107,282) is only too happy to remind you of the “L” your side just secured as you exit Beaver Stadium.

While normally I’d start this portion of our program cooing about the austere blue and white uniforms — oh, and not “navy blue” or “Nittany Blue” by the way, but just plain “blue;” perfected by black cleats and only black cleats — I’m compelled to open with the most enduring brand element in Penn State football’s extensive brand portfolio.

JoePa.

A Brooklyn native with an Ivy League diploma (Brown University class of ‘50, where he shares the career interceptions record of 14), Joseph Vincent Paterno joined the Penn State football coaching staff as an assistant to Rip Engle in 1950, much to the chagrin of his dad, who asked why he even went to college.

Paterno holds the longevity record of all football coaches at all universities, and with it the mark for most wins of all D-1 (FBS) coaches, now at 394. Not surprisingly, the diminutive football giant owns the bowl victory high-mark with 24 wins (to just 12 losses).

Pundits say Penn State’s just blindly adhered to the past, addicted to some out-of-fashion programmatic drug so devoid of reality it doesn’t even know it. “Why not hire a young, strapping figure who makes the boosters swoon? Why not add some loud colors and graphics that appeal to today’s teenager? Why not chase today’s trends to the screen doors of the nation’s hottest recruits, add a little something to those plain uniforms, and then a little more, and then a little more?”

Because that’s not what one of the best brands in college football does.

Yes, there are older programs, and as noted previously, schools with a higher win total (Michigan, Texas, Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Ohio State), but few if any have executed its brand plan more steadily or thoroughly than Penn State has. Pay attention brand strategy students and haters everywhere.

To the analysts I direct attention to Exhibit A: when 15 Nittany Lion players — including a few marquee names — were present for an off-campus brawl in 2007, JoePa took brand matters into his own hands and sentenced all involved to cleaning detail the morning after every home game that season. Garbage-gathering, aisle-sweeping, and whatever-hosing in a building that seats 108,000 the morning after a game, when it’s near-impossible to get out of bed as it is. That’s a lot of nacho goo for Saturday’s heroes/Sunday’s zeroes. Try getting a big ego knowing you’ll be knee-deep in White-Out detritus the following morning.

Recruiting consequences be damned. This is the way you run a world-class brand.

Congratulations to the Penn State Nittany Lions for earning second place in the Top Brands of College Football.

1. University of Texas Longhorns

With the second-most wins (845) and bowl appearances (50) all-time, it’s impossible to overlook Texas as one of the true powerhouses of the game.

And then there’s the look of Texas. Solid fields of burnt orange and white, interrupted only by the most unique helmet logo on the planet, the longhorn. Wow. Heads-up branding folks, you’re looking at the essence of clarity, focused presentation, and “define by design.”

At first glance, the casual fan might believe this proprietary, low-intensity orange hue is an emulation of the scorched, iron-rich plains and prairies of the Lone Star state. Okay, maybe you didn’t, but I did as a little kid. Think: Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam duking it out near a cactus or in a saloon. That color.

And then I traveled the country and saw that burnt orange wasn’t so Texas as it was more arid places like Arizona and New Mexico. So where did the most inimitable shade in the college football palette come from?

Burnt orange wasn’t always the color of the Longhorns. Like most seminal programs, they started playing football way before the Pantone Matching System and four-color printing came along. Most major programs, in fact, have at some point “updated” their uniform color combo after fabric/leather dying and helmet technology made it possible. And they’re still routinely doing it today (e.g., LSU’s recent shift to a bluer purple).

The 1883 team wore orange and white some games, gold and white for others. In 1895, they moved exclusively to orange and white, and then two years later, they switched to orange and maroon to save on laundry costs. Then they went back to orange and white, but were sometimes derisively called “Yellowbellies” by opponents because, by the end of the season, the omnipresent sun had bleached their standard orange uni’s to a pale yellow. For a football team, or any brand for that matter, that’s simply unacceptable.

So in 1928, UT coach Clyde Littlefield added one word to the order form that forever altered branding in college athletics: “burnt.” The darker orange resisted fading, and only the high cost of that tint of dye during the Great Depression reverted the Longhorns back to the brighter orange for two decades. When the financial coast was clear, it’s been burnt orange and white all the way.

The Longhorn mascot’s name is “BEVO,” and like many great logos, its origin is as debatable as the conflicting accounts are dubious. Some attribute the name to Ben Dyer, editor of the UT student paper The Alcade, who used the name “BEVO” in an article after the steer’s first cameo appearance at halftime of a 1916 Thanksgiving Day 22-7 beating of archrival Texas A&M (then called the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas). Supposedly, some people back then called near-beer “Bevo,” which might have been Dyer’s motivation.

Another widely spread legend holds that in 1917, two years after beating Texas 13-0, A&M students kidnapped the bull and branded that score on his flank as “13 v 0.” (Mad props to A&M for starting the first branding program in the country, by the way.) The first part of the story is proven to be true. What’s in doubt is that UT students, upon BEVO’s return, converted the burned-in “13” to a “B” and the “v 0” design to “EVO.” Unfortunately, for this to be true, Texas would have had to have employed time travel, because the name BEVO had already been in use for a full year before A&M absconded with the one-ton beef patty.

Others claim that “BEVO” was just an example of the wacky trend in the 1910s of calling someone their primary personality trait and then adding the letter “o” to the end. The Marx Brothers help clarify: Groucho was grouchy, Harpo played the harp, and Chico raised chickens as a child. Evidently, “BEVO” is just this convention in play with “beef.” Say see, it’s BEVO to you, see?

Whatever the root, BEVO is one of the most majestic and fearsome live mascots in any sport anywhere. To wit: BEVO II charged an SMU cheerleader, BEVO III jail-broke his pen and ran free around campus for two days, BEVO IV attacked a parked car, and his successor BEVO V broke away from his handlers (called Silver Spurs) and scattered the Baylor band. Awesome.

But enough about cattle. There are many other traditions that have strengthened the brand down in Austin — the Hook ‘Em Horns hand gesture, firing Smokey the Cannon before games and after TDs, amazing rivalries with Texas A&M and Oklahoma among them, and even though I’m not personally a fan, those fringe-laden band/cheerleader uniforms. (Oh, and that reminds me: flag corps are for high school bands, y’all. This sad fact did affect your overall brand score, but not your final list position.)

Back to on-field excellence. The Longhorns count four national titles, 32 conference crowns, two Heisman winners, the third-highest winning percentage of all programs (.720), 17 players in the College Football Hall of Fame, and four enshrined in Canton. And if it’s consistency you’re looking for, Texas holds the NCAA record for consecutive weeks in the AP Top 25 (155).

It’s not all swine and roses, however. They were pretty bad in the ‘80s and ‘90s, ending the Big XII season with the best record only once from ‘91 to ‘04, and winning just one bowl between ‘82 and ‘93. But in noble brand fashion, they pulled through, and under the leadership of the classy Mack Brown and an outstanding administration, are back among the football elite.

Case in point, I once had a business meeting in a luxury suite inside Darrel K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Beforehand we had lunch at the private Alumni Club, also inside the stadium. I was blown away. From the bull-skull lighting fixtures and faux-barbed-wire handrails to the tasteful amount of burnt-orange trim around the facilities (it is possible to overdo it, but they didn’t), the University of Texas football brand is managed by experts who really, really get it. It’s no wonder UT has one of the most respected advertising and branding programs in the country. The proof is everywhere, but then, they should excel at branding. The mascot’s a bull for heaven’s sake.

And with that, hearty congratulations are in order. To the University of Texas football brand on its first national championship, you are hereby crowned The Best Brand in College Football 2010.

Branding Death Penalty: University of Oklahoma Sooners

See? I told you the “best brands” ranking isn’t only about wins and losses. The University of Oklahoma has racked up seventh-most victories all-time (800), five Heisman Trophies, has set the record for most consecutive wins (47), and since the end of World War II has been the most successful program in the entire country. So certainly the Sooners should be among the top nine, right? [Insert Lee Corso response here.] Not if your helmet reads “OU” and your name is “University of Oklahoma” you don’t. You’re supposed to be an institution of higher education and you can’t be bothered to design all two characters in your logo in the proper order? Sorry, but even the worst brands in the land know how to spell. I’ve got my own brand to uphold here, and I’m afraid that until you’ve mastered the English alphabet, you’re officially uninvited.

Honorable Mention, Design: Arizona State, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Southern Methodist, Stanford, Syracuse, Utah, Washington, Wyoming

Honorable Mention, Tradition: Clemson, Florida State, Georgia, Miami University, Pittsburgh, Texas A&M, Wisconsin

It’s Good to Be Banned: Blackballing Benefits the BlackBerry Brand

2010-08-15T21:31:00.011-04:00

As hard as it is these days to successfully steer your brand, there’s a churning marketplace, the shifting tides of policy, and myriad other dynamics standing ready to increase the level of anxiety in orders of magnitude.

Unless your prescience is so honed you can predict when the next leak will sprout, you’re guaranteed to finish patching the final hole only to discover a new one on the other side of the raft. (And if you are a soothsayer, by all means do yourself a favor and go pick the lottery instead. Fewer gray hairs, ulcers, and late expense checks.)

So imagine Research in Motion’s surprise to find its BlackBerry, long the standard of workforce communication, faced with the ban of its flagship product in a number of countries over security concerns.

So let’s get this straight: you spend decades and billions in R&D to create an incredibly useful, reliable tool that’s become indispensible to millions of customers the world over — so much so that its name has become the Coke/Xerox/Kleenex of its industry. Your update cycles are dizzying. Your brand is respected and respectful. You’re the innovation darling of your home nation, Canada, and many others. You raise productivity and expectations wherever you go. You’ve become a verb.

And then you’re singled out as a serious threat to foreign governments for your efforts.

Recently India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates — the governments of whom are all allies of both the U.S. and Canada, which further tangles this complex and sensitive issue — have made headlines for waging war on the “absolute privacy” enjoyed by its users and which has been so instrumental to achieving its leadership status.

You may have only now become familiar with this story, but the war on encrypted communications has been going on for years in the above-mentioned nations as well as China and Iran, two authoritarian states which are more or less dictatorships when it comes to civil liberties (and who are not, coincidentally, U.S./Canada allies).

The OpenVPN service employed by BlackBerry and many other providers encrypts data sent from computers (i.e., smartphones) to servers outside the territorial jurisdictions of those and most other countries. These connections can be bored through any firewall or proxy, transferring data in unbreakable, NSA military grade-level encryption. In fact, OpenVPN is so stealthy it can’t be detected by most known sniffer technologies or traced back to the sender. You can just imagine the chills these facts send down the spines of governments in the world’s least stable region. “Anyone can carry out an evil plot using your technology right under our noses,” they hyperventilate, “and that, plus your wayward concept of ‘privacy,’ are the only things standing in our way to stopping it.”

So they want access to any and all data transferred from within their borders to foreign servers. And that means an end to digital privacy for citizens and visitors alike. It’s known that VPN subscribers from these countries use the technology not just to bypass restricted sites such as adult content and gambling, but to read news and visit social networking sites, mundane activities which seem harmless to us but are just as prohibited as pornography and sports-betting under those regimes.

More than just a national security hot-button, many of the world’s 150-or-so VPN providers say that over half of their subscribers are located in UAE, Saudi Arabia, and China. In one fell swoop, ending digital privacy becomes an attack on both individual rights and big tech; once data integrity is compromised, watch the exodus commence.

Throughout the world, large institutions like banks, hospitals, and yes, law enforcement and the military rely on VPNs to protect vital information from unauthorized access for a variety of legitimate reasons. Count those cans of worms open too.

“If you were to ban strong encryption, you would shut down corporations, business, commerce, banking, and the Internet,” Research In Motion founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis recently told the New York Times. “Effectively, you’d shut it all down. That’s not likely going to happen.”

The governments of those nations claim they aren’t really concerned with corporate customers though, because terrorism by and large doesn’t spring from inside corporate email systems (whose data records can be subpoenaed if they’re ever needed anyway). No, it’s the consumer product-flavored BlackBerry they’re after. The VPN activities of people who mean well (tourists and small-business personnel, for instance) and the ones who mean harm aren’t subpoenable; to make it harder, those responsible for acts good and bad are long gone before their legacies become apparent. In a region like the Middle East, it’s easy to understand all the concern.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say that R.I.M. capitulates and agrees to offer these federal governments access to its subscribers’ data. Is it realistic — or even possible — to believe they’ll be able to track the one bad needle in millions of benign haystacks quickly enough to do anything about it? No, it’s not. Sure, there’s security “trending” software which helps extrapolate activity patterns, but that’s in its infancy and certainly not even close to dependable on such a massive scale with consequences this dire.

So that means it’s open-season on individual rights, there for the claiming for any government, authoritarian or not, who shows up on R.I.M.’s doorstep with a search warrant scrawled on a napkin or backside of a reed. Because you know damn well if R.I.M. opens up to India, they have to welcome all comers or suffer a major credibility hit for preferential treatment.

So after all that, all the technology talk and geo-politics gobbledygook, the threats and promises, the fear and the press statements, this is an all-or-nothing proposition.

And that’s why this may well turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the BlackBerry brand.

It is rare indeed for a brand to have the embodiment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness fall into its lap in front of the entire planet. What an opportunity.

What hasn’t made many, if any, headlines are Google’s Gmail and Luxembourg-based Skype, who have also been invited in front of Indian security officials over the same concerns. Of course, Google’s experienced its own similar friction these past few years between its search platform and Chinese censorship, so they’re kind of old news in this arena. Then there’s Skype, which is too small and still esoteric for much of the digital world. That leaves BlackBerry to carry the flag of freedom.

BlackBerry ranked #63 in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands List 2009, and I’ll bet you a ten-spot (not much for you, but an open wager on the web could put me out a few grand) that by this time next year these Canadians will have cracked the top 40 — and probably even higher — which would represent an herculean leap by any standard. But only if they stay true to their mission and hold the steering wheel straight and steady.

“We’re not going to compromise that,” Lazaridis said about allowing governments to monitor messages across its network. “That’s what’s made BlackBerry the No. 1 solution worldwide.”

If he, his people, his product, and his brand keep that promise, getting banned for upholding customer privacy will bestow upon them a crown of righteousness we haven’t seen since Ford Motor Company helped win World War II with its Sherman Tank.

That’s anything but an overstatement. Amidst the ongoing crisis between the West (namely the U.S., true to form) and the Middle East — and its requisite battle of ideologies — we’re about to witness the triumph of capitalism over fear. If the countries named above block BlackBerry from inside its borders, it’ll sting their bottom line and market cap, but only temporarily. After its apologies to shareholders have been accepted and dominance has resumed, the company will stand at the rarely visited crossroads of capitalism and idealism.

If they stay true to their word, they cannot lose. BlackBerry shall inherit the win.

The copywriter is dead. Long live the copywriter.

2010-07-14T12:11:00.011-04:00

The below was written in response to a LinkedIn advertising creatives group discussion titled "Is the copywriter dead?":

I know deep down that copy’s as important as ever. It’s just the copywriter who’s fallen on hard times.

Of the two primary creative disciplines, it’s we copywriters who deal with the human construct of language, with all its rules, nuance, and general inconvenience. Visual artists work in a medium incumbent to anyone blessed with the ability to see. Sure, art directors have rules too, however fluid and subjective they may be, but they’re rules nonetheless. (And the best of these artists, well, their importance cannot be overstated.)

For years I had no idea what the French meant by, “The King is dead. Long live the King.” It was just their dramatic way of saying the succession from one ruler to the next is instantaneous; the moment they wheel out the old man’s coffin, the scepter is passed to his son. And so it goes.

I guess it applies to writers now. Strategy is the big thing in agency land these days, and that requires --gasp-- words. Ask your favorite art director to whip up, say, a social media strategy by end of week and you’ll be disappointed, I assure you. So we copywriters find our focus shifting — but, by and large, shifting inward toward pitching new business from prospective and existing clients, not outward to winning new customers for those clients.

Language isn’t disposable, though sometimes it can feel that way. Last time I checked, even on smartphones, pressing the shift and punctuation keys was free of charge. I’m not sure which is more despairing: no one wanting to use them, or no one giving a damn either way.

Writing isn’t easy. To learn, to teach or to perform. If it were, most of us would do it well, or at least demand quality of others. The disastrous effects of a spiraling education system are spattered all over our media. Poor grammar is ubiquitous, particularly on TV, which only legitimizes and perpetuates low standards for the next generation. We hear it in ad voiceovers for the world’s most successful companies. We see it writ large across our HD plasmas in campaign tags. And don’t get me started with my medium of choice, the web. There’s little question our craft has been devalued.

The irony is, for those reasons alone I should never be out of a job. Yet after freelancing and traveling for six months since my last agency CD gig, I tossed my hat into the ring this spring and started looking again. I’ve discovered that ‘Creative Director/Copy’ has become a pariah of sorts. “How can you call yourself a creative director if you haven’t mastered CS3?” If you have to ask that question, I promise, by definition you won’t understand the answer.

Of course I’m fluent in all creative disciplines, or I wouldn’t have run entire creative teams handling the accounts of some of the world’s best-known brands. But the perception of copy has definitely changed. There’s something new and worse about how words and their providers are received by agency management. Now I’m not naïve. I know writers have claimed this for decades, or at least since the days of Bernbach and Ogilvy. But after 15 years in this business, I’ve earned the right to say we are now witness to brand new levels of apathy.

On my portfolio site I have a series of thoughts on language called The Truisms. One of them reads, “Never say, ‘The copy’s approved, but where’s the creative?’”

We are the original creatives. We cannot forget that, even if some around us do.

Managing people — whether creatives, clients, end-consumers, vendors, executives or significant others — is done with words. Always has been and always will be. And that’s why I’ll never lose hope.

The copywriter is dead. Long live the copywriter.

The Strategy Tragedy

2010-07-07T17:03:00.012-04:00

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 6^th Century B.C.

It’s time to set the record straight about “strategy,” the most misused word in the history of business, and quite possibly, the English language.

Because its meaning has been confused, tangled, and re-tangled for decades — an affliction that's only worsened with the explosion of the web — let's keep this simple.

There are three primary components to brand planning (and marketing in general). No more, no less — and they occur in this order only:

1. Objective — A concrete goal to be achieved by a stated time.

Ex.: By Q3 2011, Sun Tzu Arts, Inc. will top Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” list in its category.

2. Strategy — Rules put in place for the expressed purpose of fulfilling the objective.

Ex.: Every external and internal brand touchpoint, whether existing or forthcoming, must reinforce Sun Tzu Arts’ “innovation heritage” positioning and provide two-way communication with its audience.

3. Tactics — Where and when resources are allocated to realize the objective.

Ex.: Dozens of initiatives across the entire Sun Tzu Arts media mix and internal operations, including:

Commit Human Resources to increasing employee retention to 95%
Engage a social media monitoring service to provide brand managers with weekly reports and quarterly trends
Redesign e-commerce site to include media tags and share functions for all products
Hire a VP, User Experience
Institute a loyalty rewards program
Redeploy corporate blog to showcase brand managers’ thought leadership on “innovation heritage” within and outside the company
Executives speak at two conferences per quarter, minimum
Free smartphone app with first-in-segment features — including direct access to store personnel, limited-edition products, mobile QR code discounts, and pre-press-release news — made available only to app users

Of course, the above are purely hypothetical and constitute about as basic a three-tier process as I can imagine. I kept it simple because there’s no reason it shouldn’t be.

And unless something seismic occurs within the competitive landscape, the consumer market or the organization itself (usually bad, like BP’s oil spill fiasco, Toyota’s widespread safety recalls, and Facebook’s privacy predicament), brand objectives do not change until they’re fulfilled. I mention this because, when strategy comes before the objective — or, heaven forbid, tactics come before strategy — the knee-jerk reaction when a tactic fails is to kill the objective or strategy. And that’s precisely the kind of myopia that plagues brands which, not surprisingly, run around in circles, confuse consumers, waste money, lose talent, and never win.

To that end, I constructed a mnemonic. Now let’s say it together:

“Strategy is the rules, Tactics are the tools. Strategy is the rules, Tactics are the tools. Strategy is the rules, Tactics are the tools.”

An Open Letter to FIFA President Sepp Blatter

2010-06-29T14:20:00.022-04:00

Dear Mr. President,

As a consumer of your popular television program, the 2010 FIFA World Cup, I write you via this electronic communications medium today to solicit your help with a problem I’ve had for some time.

Certainly, the quagmire in which I’ve found myself these past months is not as vexing as the downturns marching across world economies like uncombed crab-lice, nor is it even that of the Jabulani ball which has been linked to Gary Coleman’s untimely passing.

No, my humble predicament is simply this: What should I do with this spare cellular telephone headset that’s sitting around my apartment?

Of course, an astute man like yourself might be wondering what this has to do with your corporation, FIFA, and its valued employees. Please allow me to elaborate with a bit of historical context.

In 2006 I traveled to your quadrennial World Cup. You’ll remember it was in Germany, and boy was it a hoot. Twelve cities across that rejuvenated nation hosted fans visiting from far and wide to take part in a celebration of global unity and peaceful competition. The warm weather, the women, and the weiss beer flowed like wine.

When not in Cologne’s RheinEnergieStadion or Gelsenkirchen’s Veltins-Arena to watch football matches, I whiled away my lazy summer afternoons at various fan zones, transfixed upon 72-foot jumbotrons amid modern makeshift M*A*S*H units constructed solely to transfer booze from keg directly to England supporters with nary a swallow. The technology on hand was mightily impressive — an incredibly well coordinated affair, from the matches in the stadiums and the fan fests in urban plazas to the broadcast facilities and security details occupying every available square foot from bahn to shining bahn.

A true Eighth Wonder of the World had been laid before us, assembled of thousands of miles of cable, millions of microchips, and billions of wireless watts cloaking the whole of the nation for one month in the pursuit of delivering the finest displays of our planet’s most popular sport to an eager global audience. Ah, technology at its commercial finest.

Please bear with me as we navigate the time-space continuum to the year 2010, which is this year, when your World Cup is taking place, in fact right now.

Thank you for minding the continuum. Now as misfortune would have it, I was unable to visit South Africa for the production of your famous World Cup reality television series because of its great distance from New York City, so a college buddy of mine and I chose once again to depart for Europe to participate in your company’s and sponsors’ tech-laden extrava-soccer-ganza.

The fan zones in Hamburg, Copenhagen, and London did not disappoint, nor did the marketing experiences provided by the rest of your brand partners. Even more so than the previous Cup, high-caliber technology abounded. In the plazas where thousands of fans gathered for each match, the screens were larger, the audio clearer, the
Hyundai product displays brighter. Sure was neat.

However, instead of the German smiles we’d encountered so plentifully only four short years ago, I was saddened to be met with frowns throughout the Continent — smiles turned upside-down by the actions of some of your employees.

I am sorry to be the one to alert you to this behavior, but videographic evidence indicates that indeed a few of your employees on the set of your World Cup football television program have refused to admit to mistakes involving some of the highest-profile players and countries in your sport.

That’s where something called digital media come in. One of the more interesting characteristics belonging to these media is that they can save video and audio events for future enjoyment, like the time in 2008 when you said, "Let it be as it is and let's leave football with errors. The television companies will have the right to say [the referee] was right or wrong, but still the referee makes the decision — a man, not a machine." See? I just re-enjoyed that. In fact, you’ve probably already recognized that I wrote this missive using one such machine, and I’ll bet you’re reading this with the assistance of another.

It’s possible you weren’t serious, or perhaps you were loaded. Because certainly a man of global prominence and boundless business wisdom such as you could not mean a thing like that. For instance, I read somewhere that you used a big machine to transport you to South Africa instead of paying a man to carry you there on his back. No, machines don’t talk or drink much, but they sure can be useful.

Or, like so many of us, you may call upon religion to tell you if footballs have crossed the goal line or not. I too am a member of a faith-based organization, and in moments of duress or confusion, I find comfort knowing I can turn to the Rock House Church of Serpent Handlers in Sand Mountain, Alabama for answers.

No, the problem must be greater than this, I thought. Only after further introspection did the realization strike me: the world’s economic slump must have you and your company FIFA in a pickle. Your resources are stretched thin and you’re embarrassed to admit it. It’s okay. I myself can sympathize, for recently I began purchasing cheap toilet paper.

It is reported that FIFA nets US$3 billion from the World Cup, but because the event only comes around every four years, that amount parcels out to a meager sum of just US$750 million per year to spend on things. I mean, that’s what Jay Z spends on hats.

Not much left for technology. So here is my offer: I will give you my spare cellular phone headset.

No, seriously. My gift. This way, FIFA employees can call their coworkers on the grassy set of your World Cup TV shows, from anywhere, and tell them about the images delivered by television networks to everyone on earth in milliseconds, including even to the people in your stadiums not employed by FIFA. Remember the England fans the other day who angered after watching Frank Lampard’s equalizer called back? And the Mexicans who said nasty things in the stadium the other day after Carlos Tevez scored from an offside position?

They were talking about the pictures that I’m talking about. Yep, same ones. So whaddya say Sepp?

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Real life already happens in high-definition and 3-D, Steve, so what do we need it for?” Good question. Due to the self-same time-space continuum you traversed earlier in this letter, your employees on the field aren't always able to witness everything clearly because of their position relative to the event in question. And wanna know something else? Those same machines can save it for review later — or better yet, for instant viewing during the three minutes the players are pulling their shirts off and celebrating their goal before kicking off again.

And I’m aware that today you let the world know that you would “re-open consideration of goal-line replay technology” (via twitter no less; there’s that technology thing). So you’re saying there’s a chance you might choose against adopting it? That's awesome.

Remember now, every other sport on earth has done it, but don’t let that dissuade your re-opened consideration process.

Ultimately, there are billions of dollars surrounding each of your reality TV shows, and I for one would hate to see some of the more deserving participants be voted off simply because FIFA employees can’t talk to each other.

So please, consider my offer of a free cellular phone headset. Because placing referees under police protection after receiving death threats for being human isn’t fun, and rewarding the deserved is.

Thank you for your time.

Steve

The 2010 Brand Spanking New York World Cup of Brands

2010-05-25T14:26:00.031-04:00

I read somewhere that a flatulent howler monkey exiled from his troup deep in the jungles of Bolivia has no idea that the World Cup is nearly upon us; his web access must be down, or provided by TimeWarner Cable. However, he’s the only lifeform on the planet who remains unaware.

In this country, the World Cup is widely known but, until recently, almost as widely shrugged off. Thankfully this is changing, due largely in part to ESPN’s unprecedented marketing push and production undertaking, the tour-de-force sports network’s largest investment ever in an event in its 30-year history. For the second straight Cup, they’ve shelled out major cash for U2’s participation in the campaign, and have been unabashed about their massive multimedia efforts to drive hard-core football fans and an audience they term “big event sports fans” to the TV and web.

(By the way, the author is as big an American football fan as you’ll find anywhere, and I refuse to call the sport “soccer.” If you find my use of “football” pretentious, too bad.)

As ESPN Executive VP of Content John Skipper was recently quoted, "I believe that this summer, during the month of June, given our commitment to production, that the World Cup is going to dominate the discussion of sports fans in this country in a way that has not been seen previously.”

And there are lesser-known strides the sports programming giant has made that prove to hardcore football fans like myself that they mean business, and aren’t merely talking a good game — namely, the signing of Sky Sports icon Martin Tyler as lead commentator (thank God), the airing of all 64 matches live and in HD, the streaming of every match on ESPN3.com, and actually sending the commentators to match locations instead of calling the games from Bristol, CT (a novel concept).

From a branding perspective, the activity surrounding the World Cup is almost as frenetic and loud as the action within South Africa’s nine host stadiums (and the entire world’s pubs). Logos abound in ways that could only happen every four years (or in Blade Runner), lest the clutter blind us all to marketing messages from every business vertical imaginable.

Of course, football equipment manufacturers (see World Cup of Branding Bracket below) take center stage, which is obvious and makes perfect sense. From there, we’re hammered by sports drinks, beers, liquors, car companies, airlines, personal care products, banks, computers, mobile providers, electronics, cigarettes, and of course, TV networks like the above-mentioned ESPN.

In fact, the property is so sought-after, it has two different layers of official marketing participation. FIFA, the sport’s international governing body, has its own official partners — adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates Airlines, Hyundai/Kia, Sony, and Visa — and the World Cup competition has its own phalanx of official sponsors, including Budweiser, Castrol, Continental Tires, McDonald’s, MTN Wireless (Mobile Telephone Networks South Africa), and Indian IT consulting giant Satyam.

In 2006, I spent the Cup’s first eight days in Cologne and Gelsenkirchen for two matches and had probably the best time of my life. Videographic evidence can be viewed here:

I was stunned at how dominant American swill-distiller Budweiser was — much to the bitter chagrin of the home country, where their famous amber liquid is key to every facet of life, and is often used to make furniture. In fact, Bud and Bud Light were the only two beers on sale inside the stadiums — in Germany. Think this is a precious advertising opportunity?

The total ad spend for the ’06 Cup was an estimated $1 billion. To put this in perspective, ad spending for the 2010 Super Bowl was $170 million (admittedly in a recession, but still). And American football is a sport that has timeouts and planned commercial breaks (far too many in my opinion). Not so with international football, which has continuous action for 90 minutes plus stoppage time, broken only by a 15-minute halftime period. Of course, that’s advertising, not branding in the holistic sense, but it's easier to quantify and helps make my point.

Indeed, in marketing terms, the World Cup makes the Super Bowl look like a cub scout jamboree. And for good reason. Every language, custom, color, creed, political system, walk of life, musical taste, income level, and lack of fashion sense is joined in the pursuit of something that’s, well, fun. Historical imperialist powers compete peacefully with formerly vanquished colonies. Muslims and Jews stand in the same line for refreshments. Face-painters and non-face-painters sit cheerfully side by side. Faux-breasted Germans remove their tops right alongside their au naturelle Polish counterparts. Ohio State and Michigan fans can be spotted rooting for the same team, and after a USA victory, making out in the parking lot.

Without the World Cup, only the unified effort to destroy intergalactic overlords could bring about such togetherness across planet Earth. Who knew something so important to the collective spirit of the human race could come from Uruguay?

And so, fast-forward 80 years from its humble beginnings to this, the 19^th FIFA World Cup. In 2006, the Cup’s cumulative non-unique viewing audience for all matches was 26.29 billion (24.2 billion in-home and 2.1 billion out-of-home viewers, which means untold millions of gallons of junky pub beer). The final was viewed by one-ninth of the entire planet’s population. Hell, the World Cup draw, which assigns the 32 teams to their groups, was witnessed by a TV audience of over 300 million. All that in a time without ESPN’s 360-degree coverage commitment across all its properties, no Twitter, and a one-year-old YouTube. For a full list of official viewership statistics, see the bottom of this post.

Now let’s take a look at the brands who make their pitch on the pitch. Arguably these brands have the most at stake, as the performance of their products between the touchlines can actually change the outcome of the match and, therefore, have a hand in who is named Champion of the World for the next four years. The breakdown is as follows:

adidas (Germany), 13 teams, avg. FIFA World Ranking: 24.46

ALG, ARG, DEN, ESP, FRA, GER, GRE, JPN, MEX, NGA, PAR, RSA, SVK

Nike (USA), 9 teams, avg. FIFA World Ranking: 25.22

AUS, BRA, KOR, POR, NED, NZL, SRB, SVN, USA

Puma, 6 teams (Germany), avg. FIFA World Ranking: 17.5

CAM, CIV, GHA, ITA, SWI, URU

Umbro (UK, division of Nike), FIFA World Ranking: 9

Brooks (USA), FIFA World Ranking: 17

Joma (Spain), FIFA World Ranking: 38

Pirma (Mexico), FIFA World Ranking: 84

DPR (N. Korea)

As you can see in my prediction Bracket above, no one brand is the sponsor of all four teams who’ve been assigned to the same group, but adidas has three teams in each of two different groups, A and B. Only one group is completely devoid of the three stripes, Group G; Group H is the only one with four teams of different sponsors, two of which, interestingly, are the only teams those brands sponsor (Brooks and Joma); and the most teams Puma sponsors in any single group is one.

Of course, with every successive match, the international TV audience will continue to balloon, as people like myself will be watching every one of them while the number of “big event sports fans” will grow as the stakes get higher, the overall quality of each match increases, and online chatter exponentially drives interest.

With 13 teams, adidas has quantity on its side — and with an average FIFA World Ranking of 24.46, they’re guaranteed to receive their fair share of media representation well after group play is complete. And even though it has a slightly lower average FIFA World Ranking among its ranks, Nike sponsors quality, with three of its nine teams in FIFA’s top five (quality in keeping with its release this week of one of the coolest TV spots in history). Puma’s six squads have a formidable 17.5 average ranking, but with less than 20% of the tournament wearing the leaping cat on their shoulders, all but defending champs and #5-ranked Italy, ostensibly, will have to prove their mettle to advance past the quarters.

World Cup matches last an average of 96 minutes (two 45-minute halves and an average of :03 stoppage time added to each), which in old-school advertising terms translates to 192 30-second TV spots. And when both teams on the pitch are with the same brand, that equals 384 :30 commercials for said marque. In group play, adidas will enjoy eight matches where they’re the only logo in the field of play (literally, as the referees and even the ball are under the adidas sponsorship umbrella), which equals an astounding 3,072 spots’ worth of live-action TV advertising. Similarly, Nike can count three matches wherein both sides are swoosh-clad, which is the equivalent of 1,152 :30 TV ads. And because of how the ping pong balls were selected and thus the group members were assigned, Puma isn’t guaranteed even one match with all-self-logoed players at any time during the Cup. Umbro, Joma, Brooks, and Pirma, with only one team each, obviously aren’t either.

And because adidas is the biggest of all World Cup/FIFA sponsors, the three stripes will seem ubiquitous the whole month anyway, even at matches like the ENG/USA tilt, where Umbro takes on parent company Nike between advertising sidewalls laden with Adi Dassler’s famous three-striped logo.

So for argument’s sake, let’s accept 96 minutes as the average World Cup match duration; this means the group play round will guarantee the following amounts of TV time, after which point half the field goes home and leaves 16 teams to absorb twice as much of the world’s attention span as they had in the Group Stage:

adidas: 3,744 minutes (40.6%)
Nike: 2,592 minutes (28.2%)
Puma: 1,728 minutes (18.8%)
Umbro, Joma, Brooks, and Pirma: 288 minutes each (3.1% ea.)

Of course, accurately quantifying brand impressions in the non-TV digital sphere is tough at best, but with ESPN pulling out all the stops across its family of networks and streaming matches on ESPN3, the opportunities for brand exposure are no longer limited to traditional media. Multiply these minutes by all the media and the fractal geometry that are the social networks within them, and it’s safe to postulate that June 11 to July 11 will be the largest branding month in orders of magnitude in human history.

If the tournament goes as I’ve prophesied in my Brand Bracket, three of the eight quarterfinal matches will feature teams on the same brand roster — interestingly enough, they are each of the three biggest sponsorship brands in the competition: adidas (France v. Nigeria), Nike (United States v. Australia), and Puma (Italy v. Cameroon). As I’ve imaginarily played through the World Cup to this point, here’s the running total of on-field minutes for each of the remaining sponsors' squads:

adidas: 4,320 minutes (42.5%)
Nike: 2,976 minutes (29.3%)
Puma: 2,112 minutes (20.7%)
Umbro and Brooks: 384 minutes each (3.7% ea.)

You’ll notice that, with the growing number of on-field minutes for each of the brands still competing vicariously through their outfitted teams, so has every brand’s percentage of playing time also risen, albeit pretty evenly, because small players Joma (Honduras) and Pirma (North Korea) were forced to vaya con Dios by not making it out of group play.

And then there were six — brands that is — emblazoned on sixteen national teams from five continents. But if you want to talk about a world map of multinational conglomerates, there actually remain only two — nations that is — in the fight: the United States (Nike, its division Umbro, and Brooks) and Germany (adidas and Puma). Ah, Germany and the United States. Have we met? I think I read about something like that once or twice, but mostly, I wish it were to happen again in the 2010 World Cup Final Match. Sadly I don’t think either will make it to match #64, but I digress.

It’s now week three, and with viewing audiences, hype, chatter, scrutiny, and focus compounding throughout the world, the six brands and their 16 teams tangle for a ticket to the quarters and the millions upon millions of dollars, euros, yuan, drachmae, eyeballs, impressions, and expressions that brings.

A look at my Bracket will show that a full half of the eight teams who make it to the quarterfinals are three-lined, while three are swooshed and one is felined. As such, the running total of time enjoying center stage on the field of play for the brands in World Cup competition now stands as follows:

adidas: 4,704 minutes (46.2%)
Nike: 3,264 minutes (32.1%)
Puma: 2,208 minutes (21.7%)

Now the brand fun really starts. As I see it — laugh all you want, but if the US beats England in its first match, and there’s a better chance of it happening than we’ve seen in our lifetimes — this scenario is extremely possible. Some spirited matches and requisite controversial calls have produced the 2010 FIFA World Cup’s version of the Final Four: USA, Brazil, Italy, and Germany. Again all three top sponsors are represented, bearing out running totals of on-pitch time for each as you see here:

adidas: 4,800 minutes (45.5%)
Nike: 3,456 minutes (32.7%)
Puma: 2,304 minutes (21.8%)

Compared to the quarterfinals, we now see that for the first time, adidas’s “performance marketing” in the field of play has dropped while that of the other two brands has continued to rise — again, not in a significant way, but it begs an interesting question: What if Nike or Puma had signed just one of adidas’s winning teams? How dramatically would the percentages of on-field brand presence have shifted? This is why there are marketing agents dogging the big names in the sport every day of every year, in the hopes that one more superstar player, coach, marketing manager, key decision-maker, whomever might tip the scale and bring, say, Nigeria over to Nike's roster.

How many people outside the sports marketing world are sitting around asking, “Wouldn’t it be great if Nigeria signed with Nike? What a difference that would make.” The answer: few, if any. But that’s why not everyone works in that business, because here are the same numbers, using my Bracket as a baseline, with Nigeria having hypothetically signed with Nike instead of adidas:

adidas: 4,320 minutes (40.9%)
Nike: 3,936 minutes (37.3%)
Puma: 2,304 minutes (21.8%)

The sponsor switch of just one African national team has narrowed the on-field marketing divide between adidas and Nike from a 12.8% gap to a mere 3.6% — the equivalent of a swing of 1,920 :30 TV spots from one brand to the other. Nike still has just 10 teams to adidas’s 12 in this case, but they’re almost equal in terms of actual playing time. And just think: ads don’t hold a candle to the consumer influence of in-game action (live, time-shifted, re-aired, streamed on-demand, beamed to smartphones or otherwise), because everyone knows adverts are paid messages, and World Cup football is the largest single example of the human will to win on earth. 1,920 :30 spots' worth of a change is seismic by any marketing, media or financial standard.

But let’s get back to the Bracket. We’re now in the Finals, with Brazil taking on defending champs Italy. South America versus Europe. Number one all-time in Cups (Brazil has five) versus number two all-time (Italy owns four). Hemisphere v. Hemisphere. The two most storied nations in the world’s biggest sport, forever linked by a single contest of untold proportion. In 2006 we saw Italy take on geographical neighbor France, which rendered the match no less important, but definitely impacted the overall viewership by the sheer principles of time zones with national interest and the proximity of the two teams’ countries. In my Bracket’s Finals match-up, the viewing audience would simply obliterate that of 2006: 607.9 million in-home viewers of 1,882 hours of coverage. And back then, high-bandwidth and streaming services represented a miniscule outlet compared to what is about to befall us next month.

The scope and scale for the brands on and around the pitch will be dizzying. Now, in my hypothetical scenario, I have Brazil beating my beloved Azzurri (Tutte le scuse, Fratteli!), which means Nike has defeated Puma on the field, in the accounting department, and in the battle for awareness and consideration.

At last, we arrive at the final tally of minutes of performance marketing for the seven sponsors participating in the World Cup. Out of a total of 12,288 total minutes of live football captured and broadcast through hundreds of carriers to millions of viewers live — and millions more later — the breakdown in my World Cup of Brands Bracket is as follows:

adidas: 4,896 minutes (39.84%)
Nike: 3,648 minutes (29.69%)
Puma: 2,400 minutes (19.53%)
Umbro and Brooks: 384 minutes each (3.13% ea.)
Joma and Pirma: 288 minutes each (2.34% ea.)

Again, it can’t be stressed enough how much the later rounds — culminating in the most-viewed event on earth, the World Cup Final match — weigh heavier in audience than the earlier rounds, so the numbers above are just raw minutes on the pitch for the brands. That’s all.

Of course the “more important” games occur later in the tournament, and therefore have a larger audience, both offline and online, so one could argue that Joma’s and Pirma’s 2.38% actually “weigh” much less on the brand impact scale than that number suggests because, not only did they not make it out of group play (which would’ve extended their presence in South Africa), but fewer viewers actually witnessed them at all. By the same logic, I’d argue that Nike’s 29.69% weighs much greater than that number implies, because not only did they make it through all rounds, but they won the thing, which incurs its own over-the-top level of über-coverage.

If I could predict the future, I’d be golfing somewhere right now betting a million bucks a hole, not writing this stuff. So, since I don’t know the audience numbers for the World Cup next month, let’s look at the statistics from the three most recent World Cup events:

1998: 26.28 billion cumulative viewers (took place in Europe)
2002: 26.4 billion cumulative viewers (took place in Asia)
2006: 26.29 billion cumulative viewers (took place in Europe)

This lack of overall cumulative audience growth is understandable, as a full one-third of the global viewing audience is in Asia. As FIFA explains it:

This decline in viewer numbers is not surprising when viewed in the correct context. The 2002 event was staged in two Asian territories (Japan and South Korea) and kick-off times for live matches were consequently during prime viewing hours across most of the region whereas live matches in 2006 were shown mostly after midnight. Secondly, China — which accounts for approximately one-fifth of the total global audience — qualified for the finals for a historic first time in 2002 but failed to qualify in 2006.

And the Chinese national team failed to do so again in 2010, so we’re not likely to see a spike from the Great Red Needle-Mover (plus, South Africa’s kick-off times represent pretty much the same time zone shift for Asia as Western Europe did in 1998 and 2006, so no real help there either).

So where will the 2010 Cup’s growth come from? As luck would have it, right here in the States. In 2006, the cumulative U.S. audience jumped 38.9% over 2002, coverage surged 221% to 1,889 hours, and the Univision broadcast of Argentina v. Mexico was the most-viewed sports telecast in the history of Spanish-language television in the United States.

Now that ESPN’s going full-bore with HD TV, web, and mobile coverage — and even unveiling three-dimensional broadcasting with its new ESPN 3D network on June 11^th with the first match, between host nation South Africa and Mexico, as well as 25 other matches — you can bet we’ll see a substantial bump in attention from Yankee soccer fans old and new.

Another notable increase between 2002 and 2006 (which only stands to rise in leaps and bounds for the 2010 tourney) were the statistics from host continent Africa, which saw a 131.5% rise of coverage from 7,475 hours to 17,301. With this, the inaugural World Cup on African soil, that jump will be dwarfed by this year’s coverage expansion. Additionally, a new dimension for WC10 will be the advent of widespread mobile TV across the continent for Africans who can’t make the trip and, as misfortune would have it, will most likely be commuting home when many of the evening matches take place, which in many urban centers where smartphone users dwell can be a four- to five-hour bus ride each way. CNN reports on it here:

The host continent has five nations competing, so interest will be high, data rates even higher, and smartphone battery companies are about to love the massive burnout rate that will most assuredly result.

Let’s return to the brand impact evaluation by taking the raw in-play minutes shown above and calculate the value of their brand impressions according to an increased viewing audience, as well as total minutes on the field of play, as the tournament progresses.

We can only extrapolate using WC 2006’s numbers as a guide to determine just how much the global viewership grows round by round. Once this is assessed, we’ll “weight” the minutes of each brand's on-field presence to determine the BSNY World Cup of Brands champion:

Each match drew a cumulative average of 259.9 million viewers
Total cumulative viewership: 26.29 billion
Largest single TV audience: 715.1 million (Italy v. France final)
64 matches played:

Group Play: 48 matches
Second Round: 8 matches
Quarterfinals: 4 matches
Semifinals: 2 matches
Third-Place Match
Final Match

From here it’s just dumb math, using the only numbers the author could get his hands on. Let’s nerd out, shall we?

Take the total cumulative viewing audience of the 2006 event, 26.29 billion, and using what we know now about the advancement of the US and African markets, ESPN’s high-budget commitment to all-media distribution, the exponential growth of the web and social-networking, and smartphone video serving those without access to a TV or computer, and apply a conservative 5% growth from four years ago. That gives us 27.6 billion cumulative, non-unique viewers (not only live viewers, but everyone who watches it time-shifted, re-run, streamed, on-demand, etc.).

Divide that number inversely across the 63 other matches comprising the five initial rounds and the Third Place match — remember, the audience grows as fewer matches remain — and we arrive at this calculation:

Group Play: 426.1 million per match
Second Round: 852.3 million per match
Quarterfinals: 1.7 billion per match
Semifinals: 3.4 billion per match
Third-Place Match: 6.8 billion
Final Match: 13.6 billion

Now let’s multiply those numbers by the minutes the brands spend on the field in my hypothetical WCofB Bracket — and the rounds in which those minutes were spent performing — for a brand exposure quotient of Viewer Minutes (VM):

Nike: 4.5 trillion VM
adidas: 4.4 trillion VM
Puma: 2.9 trillion VM
Umbro and Brooks: 204.5 billion VM
Joma and Pirma: 122.7 billion VM

So there you have it — NIKE is your 2010 Champion of the World Cup of Brands.

On the field of play, that is.

Who really wins the 2010 World Cup of Brands? Why ESPN does, of course. If 2006 is any guide, roughly one quarter of all ad time is network self-promotion, which, naturally, they don’t pay for. Therefore, the 2010 World Cup is a massive marketing platform for the ESPN Family of Networks, which many, many other brands must themselves pay millions of dollars for the privilege of "borrowing" to hawk their wares.

No matter who wins on the pitch, ESPN retains millions of familiar eyeballs, attracts millions more, and finds itself the Patron Saint of International Football in the United States — its least-tapped, richest, highest-potential market — and is the recipient of scores of multi-million dollar media buys by brands who’ll do just about anything to be associated with them, their coverage, the men on the field, and the nations of fans for whom they're competing.

So congratulations to our 2010 World Cup of Brands co-Champions, Nike and ESPN.

2006 FIFA WORLD CUP™ STATISTICS

TELEVISION

TV coverage in 214 countries generated over 73,000 hours of dedicated programming, a significant 76.4% increase over 2002.
The 2006 FIFA World Cup produced 43,600 dedicated television broadcasts worldwide.
An increasingly fragmented TV market saw 2006 FIFA World Cup broadcasts on 376 channels, a vast increase over the 232 broadcasting channels in 2002.
The increased fragmentation of television broadcasting has also lead to a shift in the proportion of overall coverage represented by each of the broadcast types. In 2002, almost 70% of all TV coverage was of live action whereas just over half of all coverage of 2006 FIFA World Cup was live.
A cumulative audience, in-home and out-of-home, of 26.29 billion viewers.
Asia contributed the highest share of the overall cumulative television audience, 8.28 billion in-home viewers, 34.2% of the global total.
The largest single market contributor was China, which accounted for 3.98 billion viewers, followed by Brazil, Vietnam and Germany.
European cumulative audience was 5.33 billion in 2006, up 29.6%, with host Germany and winner Italy accounting for 31.5% of the region's total.
2006 FIFA World Cup coverage across Africa saw a massive 131.5% increase over 2002, up from 7,475 hours to 17,301.
The Final between Italy and France was followed by 0.8 million more French viewers than watched France triumph in 1998.
In Europe there were 76.3% more broadcast hours than in 2002.
Total hours of 2006 FIFA World Cup coverage increased over 2002 in all regions, most significantly across Africa, Oceania, Asia and Europe.
Each of the 64 matches received on average 858 hours of dedicated coverage and drew an audience of 259.9 million viewers.
The top match, in terms of coverage and audience, was the Final between Italy and France, totalling 1,882 hours of coverage and 607.9 million in-home viewers.
The highest television rating, of 56.6%, was recorded in the Netherlands for their national side's defeat to Portugal in the Round of 16.
The highest single audience was recorded in China at 71.5 million viewers, for the group match between Japan and Croatia.
Hosts of the next FIFA World Cup, South Africa, enjoyed more 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany coverage than any other African market, with the cable/satellite network, SuperSport, showing a total of 1,627 hours of coverage on its five channels.
The cumulative audience in Brazil increased from 1.35 billion in 2002 to 1.72 billion in 2006 (+27.8%) despite the fact that the 2002 FIFA World Cup was won by Brazil and 2006 the national team were knocked out in the quarter final stages.
In Northern America & Caribbean there was 39.1% more coverage - 10,580 hours in 2006 versus 7,605 hours in 2002.
The cumulative audience in Northern America & Caribbean was 829.1 million viewers - this represents a 76.8% increase over the 2002 total.

ONLINE

FIFAWorldCup.com became the most successful sports event website in history
4.2 billion page views from June 9 - July 9 — more than double the traffic recorded during the 2002 event
More than 125 million video streams — 2006 marks the first year that video highlights of FIFA World Cup matches were free to stream on the web
Over 875,000 fantasy sign-ups — record numbers registered for fantasy football
More than 73 million page views on the mobile web portal after FIFAWorldCup.com went mobile for the first time

Source: 2006 FIFA World Cup™ / Infront Sports & Media

On Branding Panama, part II

2010-05-14T11:45:00.017-04:00

I've just returned from my fourth trip to the Azuero Peninsula of Panama and am ecstatic to report that our efforts to brand the town of Pedasí and the surrounding region have been met with incredible success. The exhaustive brand manual I generated for the consortium of landowners, developers, and hospitality businesses a year ago is now in the hands of the Republic of Panama's federal government. The promo-political machine that is José Goldner is directing the Ministry of Tourism in making our area the focus of their international marketing efforts, which, two years ago seemed a pipe-dream.

Pedasí and its virgin hillsides, farms, and Pacific beachfront are finally receiving the financial and marketing weight so richly deserved, including a new multi-million-dollar airport and massive infrastructural upgrades (roads, electricity, water treatment). All this while keeping the betterment of the native community and eco-sensitivity top-of-mind.

Our network of US expats and a few local professionals — businessmen, lawyers, landowners, commercial and residential developers, architects — living in and around Pedasí has become a genuine force for positive change. Its nucleus is Briggs Capital out of Boston and its Managing Partner Rod Robertson. Briggs has played a pivotal role in land bank investment and development permits, as well as JV arrangements in the fishing industry, and their Panamanian partners (the aforementioned José Goldner, a Briggs partner, chief among them) have become an excellent conduit for deployment of stateside equity as well as business opportunities.

At the risk of sounding like a salesman for a moment, if you're looking for incredible oceanfront and oceanview property at a fraction of what you'll find in Mexico or even Costa Rica, move on it NOW . We've cracked the egg and the world has begun to take notice, which means the Chinese, Europeans, Israelis, and of course Americans have started to inject their money into the Pedasí arena. In a year's time the maturation of the financial complexion here will have skyrocketed the value of this beautiful land and associated properties dramatically.

Look at it this way: beachfront here 10 years ago was 20 cents per square meter; today it's $20+/sq m. That 's still the deal of the century for hurricane-proof Pacific shoreland, but don't expect those prices to last.

That's why my tagline for this initiative is It's Now Forever. Oceanfront property is a finite resource, and unless you're an oil sheik who can actually build islands and beachfront, once this land is gone it's gone.

There's a reason Hollywood celebs and West Coast technology magnates are buying in this area. It's clean, private, beautiful, and less expensive than you can imagine. In other words, it's like nowhere else in our hemisphere. That's not hyperbole.

Do yourself a huge favor and visit Pedasí. My good friend and British expat Tony has an incredible deal going at his Ocean Lofts in the Azueros development. Take him up on it and go as soon as you can.

An Azueros Ocean Loft in Pedasí, Panama

I often tell my clients the value of branding isn't visible in some overnight epiphany. Rather, it's the heart-racing experience of watching your brand take its first steps, like a toddler.

Well take it from a proud parent — this kid's about to run.

Mind the Demand Gap

2010-01-15T20:57:00.010-05:00

'Tis the season for massive discounts, the post-holiday inventory purge by retailers everywhere.

With such a glut of commercial leftovers, it stands to reason there exists a gap between perceived demand and actual demand ― or put another way, the consumer audience which thinks it will buy a product (creating the demand suppliers must meet) versus the smaller portion which has committed to purchase.

Ostensibly, this is the culprit behind over-production and overstocking, ultimately resulting in drastic markdowns after the shopping season has come and gone. These days, such missteps are magnified ten-fold for any manufacturer trying desperately to compete with low-cost production centers like China; whether it's warehoused or put on clearance, unsold merchandise is expensive.

Of course, retailers would rather order and stock more product rather than less so as not to offer bare shelves to willing buyers. The argument then moves to which is worse: customer dissatisfaction generated by lack of inventory, or the financial penalty of stocking too much product. (That's why merchandisers who season after season accurately predict the right amount of orders are worth their weight in gold to retail companies.)

It is here that marketing, intent on driving awareness and furthering consideration ― alongside its oldest catalyst, social networking ― narrows and even eradicates the distance between perceived and actual demand, propelling the consumer right across the gap and into the checkout line.

This is key for advertisers and their agencies to understand. When the tipping point for a single influential consumer is reached, the impact is ― courtesy of modern communications technology ― instant and widespread. To achieve this, you must know what your target audience values and expects, and make the message uniquitous, shareable, and on their terms.

We know that the value of a friend's purchase recommendation (or even the mere mention that a friend bought something, implying a recommendation) affects dozens, who in turn push hundreds of more prospects across the divide. For marketers who’ve done their homework and put in place the right conversation machine between brand and consumers, on and on it will go, fueling a near-untraceable fractal geometry of awareness, influence, and purchase throughout the social sphere.

You simply must arm your consumer audience with all of the tools they need to close the Demand Gap for you.

Within the framework of the four brand currencies featured in my forthcoming book Currency of the Mind: Money, Information, Loyalty, and Time, the jump from perceived demand to actual demand is accelerated when the consumer has:

higher levels of money and/or loyalty
lower levels of information and/or time

NOTE: These are generalizations, of course; just as in human psychology, there are very few hard-and-fast rules.

This is known by another name: impulse buying ― operative word impulse. Used as an adjective, it is rife with negative connotations. Buying something “on impulse” is synonymous to admitting one's purchase behavior was irrational, on-a-whim, irresponsible.

So by its very nature, a purchase is made on-impulse only when one has too little information and/or not enough time; conversely, if a consumer has a lot of money or is loyal to a brand, the purchase can't be considered “on-impulse.” (In fact, in classical mechanics, an impulse is defined as the integral of force with respect to time. Here, that translates to forcing a rigid body — the uncommitted consumer — into changing its momentum, or converting a prospect into a purchaser.)

This last point is based on my long-time assertion that a marketer can only directly change a consumer's loyalty and information, and can only indirectly affect the consumer's amount of time or money.

Want proof that the impact of social made a difference in jettisoning customers across the Demand Gap this year? According to a comScore study, social media has played a significant role in driving sales, with 28% of consumers surveyed stating that social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) influenced their decision to buy. (In fact, Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday 2009 saw double-digit percentage growth over 2008.)

“In the comScore weekly holiday survey, comScore asked respondents about the influence of social media on their holiday shopping behavior. According to the most recent survey, conducted on Dec. 4-7, 2009, 28 percent of those who have begun their holiday shopping this season indicated that social media has influenced their purchases.”

The types of social media and their efficacies among comScore’s respondents:

13% of respondents read a consumer-generated product review
11% read an expert product review
7% followed a Facebook fan page for special offers and deals
6% were influenced by a friend’s Facebook update about a product
5% followed a company on Twitter for special offers and deals
3% were influenced by a friend’s “tweet” about a product

Please advertise responsibly

2010-01-07T15:37:00.007-05:00

In the most recent Guinness spot "Slide," currently running here in the U.S., we follow a freshly poured pint of the rich Irish stout on a fantastical, Bugs-Bunny-fortuitously-sleepwalking-through-perilous-obstacles journey from the local bar to the window of a high-rise office building. Just before we know where it's headed, we cut to a new guy begging his boss for a raise for his team. He hasn't even been there a week, he admits with a snarky grin.

Next, he grabs the magical sliding pint glass off the ledge and toasts his manager as the title “Fortune Favors the Bold” keys in — above the "Drink Responsibly" legalese.

The creative is just so dumb and bottom-barrel — and of course nothing near "edgy" or "irreverant," just dumb — my medulla oblongata hurts. And couldja please rip off Honda or a dozen other domino-inspired spots? That'd be great. But don't take a fraction of the time they took to set up something clever when you do.

There's just something about major advertisers defining "responsible drinking" like boozin' on the job your first week at your crotchety boss's desk. (That'll show him.) The juxtaposition of the disclaimer and the headline is just icing on the dumb-cake. Not sure if I should direct my derision at the client or BBDO. (And I love how the YouTube version doesn't bother to include the legal disclaimer, which is evidence they know it's a contradiction to anyone with a somewhat-developed cranium.) Please enjoy responsibly, but irresponsibly. Thank you.

By the way, Guinness, what ever happened to “Good Things Come to Those Who Wait”?

What did we learn in 2009?

2009-12-15T13:19:00.007-05:00

Maybe it's just because Tiger Woods's woes remain in full surround sound at the moment, but I believe 2009 will talked about as the Year of Online Reputation Management (ORM). How many pro athletes (and even coaches) were traded or otherwise publicly maligned for less-than-professional tweeting — or on the flip side, immediately fired up their Twitter accounts to apologize or explain themselves after an indiscretion? Twitter was even banned by the South Eastern Conference's media policy in an attempt to avoid rapid-fire surprises or untoward messaging. And the above-mentioned were only examples from the world of sport.

With the forthcoming launch of Google's next-generation search infrastructure Caffeine, which promises to integrate social network activity in its real-time search results, you'd better believe we've only seen the highest tip of the iceberg. And as we all know, the immense power of the search algorithm will propel right to the top your worst nightmare if the digital public latches onto it. Then try and get that new job (or explain to your spouse why that off-color joke you tweeted about your mother-in-law two years ago was just a Google search away {:B ).

The author of The Book on ORM – Radically Transparent and founder of the social media monitoring service Trackur, Andy Beal, takes a moment to speak to TopRank's Lee Odden on the subject of ORM and its importance in the coming year and beyond:

Britney Spears vs. The Moon

2009-12-07T18:21:00.009-05:00

If you think you've got a good grasp on the web and its population, I have a question for ya: Which of these two topics generates more online activity — the moon or, say, Britney Spears?

Now take a look at their respective Google search results numbers (as of Dec 7, 2009), understanding the fractal geometry of search algorithms and their ability to associate pretty much anything with everything:

Keywords: "Britney Spears" = 21,300,000
Keyword: "moon" = 78,900,000

NOTE: For those of you who question my use of the keyword "moon" versus "the moon," there are considerably more results for "the moon" — 54,700,000 as a matter of fact — so for the sake of argument I went with the lower number to prove a point.

And that point is, as marketers it's easy for us to overlook even the most obvious elements in our audience's world in lieu of what's "new" or "hot” or “sexy.”

When was the last time you talked, texted or tweeted about the moon? You probably can't remember. With the exception of cloud cover and the occasional solar eclipse, the moon is visible Every. Single. Rotation. Of. The. Earth. Yet it's so much a part of our lives, we're guilty of paying it little-to-no mind.

There's no way the moon's been featured in the news or enjoyed as much global chatter as often as Ms. Spears has since the dawn of the mass internet in the mid-'90s. Yet this dead ball of pumice located roughly 400,000 km away from earth (depending on the time of year), which doesn't even make hit singles or find itself mired in sex scandals, is approaching four times her search results. Just something to keep in mind next time perspective is in order.