RPTA 323 - Managing Sport Brands

All right, my friends. Here we go with managing sport brands. This will be the uh last required lecture in uh RPTA 323. Uh my goal is going to be to get through this in uh less than an hour. I apologize for uh the previous lecture going a little long. But anyway, um I I want to preface this by saying that um this is there there there is some there is some review here, but what I'm hoping is that with this module that will kind of bring everything together um in terms of managing sport brands. Okay.

So, you're ultimately we have these four objectives that um that that that feed in and like I said hopefully uh help to bring everything around full circle for you. Okay. So, we've we've discussed this um we've discussed this a bit um already, but um we want to make sure that that you're ultimately um that you're nailing this, right? What is branding? Branding is the brand name and marks associated with a sport organization, right? Uh we've got it on the right. We've got the logos. Um they they serve to um provide a point of differentiation so that um from in the marketplace when we see the mark when we see the logo when we see the name we're we differentiate from other brands. The brand name the logos the marks and the colors um serve as a starting point in the brand management process and we're going to talk about how that process ultimately unfolds. Right. And then like we've said um several times in this course, sport brands trigger feelings and attitudes when we see them. If we've had a negative experience, for example, with Umbro, um then when we see Umbro as a sport product, we think, "Ah, yeah, the Umbro is cheap. I don't like Umbro." All right. Um, sorry, don't mean to disparage Umbro unnecessarily, but there you have it.

So, in terms of the brand management strategic process, right, we've talked about strategic sport marketing in this class as well, but from a brand management standpoint, the book endorses uh the blip model and blip is uh blip. So, as you can see there on the slide, building brands, leveraging brands, identifying and measuring brands, and then protecting brands. Um, so we're going to get into this blip model as we move um throughout this slide deck. Okay.

You can see it here in graphic form. The blip model um simply provides us with a framework for the management of brands um for the management of sport brands, right? Um and like I said, we're going to get into each of these as we move along. It's important to also remind you what brand equity means. Um, brand equity is uh to quote a set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and or that firm's customers. All right? So, when a sport organization is able to achieve a strong image, right, that's how we enhance brand equity, right? So when you see the interlocking N and Y, you obviously you think Yankees. All right? And um that image in a consumer's mind is um in in enhanced or detracted by the brand equity or the brand equity is enhanced or detracted by how we feel about the product, how we feel about the brand. All right? And you see numerous examples here on the screen from brands in the sport industry. Okay.

Now, um I think it's important to to think about the benefits of brand equity. And so we have an image here of um the front of Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs, right? So if we have strong brand equity, we will have less drastic revenue declines when the team loses. Perhaps the Cubs are the best example of that of uh of this factor, right? Um the the the Cubs for many years were known as the laughable, lovable Cubs, right? Um but you know their revenue if you looked at look at their revenue throughout that time it did not decline as drastically as some other franchises um because of the brand equity associated with the club. And as we learned from previous slides many factors go into that. The iconic home of Wrigley Field and the idea of visiting Wrigley Field absolutely helps to maintain that brand identity. And as the brand equity is increases, we have the ability to charge premium prices. We have more corporate interest and therefore potentially more sponsorship dollars and investment and all of those sorts of things. So as we can see from this graph based on brand equity so team A has higher brand equity than team B. So right we have we we have we have peaks that are similar right but then the valleys are vastly different if your brand equity is not um fully established. Okay.

Now, so that you ask yourself, how do we develop brand equity? Right, we've got two examples here on the screen. Um, I'm curious for I'm I'm curious. I want you to test yourself. Do you know uh these two logos and who or what organizations they represent? I'll give you a second. All right. Look at each one. What do you think? All right. Did you say the Golden State Valkyries and the Indiana Fever? Okay, so the top is the Valkyries, the bottom is the Fever. All right. Obviously, both of these franchises are in the midst of developing their brand equity. So, creating awareness about the brand. Um, and so ultimately their hope is that in 10 years when we present this similar slide that right off the bat every single one of you will know that's Valkyries and we'll know that's fever. Right? So that's ultimately what we want to do. So when we create awareness about a brand, we we aid the ability of a consumer to name the brand's existence when its product category is mentioned. And then when we think about the creation of a brand image, that's a combination of different thoughts an individual has about a brand and how it's perceived. So think about when you first heard me say Valkyries, if you did not know that was Valkyries, what was the image? Okay. When you first heard me say fever, what was the image? Chances are with a fever it was Caitlyn Clark, right? Chances are with the Valkyries, it was ah yeah, uh, Warriors, San Francisco, Bay Area. Okay. Yeah, I'm in or I'm out depending on your allegiances, right? And so those are important elements.

Now, we get into when we move into brand associations. So I've created this slide u purposefully cut off the logo of this club. Right? So if I had just shown you this logo without these two gentlemen, would you uh 10 years ago been able to identify this crest and who this a crest was associated with? Almost definitively 100% no. None of you would have. Right? But because of these two gentlemen, most of you probably know that this is Rexom FC, right? Because the brand associations. So um uh now um along with that um winning can obviously assist in developing positive brand um associations but we want ultimately as marketers we want to focus energy on nurturing brand associations that are um independent of team performance.

When we continue on and we think about brand associations, there are obviously a number of different um uh elements that go into um this slide is kind of fun because we we we have um we have uh the mascots um some mascots, some Florida mascots, if you will. Okay. Um so these are all but but here on this slide and the the bullets there are all sources of brand associations. the logo, the marks, the nickname, the mascot, the owner, the players, the head coach, the rivalries, the entertainment package that's surrounding the game or event, and then the stadium. We we obviously um Boston Red Sox are uh are obviously uh tied to Fenway Park and that's a huge asset for them, right? um the Tampa um Tampa Bay Rays, right? The fact that they do not currently have a stadium, their stadium was damaged and they're playing in a that's a liability. That's absolutely a liability with their brand association. um the A's, right? Being in Sacramento right now, you could make a case for um the fact that they're playing in Sacramento that that helps them build their brand, but um most would probably say no. Having not having your own stadium arena, that does not help with your brand association at all. Okay.

Now, um this slide gives us a word of caution. Okay. players and coaches are not permanent employees of an organization. All right. So, for uh as as popular and as big of a of a star uh as Conor McDavid is um as the face as the captain of the Edmonton Oilers, um he's still not a permanent employee. Okay. Yeah, sure. Edmonton maybe would want to make him a more permanent employee, continue to sign him, continue like, you know, like legendary status like a for example a Buster Posey who's now um working for the Giants in the front office, right? So there's an association there. Um, but it it it's it's still it's still not permanent. Um, the San Francisco Giants as a sport franchise hope to last u much longer than Buster Posy's uh lifetime, right? And so you have to um you have to build brand associations beyond just a single play single player or coach.

Now, when we think about the benefits of consumption and we think about being associated with a brand, we go back to that fan team identification that we talked about um earlier in um the uh earlier in the term, right? And so there are a number of factors um and there's more than just this, right? But you think about like from the slide and we look at and we see the the OKC Thunder fans, right? They're on top of the world, right? They're identifying more with their city today than they did last year at this time, right? They're identifying more with their team at this moment in time than they were four, five years ago, right? So those brand associations um are um as far as consumption goes um you know this this person um this individual wearing um wearing the jersey the Thunder jersey number 11 and this individual with his stormchasers um uh outfit on. Right? they are way more associated with the brand and bought into consuming the brand now than they were two years ago even, right? And um and obviously that that there's some elements to the team's obviously the team's performance is a very big factor in that, right? But like we've talked about with fan team identification, people want to be a part of something. people want to be able to share with others in the joy of winning. Okay. And um and and there there's obviously that aspect. Okay.

Now, when we think about leveraging brand equity after we build brand equity, um brands need to take advantage or leverage that brand equity um by introducing new products. And so this is a great example here on the screen of uh we've got Steph Curry in one of the town jerseys. The um the Golden State Warriors were um were pioneering in terms of alternate jerseys in terms of um looking at um extensions along those lines. So we're going to talk about line extensions, brand extensions, and licensing on the next few slides. So first we have line extensions. So that's new versions of a product within the same product class. Right? So the example that we give is um Callaway Golf developing different golf club lines um using different technologies, different price points and targeted at different consumers. They have juniors, they have women's, they have big hitters, they have, you know, the big bura was uh big hitters. They have technology uh ones, right? The jailbreak AI, the paradigm. I have one of those paradigm clubs um because I bought into the technology aspect. Okay. And so that is an example of line extensions. Okay.

So the the previous slide with the town jersey for Golden State, another example of that, the City Connect jerseys that we see in baseball and um in basketball, brand extensions are using a brand name established in one product class to enter another product class. Right? And so we've seen that um uh and we can see that on this slide with the example of Bears Fit. So Bears Fit, you might think to yourself when you look, if you had just looked at this, you might think to yourself, "Oh, okay. This is like the training facility for the Chicago Bears." Nope. This is the Chicago Bears opening Bears Fit, which is a public fitness center. So, they are leveraging the brand to extend into other areas. So, if I'm in Chicago and I've got the option of going to a 24-hour uh what what you know going to one of the other brands, right, uh fitness centers or I'm a huge Bears fan. I've got an I've got an opportunity to train like a bear. I might pay a little bit more. I might pay a premium for that sort of um workout fitness experience. Okay.

And then finally we have licensing, right? And so this is when a brand grants an outside company a right to use their intellectual property. The best example that we can think of is is um Fanatics. Mo most of you are likely um familiar with Fanatics. A number of you have probably bought um hats uh from or or other merchandise and fanatics as you can see here from this um from this slide officially licensed everything NFL u major league uh so NFL MLB NBA NHL NCAA MLS right so they're able to generate new revenue without adding risk each of those organizations Now, um, you might ask yourself, what do you mean by without adding risk? And, and that means without them having to do it themselves. They're still doing it themselves, right? But scaling it up on a massive scale. Fanatics has already done that. Fanatics is doing that for them. They're opening Fanatics is opening stores that and taking on the risk of business um of business uh ownership without these organizations and leagues having to take on the risk. Make sense?

Now we move into identifying and measuring brands. And we've talked about this before in terms of market research. And like I said earlier, this is where we want to bring it all together, right? So um obviously sport organizations should be conducting the research to understand if their desired outcomes related to branding and measuring their brands are working. And as we talked about before there are a number of research methods that can be done to solidify that surveys, fan interactions, interviews and focus groups. So this is just a reminder there from a branding perspective.

Now from a protection perspective um you'll remember from the uh from the blip model. This is the final piece of the blip model. So ultimately organizations have to institute policies and procedures to protect their brand, right? And so yeah, of course I've got this security guard as a as an example here on this slide, but that's not really what that's about. It's more along the lines of putting in brand guidelines. So, for example, for me and um in Kalpali, as a Cowpali employee, if I'm out there representing Kpali, I'm supposed to follow our brand guidelines in terms of how I represent Kalpali. Okay? So, if there's official communication that our department does, we are supposed to be in line with the guidelines. We are supposed to use the trademark and the service marks. We're we're supposed to have we're supposed to be good stewards of those, right? And so what brands have to do is they have to go out there and they have to make sure and they have legal teams that go out there and make sure that their trademarks and their service marks are not being used in um a pirated type manner, right? And so that's an important element of it.

And then finally, we have additional brand management considerations. And we talked about this previously with the Washington football team. Um rebranding to the Commanders. And then we can talk about it um and give another example here with the Cleveland Guardians, right? And so organizations at some point in time may have to decide to do a rebrand and that's when they make changes to their name, their logo and their colors in order to alter their brand positioning. Okay. Um so um the the the Cleveland baseball team that was formerly known as the Cleveland Indians, they made a decision that their logos and their marks and their name were not consistent with the values that with modern values and their modern institutional brand um values. And so they ultimately had to go through a rebranding process to the Guardians. I said earlier, I don't really I don't like I don't like the Guardians stuff. It it doesn't resonate with me. Um, it's not that I had a affinity to the Indians. I think they made an absolutely I 100% just like Washington football team. I think they made the right decision in altering and rebranding. I just don't like the rebrand. Guardians does not resonate with me. Um, but I'm also not a Cleveland native. I don't um I I don't know what the Cleveland fans think about the rebrand, but I don't personally like it. It doesn't I don't like their marks. I don't like the name. I don't really like the logo. there's really nothing about it that I really like, you know, and so but but hey, I'm not their market.

Okay. Now we get into athlete branding and I think particularly now in this um NIL era um in um intercolgate athletics where um you know high even as young as high school players are having to think about their branding, right? And um and that's that's obviously that that's a concern. And that's something to think about. And so, um, branding is an important element of the mix. And I hope you have, um, seen that through this presentation. All right. I also hope you've enjoyed RPTA 323. I want you to finish strong with those final marketing pitches. I can't wait to see them. Um, don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. All right. See you.