Fascinate!

When I first changed career paths from being a member of the sports media to focusing on marketing, one of the first authors I read was Sally Hogshead, and I was thrilled to discover that she completed a Ted Talk at a Ted.com conference in Atlanta in March of 2011.  The main thrust of her focus revolves around the importance of standing out from the crowd in promoting our companies and ourselves as individuals and leaders.  Her book is appropriately titled, "Fascinate".

Miss Hogshead lures us in with an anecdote about online dating, using an example of match.com to illustrate the importance of being able to stand out and get noticed.  She starts by asking how many of the audience members have tried online dating, which builds a "we're-all-in-this-together" circle of trust.  Shen then offers some typical opening statements from men, which are of course hysterically inappropriate or gauche.  And then Miss Hogshead talks about the problem of being safe and neutral, because neutral can equate to boring.  In the end, she highlights a profile that works because it is confident, funny, and self-aware.  Miss Hogshead ultimately reveals that this profile, which fascinated her immediately, is the profile of the man who is about to become her husband.  It is funny, touching and it absolutely nails the primary point.

From there, Miss Hogshead reveals the science that supports her theories -- science that indicates that over the course of just 2-3 generations, we have evolved to the point that the average 20-year-old has the attention span of a goldfish.  Literally.  This revelation indicates that not only does a brand or individual have to be concerned with direct competition, but also with general distraction.  That's an extremely important concept for anyone in marketing or branding, and a huge part of the reason why the fundamentals of sports marketing have flipped on their heads with the recent revolution in communication technologies.

As marketers of sports, we have always relied on the concept of engagement, but that concept is now more important than ever.  To get fans in stadiums, sports teams are competing more than ever with the in-home viewing experience, which offers fans crystal-clear screens, 3-D technology and the ability to watch several games from several different camera angles -- in short, the ability to multi-task.  Corporate sponsors need to be creative in how they catch and hold the attention of their potential consumers.  Marketing, like dating, is casting a net into a sea of possibility, but to make the possibility become reality we have just a few seconds to lure the fish, and then we must fight like heck to land them.