Baseball is back.  Pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training.  Legions of fans (and fantasy gurus) are dusting off their allegiances and refreshing their commitment to following their hometown team's fate for a grueling stretch of 162 games.  As a lifelong Cubs fan, I've learned that off-field affinity bears little to absolutely no impact upon on-field success.  The world of sports is a rare arena in which consumer dialogue and endorsement of a brand fails to significantly impact that brand's "success" (as measured by victories, not dollars). 

So, in this context, just how talkable is victory?  How "engaged" do consumers remain in their favorite sports brand if the team hasn't given them an on-field justification to stay engaged?

With an off-season that provides countless rivalrous entertainment options, from the Super Bowl to Jersey Shore, baseball is often forgotten, shoved to the sidelines until fans have a reason to care yet again; until a blank slate and fresh start offer a new glimmer of "this year could be the year" hope. 

However, some fans do engage in off-season dialogues.  And some offseason dialogue is significantly more robust than others.   Many who drive the off-season conversation are die-hards (brand evangelists).  A good handful find their interest and conversation stirred back into action by the exciting announcement of an impending acquisition or the next great hope who can carry their team to victory. 

The following chart attempts to uncover a correlation between on-field victory and off-season dialogue across online (blog) channels.
 
Comparative Graph of 2009 MLB Regular Season Victories and Offseason Blog posts (in Jan/Feb 2010) - Yankees v. Phillies v. Cubs v. White Sox + "Baseball"

• New York Yankees - 103 regular season victories (World Series champion); 112.22 blog posts/day= 1.08 blog post/victory
• Philadelphia Phillies - 93 regular season victories (World Series loser); 45.53 blog posts/day = 0.489 blog post/victory
• Chicago Cubs - (83 regular season victories, no playoff presence); 53.7 blog posts/day = 0.646 blog post/victory
• Chicago White Sox - (79 regular season victories, no playoff presence); 36.33 blog posts/day = 0.459 blog post/victory

Findings:

• Although the World Series winners (Yankees) were the most talked about team, simply making the World Series (Phillies) doesn't guarantee more off-season dialogue than other teams
• The Chicago Cubs, lacking a postseason appearance, drove significantly more off-season dialogue than the World Series runner-up Phillies

Conclusions:

• Building a truly talkable brand requires more than just short-term salience (i.e. a World Series appearance)
• Building a truly talkable brand requires building a deep, ongoing connection/relevance in shaping the identity/lives of its consumers (fans) - which the perennially-losing though deeply-revered Cubs have clearly achieved
• Although the Philadelphia Phillies are the "oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports" (thanks, Wikipedia) - and have appeared in back-to-back World Series (actually winning in 2008) - short-term salience alone - aka "buzz" - is not enough to sustain talkability
  

Considerations/Limitations:

• Please note, the sample size is painfully small and insignificant, as it features just four teams and tracks off-season dialogue over just one season.
• It also doesn't account for varying rates of salient alternative off-season entertainment options among each of the four local markets.  
• Nor does it account for "control seasons," as postseason appearances could unfairly drive an increase in off-season dialogue, simply for prolonging the period of salience.  
• It fails to account for potential errors/limitations in the freeware IceRocket.com software used to generate the graph
• Additionally, some might argue that "victories" is the incorrect metric by which we measure "success" - if truly trying to find similarities/parallels between a sports "brand" and a traditional consumer "brand" - the evaluative metrics ought to be ticket sales, ad revenue, TV revenue, food/beverage revenue, etc. - to truly understand the impact of talkability on the brand's bottom line.
  

FINAL 2009 MLB REGULAR SEASON STANDINGS - Source: ESPN.com


Comparative Off-season Dialogues - Brand Name + Baseball - Last 60 Days - Source: IceRocket.com (Blog posts only)



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Ahh..  the Super Bowl - the night when we all eat too many carbs, too much taco dip and either watch the game with genuine interest or simply state," I'm watching it for the commercials." 

It's also the night when marketers sit with bated breath to see how months of hard work will be received by the public at large. We review, critique and measure the reaction of those expensive 30-second spots.

I'm not here to argue the creativity of any one commercial, or the brands and agencies that produced them. Some were great; others... not so much. Personal opinions are just that - personal. AdFreak has some interesting ideas on 15 things you can purchase instead of a Super Bowl commercial for $2.6 million (4 games with Favre as QB? Really?).  And here's an oft-debated question: is the Super Bowl spot worth it to the people not playing in it?

As word of mouth marketing grows and with 92% of folks trusting their friends and family for recommendations over anything else, the core question to ask yourself before putting your 30-seconds out there is: would anyone recommend my brand after seeing this?  Sure, I laughed at the sight of Betty White being tackled to the ground, but it doesn't make me want to go out and buy a Snickers.

 

 

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I wish I could take credit for coming up with the term, "freemium," but I can't. The term was actually coined a few years ago to define the way in which many web-based products would give away their services for free in the hope that word of mouth would spread faster. 

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