John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week

Brand Winner...	And Loser...

Winner:  Spain, World Cup Victors

Loser:  LeBron James                                                  

Winner: 

Spain’s victory in the World Cup speaks for itself.  The World Cup is one of the most grueling sports challenges in the world.  Only eight other countries have ever won it –now Spain is the ninth.

Not much to say on this one other than this: the intensity of the competition and the way the weeding out process of the cup that leads to the finals leaves us with two extraordinary teams.

It is the final battle between these two teams that illustrates an important aspect of brand building.  Successful brands win through consistency and the World Cup is won by the most consistent team.  A great brand is like a well-oiled team, everything is in its place, everything performs as it should and the good of the brand is always more important than any individual player.

Ole!

Loser:

LeBron James, native son of Ohio, has left the state in one of the most public spectacles of free agency ever. 

What a sad mistake.

Bottom line, while it may be understandable for an athlete of such incredible talent to migrate to where the money and the opportunity is, what isn’t understandable is the way James did it.

He burned his fans, his fellow Ohioans, his Target Market in a public way that will be remembered for a very long time –and not remembered well.

Consider other great sports memories.  Do you want to be remembered as the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn or Lou Gehrig? 

James has chosen the Dodgers brand model and no matter what he does from here that is how he’s going to be remembered.

Why?

Because he didn’t just turn his back on his fans, he showed them that at the end of the day he didn’t care about them –and maybe never really cared about them. 

This is especially hard because Ohioans are going through some very tough times and James represented something for them that they could be proud of in a state where closing factories and blighted downtowns are common.

At the end of the day, James will be remembered not only as abandoning Ohio but gloating as he did it. 

The publicity geniuses who forget about Target Markets and look only at the amount of press a story gets are, as usual, missing the point.  Fans forgive almost anything about a high performance athlete who continues performing, but what they don’t forgive or forget is a performance athlete who doesn’t treat them with respect and build a relationship with them.

It will impossible for James to build the kind of relationship with fans that he had in Cleveland.  Again, it’s understandable that he might have felt the need to leave personally and professionally, but if he did, he should have done it differently.  Now the folks in Miami and wherever else he might end up next will always be waiting for that other shoe to drop. 

And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.