Stemming a Slide: A Lesson From the Red Sox - Boston Red Sox have built a great brand - Brief Article - Column

Brandweek, April 2, 2001 by Kevin J. Clancy, Lois Kelly

We live in an anxious time, with one company after another reporting lower-than-expected revenues and profits, layoffs, and, even worse, decisions to fold the business. Yet if companies took a lesson from the Boston Red Sox, they could better survive these difficult times and perhaps even prosper during a recession.

The Red Sox, you say? An organization with unclear ownership, associated questions about management, staffed by what some consider overpaid talent, and facilities that can no longer handle the organization's needs?

Yes, those Red Sox. The very ones that almost doubled prices in a softening economy and still set a box office record this year. No baseball team in America has more expensive seats on average than the Red Sox. Yet while ticket demand for other sports teams wavers, the Sox last year set an attendance record with 2,586,024 fans crammed into rather uncomfortable seats. There were 68 sell-outs, and Fenway Park operated at 96% capacity.

The Red Sox franchise continues to thrive where other teams struggle because it is arguably one of the best brands in America. People understand and embrace the Red Sox brand on rational and emotional levels: they clearly understand what the Sox represent and how the Beantown favorite differs from other teams, sports or entertainment forms.

Since their start 100 years ago, the Red Sox have been the team for diehard fans who love the game of baseball, who believe that the underdog always has a chance and who cherish their own very personal Fenway Experiences.

To come so tantalizingly close time and again, but to fall painfully so short is the Red Sox legacy. Who could forget poor Bill Buckner's ball-handling debacle at first base in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets? As novelist John Updike wrote that year in the Boston Globe, "All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers; our profoundest loyalty goes out to the fallible."

Most companies, however, fail at creating reputations for their brand name products that are distinct from what the competition offers. This is as true for companies offering products and services to consumers, like Gillette, Ocean Spray and Fleet Bank, as it is for companies selling business products to other companies, like Tyco, Computer Associates, and Genuity.

If a brand's reputation is bland, or the reason to buy it is not clear and compelling, customers will buy on price, which eats into market share and margins. For a brand they love, like the Red Sox, customers will pay a premium because they perceive that it's worth more.

Consider the sales of baseball merchandise. Most teams' merchandise sells briskly only when they have a winning year, or change their logo, according to Larry Cancro, Red Sox vp-sales and marketing. Sales of Red Sox merchandise, however, is consistently among the top 10 best-selling baseball brands--even though the logo hasn't changed in 30 years and the team has played in just four World Series over the past 81 years. So much for the "Curse of the Bambino" that has dogged the Sox ever since they traded Babe Ruth to those Damned Yanks.

As corporate revenues begin to ail, the frequent first line of defense is to mount special promotions or to cut prices. But these tactics will hurt a business more than they will help. Brand loyalty is based on the idea that a product or service is uniquely better and different, not cheaper Discounting erases a key difference with competitor's products. Price-cutting tells your loyal customers that it's wrong to care so much about the brand; it's not worth that much.

Though ticket prices have risen more than seven times faster than New Englanders' wages, it would be wrong for the Red Sox to ever discount tickets. For Red Sox fans care deeply about their brand: it's part of their community part of their summer magic, part of their souls.

It's as unlikely that the economy will see unprecedented growth rates again this year as it is that the Red Sox will win the World Series. But by building a solid reputation for your product or company--and charging what the product is worth in the eyes of the customer--revenues and profits can remain strong even in a sagging economy.

Kevin J. Clancy is chairman/CEO of Copernicus, a Newton, Mass.-based marketing strategy firm. Lois Kelly is president of Meaning Maker, a high-tech consultancy in Rhode island.