When Jon Spoelstra taught sports marketing as an adjunct professor, he frequently joked about the New Jersey Nets as the embodiment of incompetent marketing. Why not? In the [USA] National Basketball Association (NBA) for five years running the Nets were dead last in gate receipts, had the worst or second worst win-lose record, and had traded away their one authentic superstar, Julius Erving, to raise cash for the owners and in effect to raise ire among the fans. With no superstar like Michael Jordan and no marketing pizzazz, the Nets had terrible sales of a terrible product. Frequently the small crowds cheered for visiting teams over their own team, which among other things had received intense publicity regarding illegal drug use by players. The Nets represented the sports marketer′s worst nightmare.
Imagine Spoelstra′s response when he received a late-night telephone call from someone purporting to be the Chairman of the New Jersey Nets, wanting his advice. After dismissing the possibility that he was having a nightmare, Spoelstra assumed the call was a student prank, since he himself had some first-hand experience as a prankster. In fact that call marked the beginning of an amazing sports-marketing success story, in which Spoelstra as consultant and then later as President turned around the marketing of the Nets while the team′s on-court failures persisted. Ice to the Eskimos chronicles how in four years Spoelstra grew season ticket sales by 250 per cent, boosted attendance from dead-last 27th in the NBA to 12th, mushroomed local sponsorship revenues from US$400,000 to $7 million, and increased the estimated sale value of the franchise from $52 million to $92 million.
Although Spoelstra has a generally well-grounded knowledge of classic marketing, his forte is in clever implementation where classic knowledge does not serve one well. We all know that marketers should first of all find or create the product customers want , but sometimes we lack that luxury. The customer wants a new Porsche, but we only have a ten-year-old Yugo on our lot to sell. The fans want a championship team, but our team′s wildest fantasy, at least among players whose heads are drug-free, is to avoid last place. We all want to market a championship team that features Michael Jordan, but in reality only half of league teams will end up with even a winning record, and only one team will have the best player. The rest need to figure out how to travel with the Yugo that has a dead battery. One suggestion is marketing the competition. If you hate the Nets, come and watch them play against many other teams that you like. This book is filled with many other creative and fascinating examples of how to add value to a sports ticket and franchise when the team play stinks. Won-loss record is not the only factor in ticket sales or fan support.
Spoelstra shares affection for the jump start′′ metaphor with another of my favourite practitioner marketing authors, Hall (1995). Both authors emphasise innovation; both argue that success requires taking risks and often failing in the process; both care deeply about serving the customer through imaginative ideas; both insist on fun. Spoelstra, for example, created an owner′s manual′′ for season ticket holders, he sent non-renewing season ticket holders a rubber chicken, and he turned loose innovation terrorist teams′′ armed with lethal ideas into his organisation. This book describes many similar tactics that worked, as well as some that honestly did not work.
Ice to the Eskimos is generally an extended war story, but it works well because the author is a great general. It would be easily adopted in any sports marketing class or even any marketing strategy class. Usually sports marketing books take lessons from other areas of marketing and apply them to sports. Spoelstra refreshingly and with good humour describes his sports marketing adventures in readable terms that can be applied to other areas of marketing as well. The lessons come through clearly because the examples are more vivid and authentic than in, say, Kotler. If for no other reason than the opportunity to understand the thought processes of a very effective and practical marketer, students and old pros alike should read this book. Students need to read this book because someday, if they are lucky, they may work for someone like Spoelstra. Old pros need this book because it will rekindle their spirit of brash originality and for a moment transcend their cynicism.
The skepticism in Ice to the Eskimos toward research is misplaced. Although one specific marketer achieved success in one career path without research, my advice about abandoning research is, Don′t try this at home′′. Certainly examples of incompetent research done for the wrong reasons abound, but surgical application of the right research can work wonders in many specific situations. You may have first-hand experience with one consumption community but not understand another (Shoham and Kahle, 1996). Even if you understand the people in the stadium, they differ fundamentally from the people watching on television and from the people buying t-shirts, both of whom contribute mightily to the profit of the sports marketing industry.
Overall Ice to the Eskimos is delightful, insightful, and a joy to read. It will give you many ideas to jump-start your Yugo, fans, and life.
