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As legend has it, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady and Lawrence Ferlinghetti were struggling, young writers who spent their days pumping out poems and novels that they couldn’t get published, and their nights commiserating in Greenwich Village, listening to jazz. Finally, one night, after a particularly rousing set by Charlie “Bird” Parker, someone in the group–some say it was Kerouac, and others Cassady–had an epiphany, and posed the question to his chums: "What if we try to write the way that Bird sounds?” The young writers found their voice that night, and of course went on to become the Beat Poets, who were as iconic as any literary figures in 20th century American literature. Content [...]

By The Team|2023-12-13T12:23:37-08:00October 9th, 2023|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Beat Poets, Brand Unique Personality, Charlie Bird Parker, Finding your Voice, Iconic Literary Figures, Inspiring Brand Confidence, Jazz, Kerouac, Listening|0 Comments

First, the Eyes

If you ever read Alice Steinbach’s profile of a 10-year-old blind boy that appeared in the Baltimore Sun in May of 1984, what you are most likely to remember is that she had you at “Hello.” The first words of Steinbach’s article, entitled A Boy of Unusual Vision, did not invite you to read more so much as they dared you to turn away. First, the eyes: They are large and blue, a light, opaque blue, the color of a robin’s egg. And if, on a sunny spring day, you look straight into these eyes—eyes that cannot look back at you—the sharp, April light turns them pale, like the thin blue of a high, cloudless sky. Steinbach’s narrative masterpiece, [...]

By The Team|2023-11-29T16:07:59-08:00August 14th, 2023|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Active Voice, Being Direct, Compelling Content, Hypnotic Content, Journalists, Narrative Masterpiece, Pulitzer Prize, Steinbach, Storytelling in Marketing|0 Comments

The Olympics – The Brand

It seems unimaginable today but no one wanted the 1984 Summer Olympics. At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. had boycotted the 1980 Olympics, and the 1972 games were marred by the hostage situation which left 11 Israeli athletes dead. Sandwiched in-between were the 1976 Montreal Games which overran its budget by $1.5 billion dollars. When it came time in 1978 to find a host for the 1984 Games, the only city to make a formal bid was Los Angeles. But the city’s mayor at the time, Tom Bradley, agreed to host the game on one condition: to offset the costs to taxpayers, the entire event, he insisted, was to be financed by commercial sponsors. Thus was [...]

By The Team|2023-12-05T09:27:45-08:00October 23rd, 2022|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Team Talk|Tags: The Brand|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #33 – The Brand

As legend has it, a gaggle of players was assembled in the locker room awaiting the start of the NBA All-Star game's three-point shooting contest when Larry Bird walked in. “So,” he said with a broad grin, “who’s playing for second?” Perhaps as much as his basketball acumen–he did indeed go on to win the three-point shooting contest that day– the predicate for Larry the Legend’s iconic brand was his swagger. It was an unlikely swagger: in a world of fast, agile black men who could seemingly jump out of the gym, Bird was a lumbering white guy who might not have been able to clear a shoe box in a single bound. The “Hick from French Lick” [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:50-08:00June 3rd, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Authenticity, Creating Compelling Marketing Content, Iconic Brand, Larry Bird, NBA All-Stars, One-of-a-kind Brand, Pitchman, Swagger, Voice|0 Comments

Marketing Memories

Reading a middle-aged man’s reminiscence about a high-school classmate who was a gifted athlete raises a question: can memories make for good marketing. Here’s what was written; The first time I saw someone fly I was 18 years old. It was a cloudless, Midwestern, spring afternoon in 1983 and I was among a clutch of teenagers jostling for a rebound on a blacktop basketball court. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, one boy soared above the throng, and with his lithe body framed in amber by the midday sun, slammed the ball through the hoop in one fell swoop, like a cobra plucking a baby bird from its nest. I’ve seen human beings fly many times since then–Sonny Rollins on [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:51-08:00May 20th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Team Talk|Tags: Content Marketing|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? The Packers – The Brand

A 2017 survey by the number-crunching website Five Thirty Eight found that the most beloved team in the NFL is not the Dallas Cowboys, or New England Patriots, the San Francisco 49ers or the New York Giants. It is, by a fairly wide margin, the team in the league’s tiniest market: the Green Bay Packers. With a population of 105,0000–you could actually squeeze the entire city into the University of Michigan football stadium and still have seats left over– Green Bay clearly punches above its weight when it comes to its fan base. Is it the Green and Gold colors, or the 13 NFL championships dating back to 1929, or its legendary tough-as-nails coach, Vince Lombardi, who seemed sent [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:52-08:00May 6th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Creating Community, Green Bay Packers, NFL, Sports Brand|0 Comments

The Story of Content

Had you asked the average Minnesotan in early 1991 to handicap that year’s U.S. Senate race, the vast majority would’ve no doubt told you that the chances of an obscure political science professor defeating a millionaire incumbent businessman were approximately the same as the proverbial snowball’s in hell. The problem, as is often the case, was money, or lack thereof. For every dollar that the challenger, Paul Wellstone, had in his campaign war chest, the incumbent, Rudy Boschwitz had 7. As it turns out, Wellstone had him right where he wanted him. He would manage to squeeze by Boschwitz in one of the biggest upsets in American electoral history. Wellstone’s secret weapon? Storytelling. Coming two years after the breakout [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:53-08:00April 22nd, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Building Community, Flint Michigan, Key to Connecting with your Audience, Michael Moore, Paul Wellstone, Story Telling, Storytelling as Art|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #23 – The Brand

When LeBron James played for the Miami Heat, a man walked into a San Francisco bar one afternoon to catch an NBA game, sidling up next to a woman who appeared to be in her 60s. Miami was losing and the woman mentioned that she was from Cleveland, but there was something in the way she said it that left the man with the distinct impression that she was among the Cleveland fans left embittered by the “King’s” move from Ohio to South Beach. As the Heat mounted a comeback, however, the woman became increasingly animated, raising her fists triumphantly in the air and exclaiming “Yes!” when LeBron hit a clutch shot. Amused, the man asked the woman: “I [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:54-08:00April 8th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Alpha Male, American Maleness, Down to Earth, LeBron James, Pitchman, Sports Brand, Sports Celebrity, Successful Global Brand|0 Comments

When ‘Just the Facts’ Just isn’t Enough

As a friend tells the story, he was watching a television reporter interview the pilot of a commercial jet that had had a close call nearly 2 years ago. It was pretty standard morning television: the stoic pilot with a crew cut and a military mien, dispassionately describing his maneuvers in the cockpit as though he were auditioning for the role of Joe Friday in a Dragnet sequel. And then the reporter asked the pilot what he was thinking at the critical moment when his survival, and that of his passengers, was very much in doubt. The pilot paused for what must’ve been three or four seconds, and his eyes began to nervously scan the middle distance. Finally, he [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:54-08:00March 25th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Emotion in Marketing, Transforming the Mundane|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #3 – The Brand

“Practice?” begins perhaps the most famous rant in history. “We're sitting here … I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice. Not a game. Not a game. Not a game. We're talking about practice. Not a game. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last. Not the game. We're talking about practice, man.” The retired professional basketball player Allen Iverson may have been the most unique brand in marketing history. With his slight build, cornrows, ubiquitous tattoos, and rakish charm, Iverson’s uniquely authentic brand is equal parts Tupac and Peter Pan. He would neither give [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:54-08:00March 11th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Allen Iverson, Bad Boy, Everyman, High Value Consumer, Iconoclastic Brands, Real People, sports marketing|0 Comments

Branding Bible

Good brand marketing is a little bit like a good church. The pastor’s sermon represents the content, the parishioners in the pews are the audience, and the church is your online platform. But, do you have a Bible? The Bible for marketers is a documented content strategy which, like scripture, can be referenced for inspiration, guidance, continuity, and, ensures that your content team is all working from the same page. A documented content strategy, like the Bible, leaves nothing to chance and reduces the chances of misinterpretation. Studies show that marketers who have a documented strategy are more effective and more productive in almost every phase of the process when compared with their peers who have only a verbal [...]

By The Team|2023-12-01T09:57:43-08:00February 26th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Brand Guidelines, Brand Rules, Content Strategy, Documented Content Strategy, Identity Manual, inspiration, Marketing Guidance, Marketing Productivity, Marketing Strategy|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #5 – The Brand

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, With his bantamweight’s physique, and graceful gait, Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio–better known as a Joltin’ Joe–was the New York Yankees center fielder between 1936 and 1951. The son of an immigrant San Francisco fisherman, and Marilyn Monroe’s second husband, the Hall of Famer was also a symbol of America’s halcyon days before the country erupted in tribal clashes and civil unrest in the 1960s. That iconic quality made DiMaggio not just a lyrical touchstone for Simon and Garfinkel’s soundtrack for the movie, The Graduate, but also a uniquely successful brand in American marketing history. He hawked a New York bank, Bowery Savings and Loan, Wheaties, and [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:55-08:00February 12th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Celebrity Product Marketing, Joe DiMaggio, Mr. Coffee, New York Yankees, Sports|0 Comments

Content that Kills

The prosecutors thought the case was a slam dunk: their evidence included the murder weapon, DNA, and witnesses who testified that the defendant was alone in a room with the victim when he was fatally shot. The only missing link in this murder trial nearly 25 years ago in suburban Washington DC was motive. Prosecutors had no earthly idea why the defendant murdered a friend of many years. Still, they were stunned when the jury came back with their verdict: Not Guilty. Whether we are conscious of it or not, people need stories, or linear narratives with colorful characters, a coherent plot and a beginning, a middle, and an end. Jurors didn’t buy the prosecution’s story because they needed [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:56-08:00January 29th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Team Talk|Tags: Brand Marketing, Content Marketing, Perspective changes everything… #perspective #truth #fact #life #pointofview #pov #inspiration #motivation, storytelling|0 Comments

I See You

South Africans typically greet each other with the Zulu word Sawubona--Sawa for short--which translates literally to "I see you." But the greeting has a deeper, transcendent meaning as well which can best be understood thusly: “I recognize not only your physical form but your humanity. On its most molecular level, Sawa is an articulation of solidarity with other human beings, and it helps strengthen a sense of community and belonging. Iconic South African figures such as former President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu credit the double entendre with helping sustain freedom fighters during the country’s dark days of apartheid. Building community is also the key to creating the quality content that is central to effective brand marketing strategies. [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:57-08:00January 23rd, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Building Community, Creating Quality Content, Effective Brand Marketing Strategies, Enduring Marketing Campaigns, I see you, Mandela, Nike, Sawubona-Sawa|0 Comments

Serena – The Brand

“If you were a tennis player, who would you want to be like?” an unseen interviewer asks a young gap-toothed Serena Williams. The Gatorade commercial then goes on to document the prodigy’s spectacular career, its breathtaking triumphs and heartbreaking defeats and, mostly, the grace with which she has handled being one of the most celebrated–and criticized– athletes in American history. The commercial returns to a beaming Williams, who finally responds; “Well, I’d kind of like everybody to be like me.” It is a glorious answer, and the capstone to a transcendent career. In the world of brand marketing, there has never been anyone quite like Serena Williams, the winner of 23 Grand Slams, who has sold everything from Gatorade [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:25:59-08:00January 8th, 2020|Categories: .Cover Story, 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Brand Genius, Brand Visionary, Celebrity Brand, Serena Williams, Sports, Tennis Brand, Wonder Woman|0 Comments

By the Inch, Life’s a Cinch

One of the more common misperceptions in brand marketing is that you can expand your company’s audience with that single snappy blogpost, Tweet, or video. That, in fact, almost never happens. The most effective brand strategies, typically, build critical mass gradually, over time, courting followers and subscribers by consistently producing quality content. The objective should be to inculcate an almost “Pavlovian” response among visitors to your website, social media site, or video channel, meaning that when they see your brand, it triggers a reflexive mouth-watering appetite for quality content. A big part of this incremental strategy is understanding how most people consume content. Almost anyone can be tempted by “click-bait” offering a glimpse of Rihanna sunbathing poolside, but most [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:02-08:00December 4th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Building Critical Mass, Celebrity Brands, Consistent Quality Content, Effective Brand Strategies, Followers and Subscribers, Good Marketing Habits, Pavlovian Response, Quality Content, Rhianna, Social Media Content, Website Content|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #7 – The Brand

Similar to Joe DiMaggio’s, the former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is tall and lean, with the effortless gait– and velocity– of a gazelle. But Kaepernick’s Nike ad campaign, introduced on the opening weekend of the NFL’s 2018 season, is as jarring as DiMaggio’s Mr.Coffee commercials were reassuring. With his billowing Afro and a black turtleneck sweater, Kaepernick appears on screen, resembling your uncle only if your uncle was Huey Newton, his voice narrating a script that urges the audience to build a world that is the equal of their dreams. The tagline is a reference to Kaepernick’s NFL career, aborted by his peaceful protests against police violence “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The controversial ad [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:03-08:00November 20th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Atypical Brand, Colin Kaepernick, Controversial Ad Campaign, NFL, Nike, Playing it Safe, Politics in Marketing, Sports|0 Comments

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

Stumping for Republican Congressional candidates in the 1970 midterm elections, Vice-President Spiro Agnew attacked the GOP’s liberal critics in one of the most memorable speeches in the history of American politics. “In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Around the same time, Nikki Giovanni published her poem, “kidnap.” if i were a poet i’d kidnap you put you in my phrases and meter you to jones beach or maybe coney island or maybe just to my house lyric you in lilacs dash you in the rain alliterate the beach to complement my see Agnew’s remarks were written by [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:04-08:00November 6th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: African-American Poet, Alliteration and Rhythm, Brand Building, Content Creation, Effective Communication, Having Fun, Language and Politics, Nikki Giovani, Spiro Agnew, Timeless Content, Whimsy|0 Comments

Ali – The Brand

As the boxer aged, the irascible sports journalist Howard Cossell would chide Muhammad Ali about his diminishing boxing skills, and ask how he could possibly continue to stave off younger contenders. Finally, Ali retorted at a pre-fight press conference: “And you're always talking about, 'Muhammad, you're not the same man you were 10 years ago.' Well, I asked your wife, and she told me you're not the same man you (were) two years ago.’“ The exchange helps explain why Ali is indeed the GOAT, or Greatest of All Time, both in the ring and as an iconic brand whose imprimatur raised the profile, and burnished the reputation, of any product he endorsed. In his heyday in the 1970s neither [...]

By The Team|2023-12-01T10:52:11-08:00September 25th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Team Talk|Tags: The Brand|0 Comments

Sorry my story is so long

The story used to be a staple in newsrooms across the country. “Sorry my story is so long,” the young reporter says to his editor, “but I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” Indeed, it is time-consuming to pare writing, or content, to the bone, but the return-on-investment is huge in terms of the audience who not only reads your posts but remembers it for all the right reasons. One of the keys to writing content that stands out from the crowd is emphasizing the active tenses and strong verbs, rather than the passive voice and adjectives that are too-clever-by-half. Some content creators reflexively favor passive verbiage under the misguided notion that it lends their message a certain [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:06-08:00September 11th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Active Voice, Content Length, Good Content, Marketing Content Verbiage, Marketing Stories, Memorable Content, Passive Verbiage|0 Comments

The Yankees – The Brand

“Being a New York Yankees fan,” the comedian Doug Stanhope has quipped,”is like going to a casino and cheering for the house to win.” If the Green Bay Packers are the underdog America loves to cheer for the Yankees are a soap opera of celebrity dysfunction, a professional sports team tightly controlled by a ruthless, brawling owner and his son for two generations. It likely would never play in Peoria, but somehow, in the city so nice they named it twice,the New York Yankees are a brand like no other. You love them,or you hate them, but one way or another, the Yankee pinstripes inspires white-hot passions in almost every baseball fan. The Bronx bombers brand is based in [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:08-08:00August 28th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Bad Boy Reputation, Compelling Narrative, Entertaining Brands, Green Bay Packers, Hall of Fame, Sports Brands, The Bronx Bombers, The Underdog, The Yankees, Yogi Berra|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #45 – The Brand

The story, perhaps apocryphal, goes something like this. At the height of his fame in the early 1990s, Michael Jordan’s mother was exhorting her son to endorse the Democrats’ African-American nominee for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat, held, at the time, by the polarizing Republican, Jesse Helms. Jordan declined, explaining that “Republicans buy shoes too.” Michael Jordan may be the most ambiguous brand in the history of sports marketing. On the one hand, he has no peers; his collaboration with Nike put the sports apparel juggernaut on the map, and even to this day, a generation after his playing heydays, his Air Jordan brand shoes are a hot ticket. On the other hand, however, what brand other than Nike [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:10-08:00July 31st, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Brand Positioning, Team Talk|Tags: Ambiguous Brands, Apolitical Brand, Michael Jordan, Nike, Sports, sports marketing, Study in Myth Making|0 Comments

All That Jazz

Of Dizzy Gillespie’s many jazz compositions, none is more infectiously catchy than Manteca. First performed in 1947, the song–named for the Spanish word for lard– memorably opens with the stand-up base playing a Cuban-influenced riff, and builds to a rousing climax by the horn section. The music critic Gary Giddins hails Manteca as ‘one of most important records ever made in the United States.” It is also a tribute to the power of diversity. Gillespie’s hard-living Cuban drummer, Chano Pozo, wrote the unusual opening baseline, and the layered melodies that were staples of Latin jazz at that time. Known for his bent trumpet, puffy-jowled showmanship, and association with Charlie “Bird” Parker, Gillespie, who was African-American, wrote the bridge, and [...]

By The Team|2021-01-18T01:26:11-08:00July 17th, 2019|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Content Marketing, Team Talk|Tags: Charlie Bird Parker, Collaboration, Content that Pops, Creating Dynamic Content, Dizzy Gillespie, Group Think, Jazz, Power of Diversity|0 Comments