My 2 Interests: Sports + Marketing

Sports have been a part of my life since I was little, not necessarily the playing of sports, but the watching and following of sports teams. My dad and older brother would create fantasy teams and watch games together so I would tag along but after awhile it really interested me too. I especially love college sports: baseball, basketball, and football are the ones that I specifically follow closely. While I am kind of embaressed, yet somewhat proud to admit, this is a huge reason I decided on the University of Texas for my college of choice. I have been attending Texas Longhorns’ sporting events since I was three and I cannot imagine cheering for anyone else. Now, by combining my major of marketing and my other passion of college sports, I figured this is the perfect profession for me: sports marketing.

Sports marketing, in general, can be a very broad topic so for my research paper I need to decide how to narrow it down to a more concise study. In the book, “Sports Marketing and the Psychology of Marketing Communication”, it states how the phrase “sports marketing” refers to three very different marketing objectives. One is marketing intended to sell sport as an entertainment. The second marketing objective is concerned with building sport participation, and the third has to do with using sport to sell non-sport products or services. Because each of these are different but are still a part of sports marketing, I need to research each of these objectives to better understand which part of sports marketing I have the most interest.

Last year, I was offered an amazing opportunity to work for the University of Texas’s Athletics Director, DeLoss Dodds as his student assistant. This opened up my eyes to even more potential in the sports marketing network. I also was an assistant for our Women’s Athletics Director and the head of marketing for the athletics department, Chris Plonsky. She works closely with everyone in the marketing world and has shown me all it takes to put together just one basketball game loaded with promotions and marketing for various companies while on national television. While sports marketing is very exciting and popular, college sports marketing must vary slightly from professional sports marketing. I hope to research this more and see what the true differences entail as I love watching and following college sports more, I may enjoy the marketing aspect of professional sports. I also want to learn more about the smaller sports, such as soccer and swimming that are not as publicly broadcasted and how they are marketed compared to the larger sports like football and basketball. Another interest of mine is to see how women’s college sports marketing compares to men’s college sports marketing. We have a great women’s basketball team but they do not get much recognition compared to the men’s basketball team. These are some of the issues in sports marketing that I would like to further research.

A setback for this topic is that it is hard to gain actual customer insights for sports marketing as there are no actual “customers”. With college sports marketing, the product is not a new ipod or laundry detergent, but a sports team. On the other hand, the target market with college sports marketing is easy to identify: students and alumni of the college, most men ages 16-60, and other sports fanatics. A connection to customer insights can be the experience of attending a basketball game or even watching the Fiesta Bowl football game on TV. These experiences are different for everyone based on if they are watching it with friends on TV at a bar, with family on the couch in the living room, or with a date at the actual event. My experiences of attending Texas Longhorn’s football games when I was ten are very different from how they are today as a student. When I’m with my family at a game, we usually arrive thirty minutes before the game, sit most of the time in the shade surrounded by middle-aged men and young families. However, when I am with my friends at football games, we arrive at the start of kick-off, stand the whole time in the sun while surrounded by drunk fraternity boys who yell curse words at the referees the whole time. These two experiences make up the ultimate college football game, but are completely different. While researching more about college sports marketing, I hope to learn how marketers can capture both of these experiences at sporting events.

Are you Miss Clairol or a L'Oreal lady?

After last Wednesday’s class discussion, I couldn’t help but think more on the topic of the Clairol girl versus the L’Oreal girl. This is such an interesting concept because the overall product, home hair-coloring, is the exact same but they focus on two different types of women. However, this is not completely noticeable after just watching a commercial of each brand. It is only after watching commercials through the decades of each do you realize how their target markets are slightly different. While Clairol focuses more on a woman’s dependence on her husband or “the man” and family (pictures with her children), the L’Oreal brand leaves the commercial to the women only. Also mentioned in all the L’Oreal advertisements is their tag line of “Because I’m Worth It!”… which I love. This solely exemplifies that these women want the best for themselves not because of their husband or to impress others but because they believe they deserve the best.

The best analogy to go with Miss Clairol compared to Miss L’Oreal is Charlotte and Samantha from Sex & the City. Charlotte is the perfect Miss Clairol in many ways. For example, Charlotte is always concerned with the man in her life, maintaining a good image, and is very naïve. This is the description of Miss Clairol, whose tag line was, “Does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows!” Miss Clairol was concerned with her image in society but also wanted to please her husband. This was very controversial in the 1950’s but over the decades this has certainly changed. Now for the L’Oreal woman, Samantha is the perfect replica of Ilan Sprecht. She is confident, independent, and sexy, but most of all she doesn’t care what other people think as long as she is happy. L’Oreal commercials do not show any men or have men speaking about the product, unlike Clairol. These advertisements focus on the woman and her desires which is why their tag line is, “Because I’m Worth It!” So which one is your mom or grandmother or sister choosing? Is she Miss Clairol or a L’Oreal lady?

This weekend when I was talking to my mom on the phone I couldn’t help but think of this discussion in the back of my head. So I had to ask her, “Mom, do you use Clairol or L’Oreal?” Her answer, “I’ve always used Clairol since I first started coloring my hair, after I had you.” This means my mom has only been coloring her hair since she was 33 and had been married to my dad for over 10 years. This makes complete sense, my mom is very similar to Charlotte, always relying on my father and very conservative. Later that night, I called my grandmother to wish her a Happy Birthday. While I was on the phone I thought I would ask her, “Mom-Mom, what hair coloring brand do you use, Clairol or L’Oreal?” Her response, “Oh I never use anything but L’Oreal!” This explains my grandmother perfectly. She has spunk and independence and liveliness like no other 87 year old you will ever meet. If this L’Oreal lady was as vivacious in the 60’s as she is now, I can only imagine what people thought of her. She is someone who told herself while buying the L’Oreal hair coloring product, “Because I’m definitely worth it!” Luckily, I haven’t had to start coloring my hair quite yet, although I’m afraid it will be only a few more years. I still have time to decide if I will be like my mom, Miss Clairol, or my grandmother, a L’Oreal lady. As of now, I think I’m leaning towards a L’Oreal lady!

Are our expectations too high?

I thought this podcast with Barry Schwartz was not only witty and blunt but also very true on so many levels. The choice of paradox is something all people can relate to, especially Americans with the number of options/choices we have EVERYWHERE today. Just something as simple as trying to pick out paper towels at a grocery store can turn into quite the fiasco with this product taking over almost a whole aisle. Barry Schwartz made some interesting points when he describes the two negative effects choice has on people. The first is with so many options it makes it difficult to choose at all. My dad, for example, was stressed out just trying to upgrade his phone. He is the most basic human being and wanted the most basic cell phone, however those no longer exists, and this was hard for him to understand. AT&T stores now carry over 120 different models of cell phones. So while my mother, the AT&T sales representative, and I tried to find him the most simple phone in the store, he was completely content with no upgrade at all and chose to stay with his 4 year old Nokia phone. The second negative effect is that when we do finally choose out of the hundreds of options available, we end up less satisfied with our choice, even if it’s a great decision. I think anyone and everyone can relate to this effect, even children. For example, when kids are in Toys R Us and their parents tell them they can choose one toy, they will run through the store trying to find that perfect toy. It is only fifteen minutes later when they are buckled up in their car seat in the back of the minivan that they are pouting to their parents about how they now want the remote control car, not the army action figure. However, if the parents simply went to Toys R Us without the child and brought home the remote control car as a surprise, the child would be ecstatic! Adults can certainly relate to this negative effect when in a grocery store, a car dealership, a restaurant, a department store, or even Home Depot. We used to be able to order coffee only two ways: regular and decaf. Starbucks has completely changed this for us and while we may think we’re more satisfied after having our non-fat vanilla sugar-free no whip iced latte, are we really? I mean it took me 10 minutes to figure out what I wanted and then once I did receive it, I’m disappointed that I had decided on vanilla and not hazlenut. As Barry Schwartz perfectly said, “the more options, the less satisfaction.”

Another interesting point I thought he made was when there are more options available, our expectations go up. The jean example he mentioned is perfect for this. So now that we must decide between different styles, colors, & brands to choose from with jeans the one that we do choose must be exceptional. However, if we only had 3 choices when buying jeans, we would probably be just as satisfied even if they were not as great but because of our expectations everything is skewed. Adding more options produces less satisfaction with our results even when they’re good results. In the movie, Juno when Jennifer Garner is trying to decide on which color to paint the baby’s nursery and the two yellows are almost identical so the husband says the child is not going to be angry at you for choosing custard yellow over banana yellow. This perfectly shows how many options are out there for consumers and in the end we are still contemplating if we decided on the right one, even if it was a great choice.

In the end, Schwartz says the ultimate secret to happiness is low expectations. This seems very true after everthing he says in his podcasts and after thinking about consumers in general however I can’t help but feel a little depressed when I hear that. My whole life I’ve heard, set your goals high, you can do anything you want, you can change the world, … but then with a statement like that it all just kind of falls apart. So while as a consumer this may be the case, we should realize our increasing expectations with the increasing number of options, but as a person in general I do not think I should ever settle or lower my expectations. While I may be a happier person for a short period of time, I am willing to take the risk of failure if it gets be somewhere even better in the end.