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PGA Tour has lost its sense…of branding
Sports marketing has been careening toward the cliff of excess for some time now (the wall-to-wall corporate sponsorship depicted in “Talladega Nights” was more verisimilitude than parody). But the...
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Welcome to Sports Analogy Week
I’m a lifelong sports fan, and as a result can’t help but connect sports to business. This drove my old colleague Roberta crazy. “Why do you keep using sports analogies?” she told me repeatedly. “Don’t...
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Sports Analogy week day 2: no mulligans
I played golf with my brother-in-law a few years ago. He hadn’t played much and was struggling. But no matter where his drive went, or where he found his ball, he would not take a mulligan or improve...
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Sports Analogy Week Day 3 – to excel, you need deliberate practice
Becoming an expert is the subject of an article in the July-August Harvard Business Review by Anders Ericsson of Florida State University, Michael Prietula of Emory University and Edward Cokely of the...
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Sports Analogy Week, Day 4: Finishing
A basketball player is said to be a “finisher” if he/she reliably scores two points or gets fouled when going to the basket. To define this term by counter-example, let me present Charles Smith. From...
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Sports Analogy week, day 5: shape your strategies to your talent
Here’s a rule of thumb about the difference between coaching college sports and pro sports. Successful college coaches bring players in and ask them to conform to a system. Successful pro coaches adapt...
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Sports sponsorships–perhaps not a waste of money
Sponsoring sporting events or teams has always to me seemed more of a CEO ego trip than a serious marketing program. When my wife’s old company, Alltel, rented a corporate hospitality box at the...
View ArticleSuper Bowl Stories
People who aren’t football fans tune into the Super Bowl to watch the advertisements. You’ve probably seen them, and read about them, already. The talking stain, Shaquille O’Neal as a race jockey, and...
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"Blocking and tackling"–the mother of all sports metaphors
From Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: block verb – 1e: to interfere usually legitimately with (as an opponent) in various games or sports tackle verb – 2 a: to seize, take hold of, or grapple...
View ArticleA brief story that explains the heart of an uber-competitor
The last couple of paragraphs of former Red Sox great Dom DiMaggio’s obituary in the New York Times today made up as succinct and insightful explanation of how an intense competitor thinks as I’ve ever...
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