It will come as no surprise that a blog entry discussing brand damage is tackling the issues that the NRL has encountered this year. Let’s face it – negative headlines about rugby league have been a weekly occurrence.
Alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, pub brawls, public nudity, police investigations and much more have kept rugby league on the front page for all the wrong reasons.
Before the first game had even kicked off a Manly player took a swing at a club sponsor and offended his daughter at a pre-season function. Things only got worse when the player chosen as the featured face of the 2009 season campaign, Brett Stewart, was caught up in a serious off-field indiscretion. That campaign material was scrapped as a result. Not long after that the media personality promoted as the 9 Network’s face of the game for 2009, Matthew Johns, was the focus of a career ending Four Corners report into team bonding group sex.
Since then a procession of inexplicable incidents has followed with some players warned or fined and in a few cases contracts torn up.
It’s interesting to think about these issues from a traditional marketing perspective. That is, with the NRL as the master brand that relies on the clubs and the players as the sub-brands to deliver its ‘product’. As with any other brand architecture model you would expect the sub-brands to behave in a way that is consistent with the aims of the master brand.
At BCM we often talk about the brand bank. When an organisation or individual displays behaviour that enhances people’s expectations of what the master brand stands for they make a deposit into that bank. However when they do something that damages the brand they make a withdrawal.
NRL CEO David Gallop and his team have a bank that’s seen some pretty significant withdrawals in 2009. Poor old Mr Gallop must answer every phone call with trepidation these days.
Most recently the superstar of the recent State of Origin series, Greg Inglis, faces domestic violence allegations and has been stood down by his club for bringing the game into disrepute.
In any other year Inglis would probably have featured prominently in the NRL’s campaign promoting the upcoming finals series. Not surprisingly that campaign will not focus on any specific players this time around. The risk is too high.
You have to think that the NRL is very lucky they have such a strong product in the game itself. It continues to rate well and ground attendances are good. But many sponsors have already scrambled to distance themselves from being associated with the grubby headlines and some clubs will do well to retain their sponsorship arrangements.
Of course the future of the game is the kids. In the wake of the Inglis incident schools have threatened to drop rugby league from their sports programs. You have to wonder how many mums will be keen to sign little Johnny up to emulate the deeds of his idols if things keep going this way. And the NRL brand has plenty of competitors vying for Johnny’s time.
It must be said that these incidents aren’t limited to rugby league players but the media and general public now expect that if there’s a negative sports story it’s probably about rugby league and that is no doubt a worry for the NRL.
So again, looking at this from a marketing point of view, FMCG operators rarely persevere with sub-brands that are on the nose with customers. But they will look to change a non-performer in some way, especially if it still has the potential to generate huge revenue when it performs properly. The clubs that are most successful in 2009 are those that have changed their culture to reflect family values and cleaned out the players most likely to cause problems. If you like they’ve updated their brands and deleted product lines.
Unfortunately it seems there are still plenty of other clubs and players who appear to be accepting of the sort of behaviour that will continue to make big withdrawals from the NRL brand bank.
This must be incredibly frustrating for the NRL. The initial decision on how to address bad behaviour remains with the clubs. The NRL has to walk a fine line and only steps in when the clubs don’t respond adequately.
If you were reliant on a string of sub-brands performing at one level but damaging your brand at another what would you do? Wait for the next inevitable withdrawal from your brand bank?
Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane
I agree with your thoughts Al. Often delivery of a brand ‘offer’ at product level is sadly lacking. The result is that consumers’ expectations, which are often established via brand advertising, are never met. Banks are the experts in this field.
But in the case of the NRL I think the reverse has happened. That is, a consistently good product has propped up a very damaged brand. With a such product strength one can only imagine what a powerful force the NRL would be if they got their brand together.
With the players behaviour such an integral part of the brand, maybe the NRL need to look at adjusting their postition to allow for the inevitable.
Maybe something like: Simply trying our best.
Or if I was an even cheekier rugby union supporter: We’re only sub-human.