What does the LeBron James "brand" represent?
Monday, July 12, 2010 at 9:38PM "James isn't an athlete. That's too confining. He is a 'brand.' So while some of us shake our heads at the nonsense of turning a career decision into a prime-time TV production, others of us marvel at the way LeBron is playing the game. And we're not talking basketball."
--Paul Daugherty, Cincinnati Enquirer
For those who know me, they know how easily I can get worked up over stuff and last week the 'stuff' really hit the fan with LeBron James starring in his own version of the reality TV show The Bachelor. In the final episode, Pat Riley got the rose, Dan Gilbert the thorns and the City of Cleveland the shaft.
The extraordinary efforts made by LeBron's "team" (I thought his team was the Cavaliers--my mistake) to build his free agent signing into a made-for-TV melodrama were described by many as part of an overall campaign to 'build his brand.' This column by Dan Schwabel pretty much sums up a lot of the commentary on the aftereffects of LeBron's actions on his LeBrand.
I'd like to address this issue as both a Cleveland fan and as a marketing consultant. At its essence, a brand is a promise. Customers associate a brand name and identity with the delivery of a certain and specific experience. When it comes to cars, Volvo's brand promise is safety, while BMW's is the ultimate driving machine. In fast food, McDonalds promises consistency and value while Wendy's promises a bigger, juicier burger. In mass merchandising, Wal-Mart promises lower prices and Target promises better fashion.
Doesn't matter what the promise is, but once you make it and customers start buying because of it, you'd better keep delivering or risk the rath of those very same people who became loyal to your brand in the first place. How'd New Coke go over? Not too well. Customers loyal to regular Coke went nuts--literally--and didn't stop until Coca-Cola brought back the original drink they knew and loved.
Loyalty extends beyond the product's attributes. Remember how Tropicana orange juice customers reacted when Pepsico changed the design of the carton? How about Toyota, a brand that for decades promised its cars were reliable and dependable? And what happened to the great tire brand Firestone? When your product kills people, you've broken your promise AND your brand- permanently. Firestone out. Bridgestone in. (ValueJet out. AirTran in. I won't even comment on this brand disaster.
Which brings me to LeBrand James. No matter what his handlers, Nike, ESPN and New York sportwriters may think, LeBron's principal brand promise to the people of Cleveland was to win an NBA championship--for them.
That's how we heard his pronoucements about the importance of winning and the significance of an NBA title. His talent, desire and dedication were supposed to be enough to end the shame, humiliation, collective community inferiority complex and heartbreak of psoriasis caused by Cleveland's 46-year championship drought.
Maybe we just heard what we wanted, but we bought into LeBron's brand bigtime and did so with the expectation that our loyalty and support would result in the one thing Cleveland desires above all else:a moment to bask in the warm glow of making it to the summit. To be the best, the champ, top of the heap, king of the hill, A number 1. That was the deal.
That's why,when James broke that promise, first by throwing away (some say tanking) Game 5 against the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semi-finals, and finally by poking one of his big, long fingers in the eye of the entire city on national television, the people of Cleveland went nuts. Just like those loyal regular Coke drinkers. Just like Tropicana's customers who revolted over the elimination of that silly orange with the straw sticking out (well, not exactly, since there were no reports of people burning new Tropicana cartons in effigy, but you get the point).
The LeBron James reality TV show on ESPN was Cleveland's equivilent of driving a Ford Explorer on a set of unraveling Firestone tires. Too late to do anything about it. You know you're going to crash. You just hope you'll survive-- so you can sue the crap out of that lousy company for breaking their brand promise.
Clevelanders survived the crash. Jury's still out on whether the LeBron James brand will wind up like Firestone. His new NBA home here in South Florida is perfect for him. The promise here is simple-- just win a title, not to rescue a community's lost sense of self, but because it'll be fun, we'll have a big party and it will give us something to do until football season starts.
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