With The Right ‘Why’, The ‘How’ Doesn’t Matter
Argentina’s passion for football shows that Milton Friedman was wrong about Rational Economic Man. Consumer behaviour is just a matter of priorities.
Argentina was the 2nd country in the world to adopt a national football league, after England. The Argentinian Primera División is regarded as one of the world’s strongest. The capital, Buenos Aires, often plays host. Of the 26 teams in the Primera División, 12 (46%) are based in Greater Buenos Aires (GBA).
For comparison, of the 20 teams in the English Premier League, 6 (30%) are from Greater London (Fulham don’t really resemble a football team at the moment but we’ll include them anyway). Last season, GBA’s share of top teams was even higher, at 16 of 28 teams (57%). By the end of the season, these teams accounted for 6 of the top 10 finishers and all of the bottom 6. Around 30% of Argentina’s population live within the Greater Buenos Aires region — an area slightly smaller to that of Greater London (15% of England’s population), or one-third the size of Greater Los Angeles (<6% of USA’s population). With more ‘crunch games’, often against geographically adjacent teams (‘derby’ games), fans of Buenos Aires-based football clubs are not short of adrenaline highs.
This unusual confluence of dynamics of a sprawling metropolis and a high concentration of teams jostling for glory or salvation, like atoms in a nebula, give rise to some spectacular clashes. Argentina’s football fans have reputations for being extremely passionate and, in the past few weeks, this fanaticism reached wholly new levels when Boca Juniors and River Plate (central and most northerly on the map above) battled in the final of the Copa Libertadores — the South American version of the UEFA Champions League — for the first time in the 58-year history of the tournament.
By some estimates, these two teams account for 70% of Argentina’s total football fans between them. A normal league meeting between the two is known as Superclásico (super derby). The Observer put Superclásico as #1 on their list of ’50 sporting things you must do before you die’. There are no words to adequately describe the importance of a once-in-a-lifetime Superclásico cup final (known as the Eternal Superclásico), so I’m not even going to try. After drawing the first leg 2–2 and a long postponement of the 2nd leg due to violent clashes (from River fans), the final-final match was relocated to Madrid (which Boca had protested). A full 60 days from the first leg, the final whistle blew with River defeating Boca 5–3 on aggregate after extra-time.
Coming back down to earth a little bit, the surrounding details of this footballing phenomenon are worth philosophising.
Ticket prices for a ‘regular’ Superclásico range around USD 10, but for this cup final, there were reports of tickets for the original 2nd leg (which was postponed) being exchanged for hundreds of thousands of $ — roughly 115x the average monthly salary in Buenos Aires. One man exchanged his job for a ticket. Boca’s final training session before their departure to Madrid was attended by 60,000 fans and thousands more outside the stadium, some of whom risked their lives by climbing 80-foot barbed-wire railings (phones in hand!) for a better view. One taxi driver told the Independent that he’d rather his club win on Saturday than his country beat Brazil in a World Cup final.
What’s going on? When did human beings behave so… emotionally? Milton Friedman would be far from impressed at the actions of his homo economicus. Perhaps the explanation is that for the right why, the how doesn’t matter.
I recall working with a client around the launch of a new product in an established category that they hadn’t been in before. Retailing at 3x more than the market leader, the clients were nervous that too few people would have the ready resources to spend so much on an item that probably already own, and are happy with, from a brand that has no credentials. Over time, they tempered their expectations and ended up ‘soft launching’ what should have been the most epic launch they’ve ever done. The trouble is: you only get to launch once. We just couldn’t figure out the right why.
Some people sleep out in the street for days just to have the chance at Wimbledon tickets or limited-edition sneakers. Some people only own 10 items of clothing, concentrating their ‘wardrobe investment’ into higher-value items. When you were a kid, you might have saved your pocket money for months to get hold of that thing you really, really wanted. It’s all a matter of priorities. It’s not a question of “experiences” versus “stuff” (what bollocks). What if Millennials like things AND experiences? F*ck! We’d better change the slide! It’s just priorities.
We are in the business of propagating a new priority. Don’t let ‘reality’ get in the way of outrageous ambition.
Like Don Draper says, on the topic of market share, “I won’t settle for 50% of anything… You don’t want most of it, you want all of it, and I won’t stop until you get all of it.” You don’t hear athletes muttering modesties to themselves before a big race. We shouldn’t over-analyse consumer behaviour into some rationalistic value-exchange. Milton Friedman probably didn’t love anything enough to ever emphasise with Boca fans.
Nor should we be satisfied until we’ve found our Eternal Superclásico — the Why to end them all.
