1 in 6 Billion

It’s a small world

There it was. A huge pile of mail. Colours everywhere. Drawings. Finger paintings. Scribbled crayons. Spelling mistakes. Glitter. Photos. Sign here. Visit our school. Write me. You’re my hero!

I was fresh out of college and had recently started a career in sports management, working for an Australian agency that managed some of the world’s best athletes. As the office junior I was tasked with handling all the athlete fan mail. No problem I thought, how hard could that be? Turns out extremely hard.

There was no process in place and the amount of fan mail was overwhelming. According to Australia Post, one of our athlete’s received more fan mail than Santa Claus did at Christmas time. Ok, so excess fan mail is a good problem to have but disappointing thousands of fans because you can’t manage it, is not.

I didn't have the time nor the manpower to open all the fan mail let alone respond. Each letter represented a disappointed fan, at least that’s how I viewed that mountain of mail.

Struggling for a solution, I couldn't help but think that this problem had been solved before. Immediately I thought of my childhood hero Michael Jordan. Surely he received lots of fan mail? How did his management handle it?

This was 2003 when Google Search was relatively new so there wasn’t a lot of content about my specific problem online. As I pondered the challenge in front of me, I kept thinking about Michael Jordan and how his fan mail was managed.

Fast forward 2 weeks later…

I’m sifting through the mountain of mail when the office phone rings. It was an American woman. Her son was a big fan of an athlete we managed and she wanted to enquire about sending fan mail. Great, I thought, another fan request, just what I don’t need!

Reluctantly I had to explain my problem to her. I gave her our mailing address but I told her that I couldn’t promise anything right now as I was currently inundated with fan requests and I had limited resources.

She was extremely sympathetic to my situation and I soon found out why. What she said next would leave me staring into space.

“You know, I might be able to help you,
I use to help manage Michael Jordan’s fan mail.”

Whaaaaat?

Turns out she had a friend whose husband worked at Michael’s management group. She and her friend would go into the office each week to help with Michael’s fan mail.

I was completely shell-shocked. I ended up scheduling a conference call with both ladies to discuss their insights. Without going into all the specifics, Nike would supply printed postcards and the ladies would mail these out to fans that wrote in. The strategy made sense as it was a good branding opportunity for Nike.

For two weeks I pondered how Micheal Jordan’s fan mail was managed. And then that phone call. There are over six billion people in the world and the one person who played a role in managing Michael’s fan mail picks up the phone and calls me.

It’s a small world.