Liverpool Football Club and the art of Aggressive Marketing
This season I am watching Liverpool. Period. In the context of the game, this is the first time I am watching them so close. Observing every game as they potentially move towards winning the #EPL after years of drought.
I am not watching the game for MoSalah or anyone in particular. I am watching because after years they are making the right kind of noise, which can be heard across the world. Liverpool as a brand has finally made a comeback.
Yes, it was a force to reckon in the 70–80’s era. However, ever since the all-new English Premier League came into the picture, the club lost its shine minus the few glimpses, including the 2004–05 champions league final.
What Changed? Liverpool always had decent players, great coaches, and loyal fans. The only thing that has infused into this chemistry is Aggression. Aggression to play rather than winning. Aggression to come back from bad situations and aggression to take competition head on. As a brand, that’s aggressive marketing for you.
4–3–3 Formation
A lot of marketing individuals I talk to, they refrain from the term aggressive and instead use something, which is more politically correct. Something like focused. No, focused is not aggressive. Making a constant, consistent, correct, and informative noise is an art, and it needs the courage to do that kind of marketing. Brands and their marketing activities sometimes are great but they lack that aggressive approach. Take the example of the gameplay Liverpool has and put it out on your marketing framework.
Up front, LFC has 3 creative strikers, which are creative and produce quality and finesse at the same time. By far, that’s the most attractive point of their game. Followed by 3 mid-fielders who are constantly pressing the other teams, keeping the competition on toes and forcing them to make mistakes, and finally a rock-solid defense line, which consists of unbroken players who don’t turn the back while standing in the wall. Together, they are never out of steam. Even their replacements are like that, always pushing the competition to the edge.
Replicate the model to your marketing mix. Upfront, have creative advertisements with a creative delivery mix. Do not use a single medium for delivery of your creatives. It’s the era of Omni marketing, why restrict yourself to text Search when you can be found on Voice search. Be open to using unknown channels and be patient to get the results.
Up next, The midfield. Mid-field is the most important position in the modern football. Similar to that, customer touch point today is the midfield of your product. Therefore, be aggressive in making noise. Interact with your customers wherever possible. Do not restrict yourself to twitter chats or google surveys, do both. Add a BTL plan over it, maybe. Send out free samples of your products to influencers or let them critique. Hit the competition everyplace. Keep the competition on toes. Hit them with pricing, product, placement, or positioning. Like Milner does for Liverpool.
Think like Churchill when he delivered the famous “we shall fight them on the beaches” speech.
Lastly, a strong defensive line. To make one for your organization, the first step is to get a strong reputation management team to respond to the critics. They are plenty out there after all. Then work on after sales services. Invest in account management as a function. A strong account management team with personal relationships with the client does wonders. Have a rock solid customer care system. Online or otherwise. Your customer should not find a loophole to expose your weaknesses. Take Apple for example. Within 15 days of iPhone X’s launch, the phone has reached every major market, including tie-ups with the retailers and telecom operators. That’s a rock-solid defense line.
To win the champions league
Marketing any brand that aggressively, you need resources, budget, and management support. If you have all three, well, you’ve already reached Valhalla. That’s mythological, to be honest. In reality, there are compromises. Just like any football club, your players will get tired or there will be injuries. In order to be the best, you need to make sacrifices. Either you apply a rotation policy, meaning focus on a particular product or service at a time and give a break to others or focus on one particular product and aggressively market it. The first, in my view, is safe and honestly, the average way of marketing products.
Invest your time and resources to aggressively market one product. Use BCG matrix to understand, which product you should focus on and invest time and money on to that. Do what Zidane did, 3 seasons with Real Madrid, he was average in the domestic season but fantastic when it comes to champions league. Start with a short target or go local. Build your market in that space. The choice is ultimately yours, be №2 Or №3 in all the places or become №1 in few of them.
Gerrard to the rescue!
This kind of marketing activities, if planned and executed perfectly, tends to bring a chaos within your customer base. The existing or loyal customer might get overwhelmed by such noise. Like come on, we know you’re good, stop promoting. That is where your cash cow products should be placed. Throw in a loyalty program in the mix. Make efforts to retain them. Get them into some exclusive club of loyalists and feed them with your cash cows, so that they’re involved. Remember Liverpool fans played ‘we have Gerrard’ card for over a decade and stayed loyal to the club.
To wrap it up, remember that statisticians, commemorate the winners and history remembers how the game was played. The current Liverpool side, well, whether they win the champions league or not, that’s future. But by far in the last couple of years, this has been the most exciting football club to watch. Last time I was so hooked to a team was in 2015 when Leicester City with Jamie Vary was disrupting the footballing world. That discussion is for some other day.
Here’s me signing off in hope that my fellow marketers will not hide behind low budgets and compliance and use an aggressive approach to marketing. Remember, we are the most exciting department in any organization. Thank you for reading.
PS: I am a Newcastle Fan since the days of Alan Shearer. The Magpies will be back.
Disclaimer: The article is not an endorsement of Liverpool Football Club (LFC) or any other club in that matter. This article is a personal point of view and should be used only for academic purposes. I am a graphic designer for 12 years now. I currently manage marketing for KPMG in Kuwait. This article has nothing to do with my organization or any other professional organization too.
