In praise of authenticity
How the NFL got it right
This might shock some of you, but I watched the #NFL Draft last night. And I thought it was awesome.
It also made the marketer in me sit up and take notice. It should do the same for others.
I’d seen one draft before — a glitzy, Vegas-style affair that brought together draft picks, the NFLerati, agents, advertisers, and fans who’d ponied up big bucks for an event that was a weird hybrid of a prom and a big Hollywood awards show. (I’m sure other sports awards ceremonies are like this too but I’ve never seen those.)
Even as a fan, I’d cringe a little as these kids — many of whom would never make it past 3 years in the NFL and would likely be injured and prone to substance abuse (staggering numbers there) after that — got inducted into the world of big money, big spending, big expectations, big disappointments, and maybe worse.
It made me sad. And it made me shake my head at the NFL which has more money than God to spend on great media and marketing advisors. Why on earth, I wondered, would they do something so tone deaf like this? It merely played into the larger narrative so popular among the liberal elite: the one where the NFL encouraged all the wrong kind of values and that it was a bunch of (white) billionaires monetizing the hell out of the dreams of young men— the majority of whom are African American (70% of the NFL is black)–giving a handful the chance of winning the lottery and becoming millionaires.
But this time, things were different. Forced by COVID, the NFL had to go virtual.
Suddenly, we had the slightly surreal experience of being in NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell‘s man cave. Suddenly, instead of a red carpet with proud mamas and papas in fancy togs, we were in living rooms in Portland and Camden and small towns scattered across the South. We were in General Managers’ generally not-terribly-glamorous basements and living rooms. (Kliff Kingsbury excepted.) Several made it a family affair by having their kids dancing around those basements when a draft pick was made. (Though Mike Vrabel, what was that about?)
OK, there was Jerry Jones’ on his yacht. But we don’t need to talk about that. Jerry is always Jerry —kind of as inevitable as death and taxes.
Sure the production was a little janky. You got tired of Roger Goodell playing cheerleader in front of a Zoom gallery view of team fans as each draft pick was announced. And the pixellation, whoa.
But overall, it felt real. It felt authentic. It felt human. Endearing and charming, even.
And if felt like what football needs now. It reminded me that football is about people, not the gloss. It’s about the kids —barely out of their teens, some still suffering from acne –who’d struggled, worked hard, sustained crazy injuries, and who lived for the love of a tough, unrelenting sport. It’s about their families in small towns and come-as-you-are living rooms, and their pride and their hopes and their dreams. It’s about college coaches bursting with genuine pride at the players they’d been coaching. And it was about the most successful professional sports league in the world sweating Zoom glitches, trying to make the show go on, just like us. It felt pure. It felt equalizing. And dare I say it? It felt like it was about love.
Remember a few years ago when the NFL spent all that money on their huge Football is Family and their Together We Make Football ad campaigns? Well, this was real family, real togetherness. And it probably cost a helluva lot less.
I hate the word authentic, so overused. But this was that.
Other marketers and brand people should take a page from the experience and go back into what you know connects to hearts and minds. Get real. Be human. Get messy. Dig back into the why of what you’re doing – the purity of your purpose.
I know that’s so much easier to say than to do in this world that seems to demand gloss and perfection.
It takes a brave leader to see that. Or one helluva crisis.
PS. Go Giants.
