Good Owner, Bad Owner; Echoes of Brexit; Beware easy solutions to hard problems; Fleecing rich white men, marketing lessons from Augusta; Adtech ruins everything it touches; Purpose watch;
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Good Owner, Bad Owner, Brexit and the problem for an independent football regulator
Two things I know about former Brexit Secretary David Davis MP.
He was described as being 'as thick as mince’.
But he once said something wise.
David Davis: ‘We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill-in the details afterwards’.
The subsequent Brexit vote was precisely this: a blank sheet of paper, upon which voters were encouraged to project their unhappiness, from ‘resentment of elites’ to the shape of their bananas.
Vote Leave cynically presented Brexit as a beguilingly simple solution to myriad complex problems.
And this sums up my concerns about the role of a football regulator: Whoever fills the role will never be able to deliver on the hopes of football fans.
Nick Harris of the Mail on Sunday took the bold step of asking football fans an open question:
What do you want from a regulator?
The answers are fascinating.
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for some of these ideas, but each has second order implications, both intended and unintended.
I suspect that when asked, football fans, like Brexit voters, will always find things to be unhappy about.
But the regulator - whoever that ends up being - will need to work to a very tight brief, not a blank sheet of paper.
And this will make them seem weak. Disappointment is baked in to the process.
Hear here: This week’s podcast with Nick Harris, John Scales and Niall Couper.
Click the image to go direct.
Prediction: Ad tech will ruin the gaming experience, just like it does with every other thing it touches.
This week saw the inaugural IAB Playfronts event, which pitched itself as the intersection between gaming and brands.
Axios: Hundreds of reps from brands and agencies packed into a Times Square venue and tuned in virtually yesterday for the PlayFronts, IAB's first deal-making marketplace for gaming
The trades were full of quotes from marketing people extolling the ‘exciting opportunities to engage with Gen Z’ .
There weren’t many quotes from gamers discussing the exciting opportunities to engage with brands. Just saying.
Build: How Adtech Ruined the Internet UP129
Our guest was Dr Augustine Fou is an expert on ad fraud, which has been the bane of the digital marketing era, via ad tech and programmatic advertising.
Augustine Fou: ‘Marketers wanted scale, and are now addicted to it’
Ad fraud is about incentives, both corporate and personal. A whole generation of marketers has been tricked to expect absurdly massive audiences for their digital campaigns. And like a drug free sprinter, one day you turn around to find that if you’re not cheating you’re losing.
Read the three myths of digital marketing by Dr Augustine Fou here.
Spoiler: They are 1) the long tail, 2) behavioural targeting and 3) hyper-targeting.
This was part of our Who’s There? series.
See also:
Matt Locke (UP78): ‘How to measure ghosts’
Lesa Ukman (UP84): ‘How to measure purpose’.
Build: Legislators v the market
The adtech industry has flourished for the last decade.
Meanwhile, IAB In-Game advertising measurement guidelines haven’t been updated since 2009…
Idea for best selling sports business book
Fleecing Rich White Men: Marketing Lessons from The Masters is a bawdy romp through the famous golf tournament that has become the go-to case study in sports marketing excellence.
See: Six marketing lessons from Augusta.
Here are three to get you going:
When old brands go young: Augusta v Tiffany
Stunts v strategy.
Augusta’s attempt to bring in the cool crowd felt weird and fake.
By contrast, I thought this thread on Tiffany’s refresh was good.
Purpose watch
Message: If you’re going to do it, be specific.
Job of the Week:
Campaign and Brand Strategist - Livewire Sport
The Blurb: LiveWire Sport is a multi award-winning content agency growing and engaging audiences for the likes of Premier League, Wimbledon, World Rugby and the ECB. In February, LiveWire joined forces with Two Circles to rewire sports, taking the company’s headcount across five international offices to 450+.
Now, the London-based content team is now looking for a Campaign and Brand Strategist, armed with creative, strategic and intuitive thinking, to develop even more social-first campaigns for new, younger audiences.
The link: Find out more here.
