From the linkblog (which you can get as a handy weekly email digest):

This bit from The Garden Report podcast is bigger than sports.

The teams are your property as the fans. They’re yours. [The players] are the stewards—they’re carrying the mantle now and then they’ll hand it to someone else and someone else. So they’re managing something that’s yours. It’s more yours than theirs. They come and go. This is your team.

Teams are the ultimate. We get irrational about our teams.

But they’re still brands. Brands built on community.

Employees of companies come and go but the customers (hopefully) stay. Which means the brand is theirs, not yours.

Be good a steward.

I'd thought about including sports teams in my piece about the death of social media managers as an example of brands that will trick others into thinking that organic social can work.

R.I.P. Social Media Managers
The role as it’s currently constructed is obsolete, but it has a future. For those with the right skills.
CuriousMarketers.ClubKyle Mensing

I didn't because it was leading me down a rabbit hole of brand as community. But isn't that the brand dream? To become a point of identity and gathering for customers/fans/stans?

What do sports teams have–as far as branding goes?

  • Clear iconography for easy identification of fellow fans (there is a hierarchy of iconography for many teams as well that act as gates to ever deeper levels of fandom (Scary Terry anyone?))
  • An opponent (or enemy (possibly many)). Fandoms can as easily be defined by who you love as by who you hate. Being a Boston fan is nearly synonymous with being anti-LA and/or NY.
  • Differentiation. There is (usually) only one team per market, which means geographic monopoly. It also allows for rivalries based on local pride (see the point above). There is also differentiation within the style of play and roster, which means each season a team can be different than the season before.
  • A routine fans can galvanize and evangelize around. It's called game day. (And for the hardcore fans it can also be called draft day, preseason, offseason, training camp, trade deadline, and on & on.)

Teams are cults. Fandom is cultdom.

What if you thought of your brand more as a team and less like a business (teams are most definitely businesses, but this is about public perception)?

What would you change if you thought of your customers not just as customers but as fans?

An aside:

As in the world of brands, sports is seeing a shift towards persona-centric fandom. Some people are Lakers fans and some people are LeBron James fans. For now they wear the same colors, but that fan camaraderie will end when the player-team relationship does.

Running a brand that has loyal customers means your are in charge of an entity that people have chosen to make part of their identity. You are not just managing a business with a recognizable logo, you are managing an instrument of personal identity and social signaling. You are working in service of your fans (or you are about to burn down all the value (everything is customer service)).

Be a good steward.