If you have to leverage a tiny budget to market a parity product, you may think your job is tough. Think again. Things could be worse. What if your customers learned your product had failed again, every time they glanced at the TV, radio, online or print news?

If you’re marketing a second- (or third-, or eighth-) best car or soft drink or printer, you can always:
•    Claim to be the price leader.
•    Or preempt competition by emphasizing some feature that’s actually common to all brands in the category.
•    Or get a few satisfied customers to provide testimonials.
But if your “product” is a sports property:
•    Your losing record is headline news almost every day.
•    And that’s just the beginning, as professional commentators and fans expend thousands of words a week talking about your failures.

One way to take on this tough marketing job is to distract people’s attention:
•    The classic example happened when Bill Veeck sent up 3 foot 7 inch Eddie Gaedel, uniform number 1/8, to pinch hit for the last-place major league baseball St. Louis Browns in 1951.
•    Minor league baseball teams carry on this tradition today, with promotions like the last place Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Salute to Cows with mooing contest, cow tipping and more, and the second to last place Fresno Grizzlies As Seen On TV Night with the Snuggie ShamWow LifeAlert relay race.

Make lemonade
But borrowed interest is the easy way out; some sports marketers intentionally embrace their losing record.

•    In Japan, thoroughbred horse Haruurara became famous by losing 113 races, backed by fans wearing Haruurara-themed T-shirts, key rings, hats and more.

•    Ski jumper “Eddie The Eagle” Edwards became famous by failing at the 1988 Winter Olympics. He turned that failure into a career as a one man marketing machine.
•    The Jamaican Bobsled Team also debuted at the 1988 Winter Olympics. They crashed; people laughed. The team laughed all the way to the bank, as they went on to inspire a successful movie and to finish ahead of the United States, Russia, France and Italy in the 1994 Olympics. You can still buy an official Jamaican Bobsled Team T-shirt.
•    The 2009 NBA season started with the New Jersey Nets losing game after game. So at game 10 they ran a “10 Is Enough” promotion, with $10 tickets.

Of course, when it comes to the marketing of wait-till-next-year sports properties, we’re right here in Chicago, where the motto of so many of our teams is “We Never Fail….To Disappoint.” And none is quite so disappointing as the Cubs, who have not won a World Series since 1908, and have not played in one since 1945. Legend says that this is because in the 1945 series, the team ejected a ticket-holding goat owned by saloonkeeper Billy Sianis, who then cursed the team. So in 1994 the Cubs invited a goat to Wrigley Field. And in 1997 the Cubs held a curse-removing press conference at the Sianis family’s tavern.

It didn’t work; the Cubs still haven’t made the World Series. But attendance at Wrigley Field continues to be near capacity, with an average 2009 ticket price close to $50. So at least the marketing works.

Lots of fibs get told during the mating dance that precedes an acquisition and the rumors that swirl through the media after the closing. “Budgets will remain unaffected” and “Nothing substantial will change” are among the most popular. Such was the case with InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser-Busch. But when sport marketing accounts for almost $250 million in spending, one has to be a bit naive to believe that the budget axe wasn’t going to strike. Even as senior managers expressed optimism that budgets wouldn’t be cut and might even increased you got the feeling that someone was drinking the Kool-Aid.

Interesting Twists, Turns, and Topspin Lobs

Beginning in December reports surfaced that a lot of the promise-makers were departing the company and sponsorships were being pulled. One of the earliest budget casualties was Kenny Bernstein’s NHRA team. The Budweiser King was the longest running sponsorship in motorsports at over 30 years. Some stadium signage began to disappear too. But just when we were expecting news of more reductions, Anheuser-Busch InBev announces a new sports marketing effort. Matthew Futterman writing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal tells us that the company’s US unit is betting that the next game to sweep the country is ping pong. That’s right, ping pong. I’m not so sure I am buying into that just yet. The price was probably right (cheap?) and its easy to label it a grass roots effort in advance of explosive growth. When you start shopping the right hand side of the menu, you can wind up in some pretty unexpected (or bizarre) places.

Your thoughts? I’ll be in the basement clearing the Holiday giftwrap and decorations off the ping pong table. Knew I didn’t throw it out for a reason!