The tool that I would like to ultimately create to help you assess your community of Raving Fans is jokingly called a “Passionometer.”
I’m not sure what the scale is, but you know when you have it and you know when you don’t.
As stewards of our brand, our jobs are to do what we can to increase the intensity of that passion as much as we can.
Marketing is gasoline, not matches, after all.
However, when your actions as a brand steward pour water on that passion and reduce it smoldering embers, well, obviously that’s not a good thing.
Today’s example is a very personal one.
The Washington Redskins.
Growing up, to say that I was a “Raving Fan” would have been an understatement.
I literally painted my chest before one home game (got to find that picture) and maniacally devoted my Sundays to watching the team, uninterrupted.
It was a family affair. Heck, it was a unifying element to the entire city and one constant in a city where every 2 and every 4 years, there is a fair amount of change. It unified people of all races and socio-economic classes.
About 10 years ago, a new owner, Dan Snyder, came on the scene and he has taken a brand (one of the most valuable franchises in the NFL) and continually poured water on the fire of his fans passion.
He’s failed to field a winner (which, if he had, we could overlook the other transgressions). Had 5 coaches in 10 years. Meddles in player affairs. Pays HUGE amounts of money to guys who are over the hill. And makes the games so expensive to attend that it kills the customer experience.
And, recently, it was revealed that the Redskins are actually suing their fans who can’t pay for their season tickets.
Sure, it was within their right, but that doesn’t make it smart business.
Predictably, the city reacted fiercely, failing to understand why a team that supposedly had a waiting list of 160,000 would have to do this.
I’ve had the same conversation with friends over and over and over again.
It was unfathomable to us 10 or 15 years ago that we wouldn’t live and die with the success of the Redskins.
It was not comprehensible that my family would give up the cherished season tickets that we’d had for 50 years.
Our Sundays revolved around the team and singing “Hail to the Redskins.”
Now…we barely care…and are on the road to "not caring at all.”
I’ve told my kids…”be a football fan, but I don’t care if you are a Redskins fan. It’s too painful anyway.”
And this is not about being “fairweather fans.”
Teams have up and down years, that’s understood and as long as they were committed to winning and committed to giving their fans a good experience, people stuck with them.
Now, I’m as big a capitalist as there is, but if you kill the customer experience, you kill the source of your revenue and what Snyder is doing to crush the passion of his fans is a great case study in how NOT to steward your brand.
He’s still making money today, but I’m not buying a team jersey for my kids. Don’t invest in the games. Barely watch them. Just not worth it.
When you stop cherishing your Raving Fans, stop recognizing that they are so valuable that they may as well be assets on your balance sheet, you are heading dangerously in the wrong direction.
Hail to what the Redskins used to be!
