Michael Owen: Athlete, Ambassador, Icon and Embarrassing
The news that Newcastle United footballer Michael Owen has had a 32 page brochure produced to ‘introduce’ him to potential employers gobsmacked me.
If ever there was an award for a pretentious piece of marketing, then this has to be up there!
The brochure is called ‘The Athlete, The Ambassador, The Icon’ and the best bit has to be his ‘Brand Values’. There are 21 of them including ‘Fit & Healthy’, ‘Technical’ and ‘Devoted’. Tell that to the Newcastle United fans who saw him miss lots and lots of games last season!
Brand Values are not about what you say, they’re about what people ‘experience’.
I’ve nothing against Michael Owen – my problem is with the ‘marketing’ people – it’s embarrassing to call it ‘marketing’, but that’s how it will be labelled.
There’s a nice little article by Mike Norrish in the Daily Telegraph about it.
|
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Andy
Enjoyed the event up in Gateshead last week. As for Mr.Owen, if I were his new employer, I’d be checking the returns policy at the back of the brochure. Hopefully it’ll land him where he deserves. Stoke.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I think you miss a very important point here
July 6th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Paul
I’ve absolutely nothing at all against Michael Owen – In fact I’d love to see him do well for Man Utd (as long as they don’t play the Blades in the cup!). I think it will be interesting to see how Sir Alex uses him and gets the best out of him.
However, I can’t honestly believe that the brochure landed on Sir Alex Ferguson’s doormat and he thought ‘wow, this looks interesting – I like his ‘brand values’, I think I’ll employ him’.
And that’s my point – you’re right, I’m not his target audience, Sir Alex and other managers of the Premiership teams are. If they had to rely on brochures to spot players of Michael Owen’s stature I’d argue that they’re probably not doing their job properly.
In other words, I believe (rightly or wrongly) that he got that red shirt regardless of what his brochure said, and more on the ‘astuteness’(if it’s successful!) possibly of the best manager in the league (world?). He clearly sees something, and he gets it right more times than he gets it wrong.