OPINION:
Mike Trout is just a guy from South Jersey. Like his buddies growing up, he went to the Philadelphia Phillies’ World Series parade in 2008 and was there for his Eagles at the Super Bowl in February, trying to blend in as just another Eagles fan. He’d rather you didn’t even know he was there at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Oh, and Trout happens to be the greatest baseball player in the game today — just ask Bryce Harper. But while he may be his generation’s Babe Ruth, he is no Bambino when it comes to lifting the game up onto his shoulders.
He’s more Lou Gehrig than Ruth, more Roger Maris than Mickey Mantle.
If baseball needs a Messiah to save it, Mike Trout is not the chosen one. A disciple maybe, but not The Man — which seems to disappoint baseball commissioner Rob Manfred.
At a Tuesday luncheon with baseball writers before the All-Star Game at Nationals Park, Manfred was asked about the lack of marketing profile a player like Trout has compared to, let’s say, the average NBA player.
Manfred responded that you can lead a player to Madison Avenue, but you can’t make him sell.
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“Mike’s a great, great player and a really nice person, but he’s made certain decisions about what he wants to do and what he doesn’t want to do, and how he wants to spend his free time and how he doesn’t want to spend his free time,” Manfred said. “That’s up to him. If he wants to engage and be more active in that area, I think we could help him make his brand really, really big. But he has to make a decision that he’s prepared to engage in that area. It takes time and effort.”
Trout’s employer — the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim — came back with a surprisingly forceful response. “We applaud him for prioritizing his personal values over commercial self-promotion,” the team’s statement said. “That is rare in today’s society and stands out as much as his extraordinary talent.”
This is such a misguided debate and underscores Major League Baseball’s failure to understand how to market and promote itself. Manfred talks about making Trout’s “brand really really big.” The Angels call it “self-promotion.”
The brand, though, that baseball should be promoting is not Mike Trout’s or Aaron Judge’s or even Harper’s. The brand Major League Baseball should be promoting is Major League Baseball.
I know this runs contrary to the NBA blueprint, proven successful, of promoting stars. But Major League Baseball has something that both the NBA and the NFL don’t: A brand that is part of American culture from the time kids are born until old age.
I went to the smartest man I know when it comes to marketing — Marty Conway, a sports business and marketing consultant who has worked for Major League Baseball, the Baltimore Orioles, the Texas Rangers and American Online. I am biased because Conway teaches a Business of Sports Media course with me in Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management program, one of several courses he teaches in the program.
He, more than anyone I’ve met, understands the religion of baseball — and how to spread the word.
“The commissioner’s Mike Trout comments and the way he directed them were ill-founded and I say that because one of the things I always experienced working with players on any level in any sport, you could not take a player and put him in a situation commercially that he wasn’t comfortable with because it would come off as completely inauthentic,” Conway said.
“Whatever Mike Trout’s personality is and his own personal choices are, to try to take somebody like him and put him in the commercial mix is a mistake to begin with,” he said. “It’s just not going to be his persona.
“If you are Mike Trout and his representative, what is there that they would have said yes to? Because if you look at the recent track record of Major League Baseball’s marketing, why would he opt into anything they are doing, because they are not doing anything really well. There is nothing for him or his representative to raise their hands and say, ’Yes, I’ll sign up for that because you’ve been so successful.’”
Conway said Major League Baseball doesn’t seem to value control over its own brand — and how to market that brand.
“They have outsourced their marketing, at least at the major league level, to their clubs and said market the game as you see fit in your territory,” he said. “So you have pockets where it is done well and a number of pockets where it doesn’t do well. I think baseball should consider taking a step back and say, ’We own the brand baseball. We may not own the Orioles or the Nats or the Dodgers, but we own baseball.’
“There are 30 major league baseball teams,” Conway said. “There are something like 255 or 256 minor league affiliated teams. And if you mix in about 60 independent baseball teams, you are now talking about maybe 325 baseball clubs around the country. Baseball is played in every state, and probably multiple times in every state. I don’t understand why baseball can’t craft a multi-themed campaign. If it is a $10 billion industry for major league baseball, plus minor league baseball and independent league baseball, maybe a $12 billion or $13 billion industry, take their marketing dollars and own the brand of baseball … if the NFL or the NBA had access to that many affiliates, they would be crushing it.
“Baseball has something no other sport has,” he said. “There is a Little League World Series, a College World Series and a Major League Baseball World Series. Baseball has brand almost from the cradle to the grave. Getting the MLB brand integrated into baseball in general can’t do anything but raise the brand of baseball and evangelize it all over the country.”
The best way for baseball to sell baseball is to recognize the value of its own brand — and stop worrying about Mike Trout’s brand. He doesn’t seem worried about it.
⦁ Thom Loverro’s weekly “Cigars & Curveballs” is available Wednesdays on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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