Citibank, Roger Goodell and Joe Torre all were reminded during the past week that staying on message is harder than it looks. Citibank is wrestling with external forces that don’t agree that having your company’s name on a sports stadium is necessarily a good thing. Goodell tried to connect the NFL to the spirit of the times, only to find that the media always has its own ideas of what’s interesting. And the hype around Torre’s book tour has him at odds with his own image as a model of self-restraint.
Crafting and delivering a consistent message is tough enough. Factor in a highly agitated public, and the odds have significantly increased that one’s message may be received much differently than intended. A Gallup poll taken after the inauguration finds only 17 percent of respondents satisfied with the way things are going in the country, and 81 percent still dissatisfied. Those numbers reveal an American public clearly on edge. So, how do you communicate with people when they’re in such a state? Very carefully.
Here’s how these three messengers fared in the Age of Uncertainty.
LIFE IN THE BIG CITI: Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, has a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has a 100 percent rating from the ACLU. You can bet they don’t agree on much. So, what unites one of the most conservative members of Congress with one of the most liberal? Stadium naming rights, of course. Citibank’s deal with the Mets to name their new stadium Citi Field has been under fire since the bank’s financial problems surfaced last fall. On Jan. 28, Poe and Kucinich sent a letter to new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asking him to void the bank’s stadium deal with the Mets. Subsequent reports indicate the bank is caught between its contractual partner, the Mets, and rising public anger.
As SportsBusiness Journal’s Terry Lefton noted in December, politicians who criticize naming-rights deals are picking “easy targets.” That’s true. But there is a flip side. It may be hard for some companies to acknowledge, but everything changed once they accepted millions in taxpayer money. Scrutiny is very much part of the deal. Those public officials may be shooting at an easy target with Citi Field, but they also reflect the anger and frustration of their constituents, aka voters, taxpayers and customers, over a massive accountability gap.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
brought a message of “hope,
inspiration and teamwork” to the
media, which was more interested
in economic fallout and
coming labor talks.
In Lefton’s piece in December, Citibank representatives did well to explain how the Citi Field deal fits into their overall business and marketing plans. So why is Citibank so defensive in more recent public communications? In a Jan. 30 Newsday article, Citibank’s spokesperson cited the “legally binding agreement” with the Mets, offered some vanilla PR speak — “Citi Field continues to provide a very positive way to support our community” — and promised that federal TARP funds would not be used for Citi Field or other marketing. Unless that federal bailout money comes in the form of marked bills, that last point is pretty hard to prove, no? There was no talk of how the Mets deal fits into the company’s growth and recovery plans. (It does, right?)
Having to publicly defend business decisions to an angry public is not a familiar task for most corporate PR shops. It is called the “private sector” for a reason. But, if everyone involved thinks this is a deal worth preserving, the Mets and Citibank will have to do a better job defending it to the public.
HOPING AGAINST HOPE: Was NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell trying to channel some Obama magic when he opened his State of the League news conference around a theme of “hope, inspiration and teamwork”? If so, he’s not alone. The change in our political culture has not been lost on Corporate America. Advertisers are blatantly trying to connect their products to President Barack Obama’s themes. Multiple reports have cited Starbucks’ new community service campaign and Pepsi’s new logo, a clear knockoff of the Obama campaign logo. Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield calls it “the commodification of hope.”
Joe Torre’s book opens
the clubhouse door,
something he has
always been cautious
about as a manager.
For Goodell, it was an odd thematic choice given the audience was the media, not the general public. (Others thought so, too. A Twitter on the NFL’s own Super Bowl page read: “Commissioner Goodell talking up NFL core values: Hope, Inspiration, Teamwork. Does he realize the acronym for that is HIT?”) As the NFL must have expected, the media was more interested in the economy’s effect on the league and looming labor woes. In the end, labor questions had dominated. As Goodell’s responses had grown tougher as the session went on, the takeaway wasn’t too hopeful. Despite the perilous possibility of owners and players fighting over millions of dollars in the worst economy in decades, Goodell made it clear that the NFL is not afraid of a fight over the next CBA. Goodell’s words may have signaled a willingness to work together (is that the “teamwork” piece?), but his demeanor and tone were very much that of a lawyer extremely confident in his case.
JUST AN ORDINARY JOE? A book tour is about one thing: creating enough media buzz to sell more books. But what happens when the need to sensationalize totally runs counter to the public image of the subject? Joe Torre, come on down. For 12 years, Torre came across as a calm, honest and noncontroversial presence in the toughest pressure cooker in sports. That image has taken a hit since the release of “The Yankee Years,” his new book co-written with Tom Verducci. Torre the Manager never gave the media any wider a look inside his clubhouse than he wanted them to have. Torre the Author is telling all in a book he doesn’t consider a “tell-all.” How many times have you ever heard an author react to hearing a passage from his own book by saying, “I can’t disagree with any of that”? That was Torre to Larry King. The book should sell well, but after this tortured book tour, Torre won’t be able to buy back his unblemished image as a straight shooter.
Steve Bilafer is founding editor of SportsBusiness Daily. He can be reached at stevebilafer@comcast.net.
