I first heard the hockey/figure skating analogy from Evan Grossman, an old friend and former client. Evan was a founder of HookMedia back in the late 90s, a pioneer in online advertising. He used the analogy to compare the then-nascent field of digital media planning to traditional media. It went something like this….
Figure skating is like planning the traditional print or broadcast campaign. If you’re a competitive figure skater, you spend months preparing your routine. You practice hours every day. All for your 90 seconds on the ice. The goal is perfection in that one moment. If you don’t land the triple axel, you’ve failed.
So it goes with traditional media. The creative is carefully crafted over weeks, even months. Each ad, beautiful and bespoke, is unveiled in the Wall Street Journal or on prime time. Your job, once the ad is placed, is essentially done. You wait, and hold your breath.
Digital media, on the other hand, is like hockey. The NHL is an 82 game season. You’re playing three or four times a week. The best teams are far from perfect. They’re learning a little bit every game, adjusting lineups and strategies, and getting better. So it goes with digital media. The goal is getting the ads out there, and encouraging as many people to engage with them as possible. And you’re looking at the data constantly, hopefully learning a little bit all the time, adjusting, and getting better.
I still think the analogy is particularly apt. More than ever, successful marketing is about effective engagement, not the perfect impression. And to stretch the analogy a bit, marketing has become a team sport, and a contact sport at that. Your play matters in relation to others, not in relation to some objective sense of perfection.
It occurs to me that you can apply the same analogy to a broad range of marketing in the read/write era. Here are a few applications of the hockey/figure skating dichotomy:
Content. Figure skating content is perfectly crafted. It’s the 30-page white paper that is in development for six months. It’s the ad where every word in the body copy is fussed over, and sent through rounds and rounds of review. Hockey content is about staying in front of people. It is just good enough, rather than close-to-perfect and rare. It is about putting content out there, finding out what people like by seeing what they respond to. It is an ongoing stream rather than the occasional post.
Analytics. In figure skating, you’ll wait months for your moment on the ice to know if your training is paying if off. So it is with traditional print campaigns, where you might have to wait six months for the post-campaign research to know if you’ve moved the needle. Digital campaigns, on the other hand, are pumping out data every day. The point is observing and optimizing; making sense of the data to drive ongoing adjustments to media and creative.
Reaching the C-level. Every one of my clients wants to reach the C-level decision-maker. The figure skating approach is an elaborate, expensive direct campaign to open the door, everything rising or falling based on one meeting. Hockey is finding your target and the couple of dozen people in their organization whose opinion they care about. And using social networking to follow them, listen to them, strike up a conversation over time, build affinity bit-by-bit. So when the sales meeting happens, it feels like a natural extension of a conversation that has already started.
Of course, like all analogies. You can take it too far. There will always be a place for production value. And being prolific is no excuse for being boring or banal. There will always be a premium on great creative and ideas, it is just that the context for where those ideas are generated or applied has broadened and stretched.
It is not about perfection, it’s about playing every day.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on where else can the analogy extend, or where does it fall short.
Or follow me on Twitter at @motoole1.
I enjoyed the article and gained from the analogy, but I must say as a hockey player and fan it made me feel like hockey was being sold as a lower valued sport or something less important. So also for traditional vs. digital media. Digital media is played differently, but also has great value in context. I suppose this is really your part of your point here.
As much as it pains me, figure skating and hockey have their place on the ice. As does both traditional media and digital media have their place in any marketing mix.
Thanks for your article… see you on the ice!
–Joshua
I really like your hockey metaphor. The challenge, however, remains in getting the “figured skaters” in traditional agencies to play a some hockey and get a feel for the game. I know a few people who have been tinkering with agile project management approaches as a way to become more adaptive but this has limitations and requires a major cultural transformation (ie no creative briefs, no statements of work, etc).
In digital media, shorter lead times and flexible publishing reduces the fear of imperfection. This solves part of the problem. Contrary to the buzz emanating from the hype spots online, however, there is more to marketing than social media and inbound marketing. Many of us still need “outbound” channels to get the reach and frequency and make things happen. Until old media “dies”, we’ll all have to deal with this friction between “perfect” and “good enough”.
How do you plan to deal with this coming transformation?
Josh,
Thanks for the comment, and hockey deserves center stage in my analogy. I think the rough-and-tumble of hockey is exactly the dynamic of digital marketing. The challenge on the agency side is we grew up thinking much more perfection/figure skating, so the cultural shift to hockey can be a big one.
Interesting!
I feel like there is a scarcity of good marketing today. Good marketing means which can convert the leads into sales. The only marketing that has moved me in the last couple of years is Social Media Optimization.
I would characterize the difference between hockey and figure skating as the difference between play and performance. The emerging, conversational media, whether you are using them for business or just to be social, call for play. To understand them and to “use” them effectively, you have to be in the game. As you rightly point out, being in the game requires a continuous, ongoing engagement with a perpetually changing landscape (the game situation).
The continuous nature of these new media poses, I think, the biggest challenge to agencies and companies alike. Maintaining continuous engagement, rather than putting on discrete performances, calls for a different set of skills, tools, and, ultimately, expectations.
All differences aside, what figure skating and hockey both share is an emphasis on technique and mastery. You have to be able to skate. You have to be physically fit. You have to be able to plan, collaborate, and execute. Etc.
In other words, the emerging world of marketing doesn’t just need hockey players anymore than the traditional world only needed figure skaters. The real challenge, and why the focus on the people becomes paramount, is that companies today need marketing professionals with the stamina, focus, and flexibility of the player as well as the finesse, poise, and artistry of the performer.
Hi Mike-I enjoyed this article.
Looking at if from a paid campaign perspective, what are you optimizing to? What dictates the need for change? For direct response campaigns, that’s pretty straightforward. But from a branding perspective, the instant measurement and decisions of what to change are fluffy, at best. You have paid media balanced with unpaid, designed experiences balanced with social experiences, freestyle content combined with ad unit content. I find many agencies struggle with this agile, constant communication concept because it’s all about the big idea quarterly campaign. An understanding of real time dashboard analytics connected to real metrics is often missing.
Frank,
Love the reference to agile project management as a way to operationalize a hockey mindset.
Matt, completely agree that the most successful marketers combine the best qualities of both. As you say, finesse and stamina along with artistry and poise.
Old marketing was aimed at the judges – like a figure skating performance – who were the people who paid for it not the people who consumed it.
Digital marketing is aimed at the consumers – like a game of ice hockey its for the fans – who attend, follow online, on TV, on iphone, etc.
The ice hockey approach has been around for a long time – eg Tupperware Parties in the 1950s – but it was not that popular with ‘push marketers’ because they did not have a role.
Today the best digital or online marketing is done by those businesses that get their consumers involved in the design, production, and distribution of their products and service. A modern example is Threadless – the T-shirt maker in Chicago. But don’t get too carried away with all this new age stuff – remember that Tupperware in the 1950s also did this very well too!
Mark,
I think you’re exactly right…playing hockey requires a cultural shift for agencies. Traditionally, we were paid for the big campaign, now we need to deliver that campaign (the big ideas are still critical) and the pre-post engagement. And campaign accountability has been turned on its head. There are many real-time tools to evaluate activities, very few to judge outcomes.
Richard,
I love your addition of who does the judging to the analogy. We are playing a very different game when the customer (vs the experts) grades our performance.
Hello mate, I want to thank you for this nice blog. Would you mind telling me some secrets for a succesful blog ? Which could attract some visitors than it normally does. Please come visit my site FreeAdultEntertainment when you got time.
I’m having translation issues.
Could you do this all over again, but this time using cricket?
Cheers.
I will recommend using Email Charger for all bulk email marketing needs. Its the best bulk email marketing software I have used so far.
Mike, great article.
I’d like to use this as a backdrop to promoting my mobile media application HockeyGPS. I’m looking for national advertisers and would like to use a link to your article in my communications…with your permission.
Dean,
No problem, link away. I’ve always been curious about the crossover between digital marketing and hockey