Skip to main content

De-icing A Great Brand

"Hawks Lead (the NHL) In Attendance."  Now there's a surprising headline.  Yes, I'm a Blackhawks' fan but I also like a good turnaround tale, especially one with a provisional happy ending.

The resurgent Hawks prove how quickly a brand can be resurrected from decades of callous mistreatment and outright stupidity.  Bad business decisions off the ice and bad player decisions on, haughty refusals to build a TV audience, disdain for a rich legacy...and yet fans never really left.  

Oh sure, they stopped buying tickets and attending games.  And they COULDN'T watch most games on TV even if they were so inclined.  But the loyalty fires ran deep, thankfully, and never went out entirely.  You can say the Hawks are lucky. They TRIED to drive loyalists away and were 'this' close to succeeding.  

What a difference a year makes.  Intelligence and passion are replacing old-school stupidity.  TV audiences are up 78%, players are once again household names and the United Center is filled to capacity.  Rockin'!

Maybe I'll see you there.  We'll cheer for another happy ending - on the scoreboard.  Against the Redwings.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Michael Porter On Health Care Reform

Michael Porter, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, proposes "A Strategy For Health Care Reform - Toward A Value-Based System." His proposals are fundamental, lucid and right-on, meaning they're sure to be opposed by some parties to the debate, the so-called "Yes, but..." crowd. Most important, in my opinion, is this: "... electronic medical records will enable value improvement, but only if they support integrated care and outcome measurement. Simply automating current delivery practices will be a hugely expensive exercise in futility. Among our highest near-term priorities is to finalize and then continuously update health information technology (HIT) standards that include precise data definitions (for diagnoses and treatments, for example), an architecture for aggregating data for each patient over time and across providers, and protocols for seamless communication among systems. "Finally, consumers must become much mor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Simplicity From Complexity

Health care planners typically juggle many different services and businesses, each with unique customers, competitors and prospects.  The complexity can be overwhelming.  So-called portfolio models for assessing industry attractiveness and competitive strength can be a good analytical jumping-off point, including the McKinsey-GE 9-box matrix . (Click on the "Launch Interactive" link.)
Post a Comment
Read more

5 Marketing Megatrends

Coming to a brand near you, from Adam Kleinberg at iMedia Connection, here are " 5 marketing megatrends you can't ignore ." Mass collaboration... Constant connectivity... Globalization... Pervasive distrust in big corporations... A global sense of urgency... #4 is, I think, under-appreciated in health care. Doctors and hospitals like to think of themselves as the last of the white hat-wearing good guys, and maybe they are. But trust is a funny thing - built over decades and lost overnight. Screw it up and watch the laser beam of populist rage move from Wall Street to Medical Avenue.
Post a Comment
Read more