Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 4:22PM C'mon! Michael Bloomberg, you can't really be serious: a mass media campaign for... just one guy!
Don't advertise to just one guy--send him a letter, instead.
If you took the matter at face value--and especially if you made your living as a marketing professional--you'd say it's the craziest thing you'd ever seen: Running a campaign, a big promotional effort aimed...not a a group of people, not an identified customer segment, but one guy! If you haven't seen this, it's fun to take in and worth the trouble to pay attention to. Let me tell you about it.
A new promotional campaign coming out of New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office is "C'mon LeBron!" Here's Mayor Bloomberg's media clip...
What's even more interesting is there's a ground-swell effort, much of it viral-marketing-like, that seeks to "join" the mayor in his enthusiasm to get NBA super-star LeBron James to sign with the New York NBA team, the New York Knicks. The web-sight for this entire "movement" is engaging, for New Yorkers appear to be spontaneously offering all kinds of stuff to Mr. James--just to get him to come and play for New York. It's a kick-in-the-pants to see New Yorkers both brag and try to out-do each other it ostensibly get LeBron to NYC!
Objectively, it makes no sense at all.
Logically, this makes no marketing sense at all. A mass-media advertising campaign is, in theory, the most efficient way to reach a large number of identifiable prospects with a commercial message. However, when the prospect of an advertising effort ends up being one person--you, practically-speaking, don't use mass-media...you simply send them a letter or make a phone call or take them to lunch!
So, what's the deal with the C'mon Lebron campaign. I'm not entirely sure, but it seems like a great way for New Yorkers to celebrate their enthusiasm for their city, loyalty to their NBA team, and their "bullishness" on their pride as New Yorkers! The mayor digs all of this because it is a feel-good, unifying, hard-to-be-controversial with issue, one that brings out the positive and the best of his constituents!
In another way, though, it makes perfect sense!
So, in the end, you can assess it two different ways: First, it makes no objective marketing sense at all [i.e., give LeBron a phone call!], yet on the other hand, it is a beautiful thing--and makes perfect marketing sense. Instead of being directed at LeBron--it's really directed at New Yorkers themselves and offers a way for them to demonstrate a little team spirit, not so much for the Knicks as much for themselves as New Yorkers!
If you look at it that way--marketing rarely makes so much sense, gets the chance to perform so well, and then be so much fun in the process!
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