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Mannie Jackson is the owner and chairman of the Harlem Globetrotters. A former player for the team, Jackson took over the Globetrotters in 1993, after a successful career at Honeywell. In this excerpt from his Harvard Business Review article, Jackson discusses the revitalization of the Globetrotter's brand.
Sometimes in business, a good brand dies. Everyone knows and respects the brand, but there's a gap between people's knowledge and their desire to actually buy the product. When the company can't close that gap, the brand slowly but surely fords its way to the dustbin of history.
In 1992, the Harlem Globetrotters were heading down that path, but I thought I could get them back on the right road. I was convinced the brand still had value. So I talked things over with two bankers, who were also close friends of mine, and we got a group of investors together—mostly friends and business connections I'd made during my 25 years at Honeywell. We convinced them that the Globetrotters organization was worth buying. And over the years, we've been able to convert people's knowledge about the brand into a strong financial return. We've closed the gap and saved the Globetrotters brand.
Reinventing the Product
By 1993 the Globetrotters were simply not relevant. They weren't stylish, and they weren't cool. They weren't a priority for anyone—they weren't on MTV or The Tonight Show, and the president didn't invite them to the White House. I wanted to find out how bad the damage was, so we held a series of focus groups around the country and brought together people who had seen us perform with those who hadn't. The meetings were very expensive and difficult to set up, but the information we got as a result was more than worth it. Young people would tell us they didn't know anything about the Globetrotters, and many of the older folks hadn't heard about us recently. "How good are you really?" they would ask. "Are you just clowns, or can you play basketball?"
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| We're cool but not hip-hop cool, and we never will be. Our brand means being family friendly. | |
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| — Mannie Jackson |
I decided we could become relevant if what we put on the basketball floor each night was top quality. We have two different ways of showing what we can do. About 30 or 40 times a year, we bring together our best players to compete against first-rate teams all over the world. For example, last fall we played both Purdue and Michigan State, the NCAA champion. We beat Purdue and played Michigan State close. Games like that make it impossible for people to say that our guys can't hold their own against top-notch basketball teams.
When we are not playing competitive games, our three touring teams play against three exhibition teams. Our philosophy is simple. In each game, we set out to do three things: we're going to show you we can play basketball, we're going to give an exhibition of basketball feats you've never seen live before, and we're going to make you laugh and feel good.
In each exhibition game, we start off playing serious, competitive basketball, and the fans in the audience quickly realize that our guys can really play. They'll recognize players who were at Maryland or UCLA or Kentucky. Then we move on to the highlight-film part of the game. We have players who do things you can only see if you come to one of our events, like shooting behind-the-back hook shots or dunking through a 12-foot basket, which is the world record. We stress perfect execution every single night so people will say, "Wow, I've never seen anything like that before." The third part of each game is the stand-up comedy. We have one or two guys on each team who are world class comics. They can walk into an arena full of 20,000 people and get everyone laughing and feeling better about the world.
The whole package is choreographed like a Broadway musical. Let's face it, a two-hour basketball game can be pretty dull. To get rid of the dead time, we carefully added music to our events. Our announcers now have a computer board, and they plug in tracks that fit with what's happening on the floor. So if the action is fast paced, they might play a hip-hop song, and if the other team is coming back, they might play a big-band dance tune. And then, when the comics come on, everything stops. They go out into the audience with body microphones, tell jokes, do comedy routines. Sometimes it's completely outrageous, but it's always appropriate for families.
I learned an important lesson about the product several years ago when I brought an executive from Disney, one of our sponsors, to a game in Europe. As we watched, I asked him what he would do different. He sat for a while and then he said, "You know what? It's a 90-minute show, no more." I was shocked. We had been stretching out the events for two-and-a-half hours, like NBA games. On school nights, kids would be falling asleep. Now we do it all in 90 fast paced minutes, and people are happy when they leave.
We're cool but not hip-hop cool, and we never will be. Our brand means being family friendly, so we keep ticket prices relatively low, and we make sure our players sign autographs, talk to kids, and engage with the fans in the stands. We don't do anything that would embarrass a mom and dad who've brought their kids to a game.
Many people still don't believe that our guys play top-level basketball. That's something we have to work on continually. But the 2 million people who see us every year know the truth, and they leave our events having seen both great basketball and great entertainment.
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