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UT football campaign applicable to business

UT football campaign applicable to business

If you’re excited about the upcoming college football season and you live in Tennessee, you’re likely already one of Butch Jones’s 87,161 Twitter followers. Or you may be one of the 26,135 people who like his Facebook page. Or perhaps you’ve just caught yourself tweeting #BrickByBrick or #RiseToTheTop on occasion.

At the very least, you are aware of the significant changes the UT football program has undergone in the past several months. The recruiting hype. The social media. The uniforms. Ole Butch has revamped nearly every component of the franchise and has somehow even managed to get America’s most impatient, glory-starved fan base 100 percent on board.

Which sort of begs the question…how? Surely whatever has plagued UT football for the last half decade can’t be eradicated that easily? What’s his strategy?

You’ve probably already heard at least a few people talk about how Butch has taken to Facebook and YouTube and orchestrated a media campaign and how that’s where Dooley failed. But it’s far more involved than that. Granted, Butch has the advantage of social media that Dooley, Kiffin, and certainly Coach Fulmer did not, but so do all other presently active coaches. Which leads me to believe the excitement surrounding Saturday’s eminent arrival is about more than how many favorites “The Butch Jones Song” got on YouTube.

At its core, the campaign Butch has created is something people want to be a part of — an experience, and one that incorporates more than just exciting created media and clever hashtags. Coach Jones has diverted his attention to the people, rather than the thing. He has all of his coaches on the same page, his players actually like him, his recruiting efforts are genuine and hard-hitting, and he is honest, confident and excited. Who wouldn’t buy into that?

It’s an approach that applies far beyond the sports world. In fact, it’s one of the most intimate realities of the business realm and consequently, often goes overlooked. Companies aim to provide products and services people want to buy when really the better approach is to create an experience people want to be a part of. People make decisions (including buying decisions) based largely on how it makes them feel, and only in small part on the cost/benefit of the situation. That’s what Morris Creative likes to help our clients with — developing an experience that really draws people. Sure, making that great product is half the battle, but to really tap into your potential market share, you have to make people want to be a part of something bigger.

See y’all Saturday. Go Vols!