Week 1 Blog Post

To begin my first ever blog post, I want to preface it by warning readers that I may be taking a less traditional approach to connecting the material learned in MK 640 to real life experiences.  Having been a four-year starter during my playing career at Western New England, currently serving as an Assistant Coach on the same program, and still pursuing my dream of playing at the professional level, most of my posts will be connecting the material to the various aspects of football.  Some readers may get sick of it, while others might not see the connection between the two.  Hopefully throughout my posts, I will be able to connect the two effectively through the various aspects of the game and business of collegiate and professional football.  I will try my best to use other examples as well, as I am sure there may be better examples of the course content outside of football, but having connected much of the content learned in other courses to football, I assume the same will hold true during this course.

The Two Basic Functions of a Business According to Drucker

According to Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker, author William Cohen explains a lot of the ideas expressed by his mentor and former professor, Peter Drucker.  Drucker stated that there were two, and only two, basic functions of a business: marketing and innovation.  He later states that everything else is just a cost.  When you first read this, it is hard to comprehend, because you immediately think of all the intricate parts to any business, and to boil them all down to two basic functions seems irrational, and even impossible, but the more you sit and actually consider the thought, the more it makes sense.  

When most people hear the word "marketing", they immediately connect it to "selling".  To be able to handle what Drucker is saying, we must first change our impression towards marketing.  As seen in one of the videos shared with us on education-portal.com, marketing is defined as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and societies at large.  Once we thinking of marketing in this regard, we realize the broad spectrum in which the word covers.  Marketing is not only selling, there is a large process that goes into it, and it covers a large process and purpose of any business.  When it comes to describing innovation, a simple definition could be the introduction of something new and better.  Some people may feel this to be unnecessary for some businesses, and that you should stick to what has brought you to success, that you should not fix what isn't broken per say.  Cohen described multiple scenarios in which lack of innovation led to the downfall of companies and products.  Take for example the extinction of the slide-rule by engineers due to the invention of the calculator, the extinction of wigs worn by noblemen, or even the extinction of cassette tapes due to the invention of CDs, DVDs, and MP3s (CDs and DVDs may soon disappear as well).  Constant innovation is crucial to the existence of a successful organization, no matter what industry.  There are always competitors out there looking for ways to get ahead, whether it be through the invention of better, more effective products and services, or a recent trend or fad that fades or grows.  

An example to support Drucker's claim can be found in college athletics, specifically in recruiting of college football players.  Recruiting is essentially the process of marketing your program to a prospective student athlete.  This is done through face-to-face visits, emails, phone calls, text messages, Twitter and Facebook messages, etc.  This is a challenge to all college football programs, as they are essentially battling against each other to land their recruiting class for the next season.  Innovation is key to gaining an edge in the industry, as programs are constantly looking at ways to improve their recruiting techniques, while staying within the guidelines of the NCAA, the national governing body for all collegiate athletics.  At Western New England, we are constantly evaluating our processes and techniques, and researching and comparing them to tactics used by other programs to innovate the way in which we land recruits.  Innovation is also key to the game itself, as we are constantly seeking ways in which to stay ahead of the competition on the field with constantly innovating and updating our schemes, the tempo, style, and pace in which we play, and the way we go about practicing and preparing both in-season and out of season.       

Mission Statements: Does yours coincide with your marketing strategy?

We were asked to take a look at the mission statement of our companies to see whether or not they align with our marketing strategy.  I will be investigating the mission statements of two different organizations in which I work for, the Western New England University (WNE) Athletic Department and the Professional Developmental Football League (PDFL).

The mission statement for the WNE Athletic Department is as follows:
The Western New England athletics department is committed to enhancing the overall development of its students and student athletes through competent instruction and appropriate role modeling by our coaching staff.  Lessons learned in the competitive environment of intercollegiate athletics and the responsibility of team membership must be applied in the present, but most importantly, are used to prepare the student athlete for life after college.

The following is the mission statement of the PDFL:
To bring affordable family entertainment to fans across the Nation; maximize revenue opportunities for individual franchises, deliver high impact visibility for corporate sponsors; reach our local youth through mentoring and football programs; mentor and help advance our players, coaches, and staff; instill a sense of community pride using local talent; and honor God in all we do.

I do agree that both mission statements reflect the marketing strategy of both WNE Football and the PDFL.  In one of the "Chalk Board Talks" we reviewed some of the problems with various mission statements.  Some of these problems may be that the mission statement is:
1. Incomplete
2. Vague
3. Not motivating
4. Not distinctive
5. Too reliant on superlatives
6. Generic and broad

After reviewing both mission statements, I feel as though they both have very similar problems.  While I feel both mission statements are not incomplete, motivating, distinctive, and not reliant on superlatives or generic, they have parts in which they are vague and broad.  WNE's states that they are committed to enhancing the overall development of its students and student athletes.  This statement is vague and broad in the sense that enhancing the overall development of a person varies by case to case and is hard to measure.  The PDFL's mission statement uses the terms "high impact visibility for corporate sponsors" and "maximize revenue opportunities", which is also very vague and broad in the sense that both of these need a specific goal and process that must be defined.  As we are learning in Cohen's book, a business' focus should not be towards profit maximization, and instead should focus on creating a new customer.  This is ironic that we have just learned about this, and the PDFL has it stated in their mission statement that their focus is towards profit maximization.  Since the owner of our team is also the commission of our league, I will be sure to talk to him about this and steer his focus towards creating new customers.