Marc Schiller, founder of Electric Artists, talks about the proliferation of personalized brands and the evolution of social media. The democratization of information has changed not only the marketing landscape. He referenced the idea of walking into a job interview telling the hiring manager across the desk from you:
“If you hire me, I’m bringing 20,000 people (read: twitter followers) with me. How will you handle that?”
A great example of this is NFL player, Chad Ocho Cinco. In the NFL, players enter into legal employment contracts that teams are authorized to break at any point. This leaves these players at the mercy of their employer with little recourse. So, to look at the current example as a Human Resources case study is more relevant than it seems.
Chad’s last name, Ocho Cinco, is a Spanish translation of 8-5, his uniform number. Known for countless league violations, he was fined during the 2006 season for altering the name on his jersey to read “OCHO CINCO” instead of “JOHNSON,” his legal name at the time. In the offseason, he legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco in order to circumvent the NFL’s policy. Now you can see it in stat sheets, commentators refer to him as Ocho Cinco and his jersey reads the same.
He has always created a spectacle with his charisma and publicity stunts, which he has transitioned into social media. Currently, Chad has a UStream channel with 7,000 followers, a Motorola-sponsored Facebook fan page with over 15,000 followers, nearly 750,000 fans on Twitter under the handle, @OGOchocinco, and his very own iPhone app.
On Twitter, he has been commonly known to invite all of his followers to meetups across the country for a free dinner or a movie. He has also responded directly to fans that reached out while their friend was on his deathbed or just to get a pep talk. To reinforce the point, Motorola sponsored a 1,200-ticket giveaway to a home Bengals game in order to prevent a regional broadcast blackout of the game. He promoted this heavily on Twitter and was able to ensure the game was televised in the Cincinnati area.
What makes this so relevant to Schiller’s point is to look at Chad Ocho Cinco for what he is: an employee of the Cincinatti Bengals, and ultimately the NFL. The NFL established a strict social media policy for all employees and even fired some due to violations. When the Cincinnati Bengals were the main characters on HBO’s original series “Hard Knocks,” Ocho Cinco was temporarily banned from Twitter, UStream, Facebook and any other social media platforms to communicate with his fans.
Most recently, Ocho Cinco partnered with Motorol organized a full-blown media effort to cover the Super Bowl and enlisted other NFL players to join his OCNN press team. His and his team’s presence at Super Bowl media day received just as much, if not more, media coverage than the athletes actually competing in the game.
Sports figures and celebrities are clear prototypes for building a personal brand since it has become standard procedure for them, and Chad Ocho Cinco has mastered the art. The gift and the curse for the Cincinatti Bengals is that this guy has built his personal brand to the point where it is engaging fans at a higher level and undoubtedly increasing the fan loyalty to the NFL. However, as Ocho Cinco walks into the office of a team’s Director of Player Personnel, he can say, “If you hire me, I’m bringing 1 million people. How are you going to handle that?”
If they can continue to effectively manage the risk, then it is an extremely valuable asset. If they can’t, then it could become a toxic liability. For now, there’s only upside because Chad brings the loyalty of a million or more followers to the Bengals’ fan base. If I were a betting man, I’d wager my money that he retires in Cincinnati on that point alone.
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