Tribal Marketing

One of the many interesting things I’ve been exposed to this semester during the Internet Marketing paper I studied was the concept of Tribal Marketing.

The thinking stems from the Mediterranean way of life where people led a more nomadic lifestyle than we see in modernistic societies of today.

Tribal marketing is underpinned by a service dominant logic with people coming together to co-create value bound by their passion and emotion.

All tribes have several constant features:

A chief that emerges from within the members of the tribe, think Bill Gates or Brian Tamaki

A symbol or mark that members of the tribe can unite around – examples about here consider the Nike tick or the TradeMe Kiwi logo

A meeting place – this may be physicial but symbolic of the tribe e.g. farmers market or virtual e.g. online forums

A community - members come together bound by their common passions

Now consider the latest developments with Otago Highlanders rugby franchise.

Here is a commercial sporting operation that’s been around for many years and has enjoyed success at the highest level but has fallen on hard times (lack of wins) in recent years.

Management as part of their re-engagement / reinvention strategy have opted to take the players uniform and change the colours from blue & yellow to an all green look.

This was revealed to the public in a game last night (as I write this) and was widely condemned in the local media and water cooler talk I  heard in the build up to the match. It sounds like ‘fans’ were even booing their displeasure last night as the team ran on – not something I condone.

Lets now examine this in the context of Tribal Marketing.

You see in this example the colours of blue and yellow (or blue and gold as the locals like to say) are used widely throughout the Otago region as a proud parochial statement about who the people of the area are (their symbol or mark) and what unites them (community).

The rugby team management have messed with the tribes symbol and imposed a change neither sort nor wanted. As a result they have their relaunch strategy so wrong it’s not funny.

Sure they may score some short term media coverage for the change but they seriously risk alienating what was an already dwindling support base by messing with the Highlanders tribal markings.

Worse still the spiritual meeting place of this tribe (Carrisbrook) has just hosted it’s last game for the Highlanders as the team gets set to move to a new stadium across town.

Will the tribe feels so similarly inclined to frequent this new meeting place as they did the last? Only time will tell.

I’ll attach some local media links for you to have a look at the coverage this event has been getting and leave it for you to decide if you think the management got it wrong. Drop me a comment below I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

I’d like to credit and thank Mathew Parackal at Otago University for sharing his thinking with me over the last few months about this subject.

Related Links

• ‘Secret’ revealed: Highlanders play in green
• Video:  Fans give their verdict on the green jersey
• Rugby: You may learn to love the jolly green jumper
• Rugby: Green-landers say goodbye to ‘Brook, and playoffs