RIPKEN BELONGS IN BRANDING HALL OF FAME

This summer Cal Ripken will be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame -- not so much for his baseball numbers as for the fantastic brand he created. Cal’s career batting average is not even close to .300, and he did not average more than 25 home runs or 100 RBIs a season. Yet he is one of the most popular, memorable, and marketable players of recent history. Why?

Throughout his 21-year career, Cal Ripken was a living example of how a successful brand is built. Let’s look at the incredible, almost textbook branding lessons to be learned from Cal.

Stand For One Thing You can’t be all things to all consumers. It never works. You have to carefully determine what the soul is behind what you are selling – what are you asking your consumers to identify with emotionally?

Hundreds of baseball players are selling baseball skills, but that doesn’t turn them into a popular brand like The Iron Man. Throughout his career, Cal was always selling RELIABILITY and DECENCY. Consumers identified with his blue-collar work ethic and “bought into” his brand.

Clarity of Message Once you have determined what you are selling, you need to make sure that this is clearly communicated through all that you do -- from your products and customer service all the way through to your PR and marketing messages. Not 9 to 5, but 24 hours a day!

There is no room for confusion or mixed messages here. You can’t sell RELIABILITY one day and FLASHINESS the next. This creates “cognitive dissonance” for the consumer and always results in poor or unsuccessful branding.



This is the beauty of the Cal brand. Whenever or wherever you see him, he always bespeaks RELIABILITY and DECENCY -- never anything else.

Consistency and Repetition of Messages A long-term successful brand has never been and never will be established overnight. The key is consistency and repetition of your core message.

Seven years into Cal’s career, people in the Baltimore/Washington area knew that he was reliable and decent, but people in Oklahoma and California did not. Over the next ten years, Cal’s relentless repetition of his unique selling point changed this to where he became known as the embodiment of the blue-collar work ethic throughout the country.

Be Best, Better or Different Once you have determined what you want your core consumer to connect with emotionally, you need to figure out how to stand out from the crowd.

There have been many other ballplayers who were reliable and decent. Cal chose to make himself the best of this group by not missing one single game during a 16 year period. He further differentiated himself by playing for one team his entire career – a nearly unfathomable feat in today’s sports world.

This is also a great example of consistency of message. Cal is an Oriole. Had Cal played for a couple of different teams during his career, his brand would never have been as strong.

As a former baseball player, I loved watching Cal play the game the way it was meant to be played. As a PR and marketing professional it was a joy watching him create a brand the way it was meant to be created. See you in the Hall of Fame, Cal – the branding one as well as that one in Cooperstown.

David Warschawski (david.warschawski@warschawski.com) is CEO of Warschawski, a brand-centric PR and marketing agency based in Baltimore.



To learn more about this author, visit David Warshawski's Website.

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