Seabiscuit – An Original Social Marketer

I was watching a television piece on the recently concluded Olympic games which showed the torch relay, and how it visited town upon town, all across Canada. Some folks might think such a relay to be simply symbolic, however it does much more than that from a marketing perspective. The torch visited towns, big and small, and it was at times carried by major celebrities, people in church groups, charity group participants, and many other social and community groups. The almost 30,000 mile journey created buzz for the Olympics along the way, and at each stop (sometimes in the middle of the night) local newspapers, television and townsfolk were all promoting it in their own way.

This simple principle of marketing happens with many successful ventures, and it tends to be often planned.

In Buzzmarketing, Mark Hughes speaks of the American Idol phenomenon. As most know, American Idol visits city after city, lines-up virtually everyone in huge lines (even terrible singers), offers press passes for local media for a behind the scenes look, and more.

One would think it would be much easier to schedule several days of auditions in LA and New York instead, and weed out some of the dead weight. They would still get a good crop for the show, and could hand-pick a few duds for the William Hung factor. However, they don’t do this because the buzz created by visiting each city, and having tons of people audition, is vital to its success. The people who audition will tell friends and family, and those friends and family will watch the show, and tell more friends and family. The local media buzz in each of these cities ensures human interest stories about the local auditions are promoted on TV, in print and radio, and then replayed on Youtube and other web-media outlets at a later time. If it was economical to audition in 1000 cities I am sure they would, because each city, and each person helps.

A show like American Idol was built to succeed from the very beginning, because of networking and foresight.

I thought about this for a time, and realized, did we not have the same thing happen with the biggest match race in thoroughbred history, War Admiral and Seabiscuit? In Seabiscuit, An American Legend, the author spoke of the zig-zagging train journey for the Biscuit between California and Maryland (in total he traveled over 24,000 miles by train in his career). Along the way the train would stop, and the horse would be greeted by regular folks, including a bevy of reporters. This of course provided built-in marketing for the race.

It was reported in the book that bookies in New York could not come even close to setting proper odds for the race, because “95% of the wagers were on War Admiral”. It seems the east coast had their horse, but in the end the odds were much different, and it is relayed several times in the book that the Biscuit was America’s choice to win.

Could it be because fans and media, at whistle stop after whistle stop for twenty-some thousand miles, saw and could touch their hero, and spread that message through their own networks like a virus that he was their worthy choice? Could it be that this race was the most listened to race ever, because of this old-time social networking? Was Seabiscuit (and the race itself) more popular than by all rights he should have been, because of this journey?

We are a month away from the Rachel-Zenyatta race.  We complain and lament that the major media is pretty much ignoring the race, not giving it the respect it deserves.  But buzz does not happen by accident. The few times it is not planned and actually succeeds, is the proverbial lightning in a bottle.

We certainly will not see Rachel and Zenyatta on a whistle-stop tour by train, but I would submit we need a metaphorical train ride and some planning of such, to make this event as electric as it should be. If we look to Seabiscuit – the match race marketer – we might all learn a thing or two.