Do You Live up to the Hype?

Over the last few weeks, in the world of high school distance running, all eyes have been on a high school senior from California named German Fernandez. OK, I admit it. I am something of a track-nut, and yes, I pay attention to distance running from high school through professional. Hang on though, this has some very specific business principles- I promise.

In the world of running, one brand dominates all- Nike. Sure, other brands are favored by certain athletes, but Nike is the brand that is seen everywhere. As it happens, Nike sponsors the largest national high school track meet, called Nike Outdoor Nationals.

The largest website for high school track and field is Dyestat.com, recently acquired by none other than ESPN.

The Buzz
Between Nike and Dyestat, the buzz for this year’s 2-mile competition was all over the place (at least as much buzz as can be found for high school track). German Fernandez, they said, had a real shot at breaking the national record, set in 1979 by Jeff Nelson. The buzz brought more traffic to Dyestat, and brought more attention to Nike and the national meet. All running websites caught the buzz and message boards were all talking about Fernandez and his chances of breaking the record.

On Friday, Fernandez lived up to the hype and broke the national high school two mile record by covering the distance in a little over eight minutes and thirty-four seconds (two seconds under the record). Dyestat gained some more web traffic and Nike got more branding and exposure. Everybody won.

What if…
What if Fernandez didn’t break the record? Sorry to say it, but the entire meet would have been something of a bust. Nike and Dyestat pretty much put all their eggs in the Fernedez basket. Had he taken it easy and just gone for the win, people would have been disappointed. They would have been critical of Nike and Dyestat for hyping it up to much and, worst of all, they would have been critical of Fernedez- who doesn’t make any money no matter what he runs. The entire investment in the Fernandez race would have resulted in negative publicity for both companies.

What are you looking for?
On your next marketing campaign, if your goal is to create excitement, be sure you live up to the hype. Foot traffic to your store or click traffic to your website is nice, but as a small business you are more interested in qualified leads, not traffic. If you fail to live up to the buzz that you have orchestrated, you probably cannot afford to have a bunch of disappointed would-be customers running around spreading negative word of mouth.

Control
The toughest part about the hype that Nike and Dyestat created was that they had no control over the result. German could have done poorly or worse, not even showed up, and they had no recourse or back up plan. If you are creating hype, make sure it is something you have a reasonable amount of control over.

No Risk, No Reward
In the end though, hype is like everything else: the less risk you take, the less potential reward. Fernedez was a pretty good bet, since he had been hovering around the record time this season, had shown consistency, and had never been tested against top level opponents. If you have to take a risk to create hype, just be sure to weigh the consequences if things don’t go your way.

If you’re interested in seeing a high-school phenom, watch the video below. His running ability is tantamount to Lebron James playing basketball in high school. You can skip the first few minutes to get to the good parts.

Mike Freeman
It takes me 15 minutes to run two miles.

Photo by andynoise