Marketing and fantasy football. On the surface, these two things may not seem like they are in the same plane of existence. I guess that’s true in that one is a very real thing while the other is essentially make-believe, but what I’ve found after years of doing both is that they both satisfy my love of strategic challenges and understanding of consumer psychology and behaviors. So, when I was asked to do an end-of-summer blog — the time when fantasy football seasons are starting — I saw the opportunity to share some of the key marketing principles and lessons that I have applied to fantasy football over the years. Here are just a couple ways that thinking like a marketer can help you dominate your fantasy football league:

Avoid the Sunk-Cost Fallacy

In both marketing and fantasy football, the sunk-cost fallacy can lead to poor decisions. This phenomenon occurs when people continue investing in something just because they’ve already put resources into it. In fantasy football, this might mean holding onto a high draft pick who’s underperforming. But the smart move is recognizing when to let go. If you notice this fallacy playing out with one of your opponents, you can turn it to your advantage, like offering a trade that seems to add value to their struggling pick. It’s a strategy marketers commonly use to upsell customers who have already committed to a purchase, like when you order a pizza online and then get an offer at checkout to add dessert and drink for a few dollars more. It works at the point of sale, and it can work for your fantasy trades, too.

Leveraging Brand Bias

Brand bias is when consumers prefer one brand over another due to emotional or psychological connections. In fantasy football, this translates to managers who have a clear preference for certain types of players. By understanding these biases, you can predict their draft choices or use their favorite types of players as leverage in trades, much like how a marketer would use brand loyalty metrics or buyer personas to help predict consumer behavior. This is helpful when you know that other league members like to draft high-upside guys, like speedy wide receivers or value the point advantages of taking elite tight ends early. These are markers for brand bias that you can use to snag the players you want ahead of league mates during fantasy drafts.

Researching the Competition

Which brings us to researching your competition. Just as marketers analyze competitors to gain an edge, fantasy football managers must research their opponents. Understanding your league mates’ tendencies allows you to anticipate their moves and adjust your strategy. In marketing, finding gaps in the competition’s offerings can lead to new opportunities — just as spotting weaknesses in your opponents’ strategies can give you an advantage in your fantasy league.

Using KPIs to Make Decisions

In marketing, we rely on key performance indicators (KPIs) to guide our strategies. The same logic applies in fantasy football. Your league’s scoring rules should help you make informed decisions. For instance, if one quarterback is on a hot streak but facing a tough defense, while another has been cold but is up against a weak opponent, you need to analyze the data to decide who to start to give you the best chance to score. This mirrors how marketers use data to forecast outcomes and make strategic decisions with media spends and direct marketing tactics.

These are just a few basic marketing lessons that can help you gain a competitive advantage in your fantasy league. But just like in marketing, the more you pay attention to the trends and watch the way markets move, the more likely you are to have success in fantasy football. Start putting these principles to use this year and before you know it, you won’t just be playing fantasy football — you’ll be mastering it.

Good luck to all my fellow fantasy footballers out there.

After 18 years, the unemployment scales have finally tipped, and we’re seeing more available jobs than unemployed individuals. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Eric Morath, “U.S. job openings rose to 6.7 million at the end of April [2018], compared with the 6.3 million Americans who were unemployed.” It’s the first time this has happened since the U.S. Department of Labor began keeping records of such statistics in 2000.

Read full post...

We know a few things to be true about popular brands. They exist. They tend to offer a product or service. They have a physical space or online presence. They have identifiable brand attributes. And they are vetted over time through consumer experiences and perception.

Based on these truths, it seems safe to assume that in order for you to establish credibility and trust with your target audience, customers must have some exposure or real-world experience with your brand, right? Well, think again.

Read full post...

Using one screen, advertisers will have to conjure a fully immersive visual, virtual and social experience for consumers.

Advertising optimism is on the rise again, and for good reason. Industry segments are hiring again, advertisers and their agencies are regaining budgets, consumer confidence is growing, and the mass adoption of advanced television and entertainment consoles may very well yield the next great surge of creative advertising and media marketing.

We’re heading into uncharted territory, where new mediums will finally marry the benefits of web and broadcast television advertising and revolutionize the kind of creative content we can provide for our clients. This new generation of technology, such as Smart TVs and next-generation gaming/entertainment consoles, should signal a golden age for marketers — particularly strategic- and creative-focused agencies such as ours.Read full post...

Have a clear plan in place for the changes your staff will go through over the next few years.

Welcome to the wildest of times in the history of American healthcare. Consumers, physicians and advanced practitioners, administrators, insurers, and government bureaucrats are caught up in a systematic change that’s as manageable as a tornado in a mailbox. Since 2010, we’ve all been loosely aware of the guidelines of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare,” if you prefer). But today — only a couple months from full adoption — uncertainty and fear loom large. All parties are scrambling to make sense of this monumental change, let alone predict how it will affect their daily operations.

Here’s a clue: Unprepared health systems and hospitals throughout the country are facing mass layoffs or, worse, closing. Some even project that one-third of hospitals in America will close or completely reorganize by 2020. Healthcare is rapidly becoming the newest commodity in an open competitive market, and healthcare employers with brand names will prevail.Read full post...

A guy spills coffee on himself on the way to a job that has been slowly grating on his psyche, and boom — he starts looking for a new position.

When I tell people I’m in recruitment marketing, they ask, “So you recruit doctors?” Or they nod knowingly, assuming I’m in traditional marketing. The words “recruitment” and “marketing” together have that effect. People find the concept challenging.

Unlike most of our colleagues on the services or B2B side, we work in a fickle climate. Job changes can be instantaneous or carefully thought out. A guy spills coffee on himself on the way to a job that has been slowly grating on his psyche, and boom — he starts looking for a new position. Or an employee gradually realizes she wants to be closer to her family and moves back to her home state. That’s why it’s so important to have the right message at the right time in the right place. That’s where search engine marketing (SEM) comes into play.

SEM allows your opportunity to appear through relevant searches and even on relevant content pages. If you’re not using SEM in Read full post...

Using (or overusing) product placement in the movies.

Have you seen the trailer for The Social Network, the movie about the founding of Facebook? Not only is the premise intriguing, the marketing prowess of the producers is awesome: This film is a three-hour product placement. And it made me a little nostalgic for some other product placement movies. If your favorite is missing from my top 5, please feel free to comment.

5. Demolition Man — 1993
As a movie fan I’m willing to suspend disbelief for as long as need be. So when you’re telling me a story about a cop and a criminal mastermind who are cryogenically frozen for decades only to reemerge as healthy as ever, I’ll stay with you. When you tell me that society in the future has become completely nonviolent and utopian, I’ll follow. But the second you try to sell me on the idea that this perfect, nonviolent society dines solely at Taco Bell, you have officially lost me.Read full post...

How to measure effective recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing is a simple balancing act, right? Place your message on one side of the scale, and your communication medium on the other. If your message clearly illustrates the value of the position you are trying to fill, great. But if you don’t balance your strong message with an effective way to get it across to potential candidates, well, not so great. Conversely, if you have excellent communication tactics but a weak message, your scale will again be out of balance.

But something’s missing in this scale analogy: the fulcrum.Read full post...