Jim Murray

7 years ago · 2 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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How Being In Communications Is A Lot Like Playing Pro Baseball

How Being In Communications Is A Lot Like Playing Pro Baseball


to provoke thought and revive the comatoseThis was actually first conceived in a conversation I was having with someone over in the Lumpy Kingdom of The Mighty Hamsters, where, believe it or not, I still have a few friends.
I love these conversations because they drag knowledge out of your head that you have been carrying around for years, and subconsciously applying to the work you do.


The Baseball Metaphor

c64107e3.pngThe best advice about the communications business I ever got from anybody was from Terry O'Malley, who was the Creative Director (and part owner) of Vickers & Benson, the first real agency I ever worked at. Terry was a total jock. In fact, I think he owns a minor league baseball team now. But he always made the metaphorical comparison between advertising and baseball. And over the course of about a year, he passed this along to me.
First Of All...It's Just A Game. There’s competition out there but it’s not really as important as the battle that rages inside your head, which is where a game like baseball is mainly played. You can defeat yourself as easily as you can get defeated by your competitors. It's all about the psych.
Failure Is Part Of The Game. A major league player who hits .300 is an all star. So shoot for that and don’t worry about the .700 that you can’t achieve…just learn from your outs.
Accept that you’re not gonna hit a home run every time up to the plate. The main objective is to get on base and be in a position to score. Not every client is gonna do the right thing. But you just have to keep on swinging.

The Team That Plays Together Wins Together. Everybody in communications is creative to some extent. A smart creative person is someone who recognizes that and absorbs all the knowledge around him. You can’t do this shit all by yourself, so you need teammates you can trust and who are willing to work as hard as you.
The Work You Do Is The Ball. It gets batted around a lot. Sometimes it goes into left field. Sometimes it’s caught. Sometimes it goes foul and sometimes it goes over the fence. But that doesn’t matter because any advertising or marketing program is a constant work in progress.
The Players With The Best Overall Mastery Of The Game Will Always Be Winners:
If you learn the game and play the game well, people will tell stories about you. Turning a product or service into a real brand is something that the crowd in the stands does for you to reward you for a game well played.
Too many people throw the word branding around like it’s something they invented for themselves. But you don’t get to call your client’s product or service a brand until you earn that level of respect from the crowd, which is your target audience.

The More Things Change, The More You Rely On The Basics

All metaphors aside, the only thing that has really changed about communications over the past 60 years or so are the tools we have at our disposal. 

I have always believed that people respond to advertising in whatever form it comes to them if and only if it’s honest and provocative and, most importantly, they happen to be in the market for whatever product or service is being promoted.

I don’t think people care enough about advertising to go any deeper than that, which, in a way, makes the job much easier, if you think about it.

A lot of communications people have embraced the belief this brave new world of digital communication is all about being subtle and indirect. I think that’s bullshit, designed to prolong the process that digital marketers have created to make more money from clients who drink that particular flavour of Koolaid.

The Rules Haven’t Changed, Only The Belief That They Are Different.

If you want to be successful at any form of communication, go back to the basics. Learn the game. Play the game fairly. Motivate your team. Do the best you can. Learn from every at bat, good or bad. But just keep plugging away.

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All my profile and contact information can be accessed here
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page

All content and images copyright 2016 Jim Murray. All rights reserved.



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Comments

Jim Murray

7 years ago #2

#1
Paul Walters...they are going nuts here in Toronto too.

Paul Walters

7 years ago #1

Jim Murray I'm in London post Brexit and tonight in South Lambeth Street ( the biggest Portuguese population outside of Portugal live here) They have just won Euro 2016 and really they do feel like winners . There are thousands of people on the street and the game finished about 5 hours ago, The feel like winners !!!!

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