When the Kentucky Derby kicks off the Triple Crown series the first weekend in May every year, I cannot help thinking about my earlier sports marketing career. Read Part One here.
THE FUN BEGINS –PART TWO
In a very short period of time the five-legged horse story was picked up by the local media. There we were with no contingency plans in place to handle a potential disaster like this. We had plans in place for the six-year contract, plans in place for the contest, plans in place for advertising, merchandising and concession plans. There were no worst case scenario plans in place for a situation like this!
I remember the afternoon I was told a crew from a local TV station was arriving at our offices. They were due in less than 30 minutes. The station was determined to interview someone about the controversy. In very fast order my partner told me, “This damn contest was your idea, YOU handle it!” Faster than you can say I’m outta here, he was gone! As I remember it, so was the rest of the company. [Sound of doors slamming along with a swoosh] They were all gone! GULP!
When the TV reporter arrived with his crew, he was escorted into my office; and so the interview began. I had precious little to work with so I began emphasizing the winner of the contest. She was local college girl, and this was important to her career, etc. You know how hostages try to make friends with their captors? That’s what I was doing. I was also praying the collective we weren’t going to be crucified in the media.
I’d like to say I remember all of his questions. I don’t. I do remember that when he was happy with what he had, he asked I if would do an on camera interview? Feeling like the past half hour had gone reasonably well, I agreed. As we neared the end of the on camera interview he asked, “What do you say to those people who think they see a horse with five legs?”
Well, what was I going to say? “You got me bucko, the horse really does have five legs!” of course not. Trying to be glib, to make light of the controversy, I blurted out something about people who think they see little men on Mars, or something to that effect. OK, so I’m not a comedian. I should have remembered that!
The segment aired and my comment about not seeing a five-legged horse didn’t sound as ghastly in the context of the entire interview. It seemed the collective we dodged a bullet and I thought little of it. Reporters called a few more times and I did their interviews essentially sticking to the same format sans the little green men. And then…
A BEHEMOTH LUMBERS IN
About a week (10 days?) before the race I received a call at home around 7:30 at night. It was a reporter from Sports Illustrated. She wanted to talk about you know what. I was tired. I remember her as being slightly bitchy and rude. I was determined not to give her anything more than I had given any of the other reporters. No glib remarks to her, no siree! I stepped into that once and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake. She was equally determined to get something juicy.
The tug of war interview proceeded with her pressing me and my resisting. Contentious is a word that immediately comes to mind. When I hung up the phone I thought that would be the end of it, but I was so wrong.
When the May 16th issue of SI came out, the five-legged horse and my words from the TV interview were quoted in the Scorecard section of the magazine. Worse than that, there was a picture of the official logo for the 114th Kentucky Derby with the headline, “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” Below the picture were the words, “The horse in front has a leg up on the other!”
Those off the cuff words about a five-legged horse, uttered in the context of a local TV interview were one thing, written up and quoted in Sports Illustrated with the picture of the logo was, (Dare I say it?) a horse of another color.
Do you know how many people read Sports Illustrated? I don’t know the exact numbers, but I can tell you it’s a lot and there were lots of people reading SI that May! Remember there were only three networks at the time and no ESPN etc. If you were a sports fan, you read Sports Illustrated, period!
Calls started coming into my office once the issue was out. People I hadn’t heard from in years had to talk to me to let me know they knew how many legs the horse in question had. Of course, they had to mention my quote. (It’s about here when I mentally utter Bitch, thinking back to that reporter!) She pulled off an “I gotcha!” It never occurred to me that she would go to the TV interview, lift those words and quote me, but she did. She got her juicy story even if I wasn’t the one who gave it to her.
In any event, the race went off without a hitch. People were much too busy during the week of the race to think about five-legged horses. There were real sports stories much more important than the race logo. As luck would have it a beautiful gray dappled filly by the name of Winning Colors won the Kentucky Derby. D. Wayne Lucas’ Derby curse was broken! Everyone quickly moved on. The real story was, “Could Winning Colors win the Triple Crown?”
LESSONS LEARNED
This is probably a good time to ask why it took so long for the mistake in the official logo to be discovered. The answer is our brains constantly make adjustments, adding and subtracting key elements of things we look at all the time. It’s why we can fill in the blanks when all the letters of a word haven’t been revealed on a TV game show. Essentially, we see what experience has taught us to see.
We all know horses have four legs not five. It is the rare person who actually stops and critically examines every component of that placed before him unless there is a specific reason for doing so. The judges, the readers who viewed the logo in the newspapers, the Kentucky Derby licensee graphic artists, etc. all expected to see a horse with four legs and that’s what they saw.
Today, with the numerous editorial tools we have at our fingertips, spell check etc. it is still possible to send out work that is imprecise. The consequences of that imprecision can have a profound impact and the brand and on the event.
Lesson one should be obvious. No matter how many times you check your work, check it and check it again! This is true whether you are in licensing or not. It’s something that is always in the back of mind … ALWAYS! Graphics are a problem, particularly when working with mockups that require last-minute revisions. Having a fresh set of eyes review the work before being revealed to the public/your client is mandatory, not to mention it may save your buns in the future.
Lesson two should be equally obvious. Luckily at the time, no one had to deal with social media the way we have to deal with it today. All of that has drastically changed. Imagine, if you will, what would have happened to our five-legged horse had it landed on Twitter or Facebook. Can you spell hashtag … #Five-legged Horse?
Lesson three is obvious today, but only with the benefit of hindsight. While you never know when you may have to deal with the media, know the chances that your words will be taken, twisted and manipulated from one medium to another is real. If the end result of the intentional manipulation matches a reporter’s intent, be prepared.
The expression is forewarned is forearmed. Remember it!