Benson Hendrix dot Com

Earlier this month, my wife and I spent a relaxing week on honeymoon at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. One of the first things we noticed walking around the Magic Kingdom was the variety of languages floating through the air. Swedish, German, Spanish, Chinese – all bouncing around at the same time. (Not to mention the Disney program that allows college students from all over the world to work for Disney for a year – we met so many great people from around the globe that week)

What brought all of these people from locales all around the world to one place? Their love of Mickey and all things Disney. This place and what it represents to people around the world is a strong enough bond to bring together people who might not have much else in common. There are very few brands that can do this on a global level (Disney, Coca-Cola, the Pittsburgh Steelers, various religions, etc.).

But many more organizations have this potential, albeit on a more regionalized level. Whether it’s graduates from your school or university, sports fans, people who use your widget or follow your politics (if you’re a politician) there is a group of people who are passionate about being a part of a like-minded community.  Ask yourself, “what have we done to nurture this group? How can we engage and develop this burgeoning community?”

This past week, my beloved Buffalo Bills (@buffalobills) ran headlong into a miracle this week. After four years of delving into mediocrity, the Bills fired their head coach and promoted their defensive coordinator to interim head coach.

As a Bills fan, I’m greatly relieved that the team showed the guts to get rid of their leader halfway through the season and start the hunt for a new coach earlier than the rest of the NFL. (Of course that means this season is pretty much over, but Bills fans knew that back after week 1)

Another question raised was, “Will the Bills get a real football general manager (GM) as well, hire one person to be the coach/GM, or keep the current pseudo-GM?” Since 2005, the Bills haven’t had a real GM, the person who is responsible for putting the team together, and the product on the field has shown it.

While only time will tell for the Bills, today I want to talk about the differences between “GM’s” and “coaches” in the business world.  Each has their benefits and weaknesses to developing your “team.” (For lack of a better word)

 

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General Managers

These are the guys who hire the players (and coaches) for the team. They put the pieces in place, and figure out how to best use each person’s strength to compensate for other’s weaknesses. They are also responsible for going out and scouting which players in college and free agency can make the organization better.  Instead of creating a situation to make the sum of the parts greater than the whole, they see each of the parts and how they can be more than the whole.

In a perfect world, they trust that the people they hire know how to do their jobs without too much prodding.

Coaches

These are the guys who lead the team, develop the game plan and calculate how the team will best work together.  They take the pieces that the general manager give them and put them together in a way that will maximize their chances for success.

They try to create a situation where the sum of the team’s parts is greater than the whole.

Again, in that perfect world we all want, they trust the people they lead and believe that they can finesse the best possible outcome from their team.

 

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But Benson, I hear you saying, what about the dual-rolled “Coach/GM”? Can’t they provide the best possible outcome for you?  True, but to be honest, outside of a rare few people (in the NFL you know who they are, Mike Holmgren, Bill Cowher, Mike Shanahan) most fall short when trying to fulfill both roles. Whether the responsibilities for each are too much, or they lack one of the two necessary skill sets they fall short at one while usually crashing at the other.  In the NFL you too often see coaches wanting both positions – feeling that if they have to lead the group, they should be able to pick who they lead. However, this is more of an excuse to not develop a strong working relationship with the person selecting the team, there’s not the communication and trust between the two to work together for the best results possible.

 

All I want to say about this is figure out which role you better fill and stick with improving yourself at that. There will be time to develop the other side’s skills at another time when you already have a base of experience to build on.  And this way, at least you’ll be showing improvement and success to one of the other people who really matter – your boss.

This requires a truthful self-evaluation. Which of the above sounds more like you? Do you want to put the pieces in place to succeed and not micromanage them, or do you prefer the challenge of taking what you have in the office and kicking ass with that? Or am I totally off-base here?

Greeting again from sunny (during the day, it’s 1 a.m. as I write this) Disney World. It’ll be a few days later when y’all read this, but I’m getting the thought down now before I forget them and will have them up and running back when I get to ABQ and have reliable wireless again.

(Can you believe that after paying a bucket of cash, Disney still charges for Internet access? They have a good thing going here and know not to kill it.)

While the above paragraph sounded like some random ramblings, it makes the point I wanted to make in today’s piece. This idea of putting a message up when you want to, and allowing people to see it in their own time frame. And the medium I want to talk about today is the idea of advertising in video games.

Video game advertising? Really? Are people going to want to see this?

“Want?” Probably not. But advertising is already more and more prevalent in the video game world.  It probably started with the Madden NFL franchise (as many things in the video game world do) promoting various products with the “announcers” in the game (all real NFL Network and NBC talent). The “Old Spice Red Zone Report” when either team is within the 20-yard line (known in football as the “Red Zone,” which is also an Old Spice brand of deodorant I believe), or “this game is brought to you by EA Sports” mentioned at various times throughout the game, or the recreation of advertising actually located in each team’s stadium.

If football’s not your thing, the new “Need For Speed” allows for billboard advertising by companies or organizations that you can target to selected times and places. One organization that took advantage of this to a great benefit was Barack Obama for President. They were able to target ads for gamers in selected battleground states. Even if they did not notice the ads right away, or at all, they were still in the background adding to the subliminal message to vote for (or have more positive feelings for) President Obama.

As games and platforms continue to advance, you can expect to see game companies allow for advertising in their games. Think about it, you could place an ad for your organization on a bulletin board read by players in the upcoming Fable 3 game, or on a TV screen in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  And of course in any game which XBOX Live players can download (or even on the online games page itself).  Some platforms might even work out deals for players on their platform to get cheaper games if there is advertising allowed in the game, or might charge more to allow players to get “premium games” free of advertising.

It’s all up to you or your organization to think of new and creative ways to tap into this growing market. How would you like to present a consistent message to your audience in this medium? Would you even try to present more than a few seconds of a message? Would this be a great way to target a message to a potential audience in a selected location? – Probably, because you can selected which parts of the country these messages would go to, and they would be available to an audience that might TIVO ads away, if they even watch TV on a TV set, but can later get the message from their video game, still reading the message, only in their own time frame. (I would think that this would be a great way for a university to reach potential students.)

Then of course there are some opportunities for video game makers to offer games for a little higher price if they come with a “No Advertising” guarantee.