NFL Facing A Tremendous Marketing Dilemma

With the situation involving players kneeling during the national anthem, NFL owners were faced with the choice of siding with their employees or their customers. They chose their employees. This could be a huge risk for the future of the league.

You have to wonder if this decision is based on research on NFL ticket holders. If this market is basically a conservative, middle class group, it could be a problem. If the market breaks down like the political landscape of the country, southern and middle America teams (including the Jacksonville Jaguars) may experience a loss of support while those teams in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, New York and New England may not feel any affects. And considering that support and ratings have already declined, can the NFL afford to mishandle this issue? Time will tell.

The point is if your business has to make a decision to side with your employees over your customers, you better know how it will affect your customers and be prepared for the consequences. Now this doesn’t include issues such as employee abuse by a customer. That will never get traction. But unpopular customer policies will.

I have a client that advertises his business from time to time. When he promotes his business, sales pick up considerably. But it also puts additional pressure on his staff to keep up with sales and service. So they complain, and as a result, he backs off on advertising. This is an incredible case where he loses income by siding with his employees.

Every type of business needs to understand what their customers want and they need to ensure that their employees are on board to deliver on the business promise. Otherwise, they may just need to punt!