Cardiff Blues, Star Wars and Carl Jung

So what have Cardiff Blues, Star Wars and Carl Jung, the psychologist, got in common?

I hear some of you say, Richard Marquand, the Director of Return of the Jedi. Well, he was born in Llanishen and was probably a Cardiff fan when younger before his untimely death at the age of 49 in 1987; its close but, ‘no’.

The answer is ‘nothing’; but they should have a very close connection. Not just a close connection but the club’s strategic marketing should be based on this connection. Now there’s two words you don’t associate with the club: no, not Star Wars - ‘strategic marketing’.

Ok, let’s explain the connection.

Anyone who has undertaken a psychometric test in work to find out what sort of a person they are will have been given a typology. They will know whether they are an extrovert or introvert; rational or irrational; thinking or feeling type of person etc. Myers Briggs is the most common one used these days but they are all similar and predominantly based on the work of Carl Jung in 1921. These different classifications were used to develop architypes or characters to illustrate how different people would act or behave.

So what’s that got to do with Star Wars? Well, when George Lucas created the series he based the characters on the concept of Carl Jung’s typologies: the Hero (Luke Skywalker), the Sage (Obi Wan Kenobi); The Ruler (Darth Vader) etc. When you think about it you see these types of characters in all sorts of films and books but Lucas was probably the first to at least talk about it.

These different architypes are used by some of the best marketing firms to develop plans and strategies for companies. What they are basically asking is:

• What are you trying to do?

• How do you want to be perceived?

Generally speaking there are 12 brand architypes and we include examples of companies associated with them in brackets: The Hero (Nike); The Sage (National Geographic); The Creator (Apple); The Rebel (Levi’s) etc. They all have different ‘personalities’ and like people they are a mix of both positive and negative. Some firms are a mixture of these characters and will use them strategically depending on circumstances. The key issue is that they know what they are doing and what the likely impact and reaction is going to be.

So now we come to the difficult bit. Where does Cardiff Blues fit in? The honest answer is God knows! There doesn’t appear to be any published strategy for what the club is trying to achieve or how it’s going to go about it. Moreover, we doubt that anybody has given any consideration as to how they want the club to be perceived by supporters, sponsors or the wider community.

In its simplest terms there appears to be confusion between marketing, branding and sales. None of this is underpinned by strategic thinking. Thinking doesn’t appear to get much more sophisticated than asking the question, ‘what hashtag can we use on our Twitter account this month’? There doesn’t even appear to be an agreed colour palette or style in its branding.

To be fair to the club, it has been foist with the Cardiff BLUES name since 2003; a name which is so crushing in its ordinariness. When used on its own, Blues is totally meaningless. It is not even unique in rugby circles. It fails even the basic rugby test that if you want supporters to chant the team’s name (or part of it) it has to have two syllables – New-port; Ul-ster; Glas-gow; Mun-ster. People are then surprised that the crowd chant Car-diff; it’s simple, it has two syllables!

But the name is the name and we have to work with it, for now. The priority should be to consult and agree on a strategic plan and develop a marketing plan. We have produced a number of blogs recently illustrating:

• How the club needs to use its history to retain existing supporters and attract lapsed supporters;

• Target young people in a city which has a huge student population and also an aging current supporter base;

• Make itself more relevant, accessible and desirable to people outside Cardiff and embrace regionalism;

• And Phil Thomas has recently shown the financial importance of targeting sponsors and hospitality as compared to the average punter.

As John Romero the games designer geek said:

‘In marketing I’ve only seen one strategy that can’t miss and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last’.

Once it decides what it’s trying to do and how it wants to be perceived a company can select one (or maybe 2) of the 12 branding architypes. These will help illustrate the type of company it wants to be and why it’s more attractive to some spectators and sponsors than others. It also determines what sort of relationships it needs to establish, the style of press releases and newsletters, and the behaviour of staff and Board members. You can’t have a brand based on one character and behaviour based on another!

At the moment, Cardiff Blues couldn’t possibly market itself under The Hero brand (high quality and better than other teams) The Ruler (dominant in its field) or The Innocent (pure, simple and trustworthy) but it could consider The Regular Guy (down-to-earth, dependable) along with The Nurturer (protective and supportive) for ‘Stay Strong for Ows’ initiatives and The Jester (outrageous imagery) to target younger fans. The Creator, The Explorer, The Magician and The Lover would be non-starters as architypes, no matter how attractive the latter may appear to some!

CF10 Arms Park Rugby Trust has a brand which is primarily The Rebel (craves change and unconventional) underpinned by The Sage (learning and challenging).

So there we have it. The club’s name is its name and we are stuck with it for now unless some brave soul comes up with a strategy for the club underpinned by a marketing strategy and accompanied branding. On this basis, it would be sensible to reconsider the name. After all, the club was called Cardiff Football Club, then Cardiff Rugby Football Club and now Cardiff Blues. However, it would be lunacy to come up with a change of name without a strategy. There lies commercial suicide and we suspect that’s what happened back in 2003.

Cardiff Blues Ltd could benefit from heeding the words of Milan Kundera, nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize for Literature who said:

‘Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation’

In terms of the club the latter is beginning to occur on the field but a lot of work is required to develop both off the field. The approaches advocated here would be a good start.