#help people
Doing research for a thing everyone reblog or reply and tell me what you would do with your time if you didn’t have to work. Like if you suddenly got enough passive income to live a comfortable middle class life and you didn’t have to do a single thing to get it, what would you do all day?
If you think your answer is embaraseing anon it to me.
@ SXSW interactive
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I’m a crossfitter, so when I noticed this in the list of sessions I knew I was going to attend it without even having to read what it was about.
About an hour after I did 15.3 (the third of five of the CrossFit open workouts) in downtown Austin at CF Central Downtown, I found myself raising my hand when the speaker, James Letchford (HQ’s global brand manager) asked, “who here has already drank the Koolaid?” There was a good number of veteran crossfitters in the room and suddenly, I felt a sense of community.
Ha.
Letchford then started to sell CrossFit a bit, but not in a traditional way. He started out by saying CrossFit could easily become a billion dollar company within a year. How? Put their name on some kind of protein recovery drink, or put their name on equipment and force all the affiliates use it. They’re not going to do any of that, though. He explains that business is the art and science to creating opportunity to other companies… companies that do different things than you but have a co-relation and can help you build your brand subtly and of course you do the same for them. Think Progenex and Rogue.
Both Progenex and Rogue are, in my opinion, good at what they do. Progenex makes high-quality recovery drinks, and Rogue makes high-quality but affordable equipment. Why would the CrossFit brand take that from them? Of course CrossFit would get rich by doing this, but easy money loses people’s trust, and by CrossFit supporting other companies opportunities, CrossFit still stays on top. Everybody wins, really. And crossfitters are left with awesome jump ropes and barbells and tasty recovery beverages. ;)
In the past ten years or so CrossFit has grown from 13 to over 10,000 affiliates all over the world. How does CrossFit keep brand and quality control with so many affiliates? An affiliate is not a franchise. An affiliate is free to do whatever they want with the name, the logo, signage, color scheme, apparel design, etc. They can have the most hideous of logos and their physical space can be a hole in the wall with the bare necessities and somehow it won’t affect the larger brand. Seems bizarre. As a graphic designer, I’ve always put a lot of emphasis on logos and visual brand and such, and sometimes I do silently judge an affiliate’s visual look, but when it comes down to it I judge an affiliate harder about other things: programming, coaching, community. This is the quality that really matters for CrossFit’s brand.
I’ve dropped in at eight affiliates in 2014 and 2015, and I’ve been a member of two. I’ve seen a lot of common things and not many of those things include an “awesome visual presence.” A lot of them had some cool shirts (to which I was quick to purchase to add to my growing collection) and decent blog sites with some kind of cheap and quick logo on it, but that’s about as far as the visual look goes across most affiliates.
CrossFit wants affiliate owners to be able to change lives by being good people. They don’t look for the best business people or marketers. They look for people who care about people and the community. Letchford also even said CrossFit doesn’t really care or need marketing because it wouldn’t change their service. He doesn’t even know what a marketing plan for CrossFit would look like (madness. just madness).
What about quality control in terms of the stuff CrossFit does care about? Coaching and caring about the people and community. In 10,000 affiliates, how does HQ ensure the coaching and staff is of good quality everywhere? He said the community kind of polices itself. Word gets out. If one box isn’t living up to standards of where CrossFit wants affiliates to be, it won’t take long for people to take note and choose other boxes. There are plenty of options, and multiple in most cities. Affiliates need to be on their game, and most know this, so they put effort into training their staff and all kinds of other things to make their affiliate community great. Everyone loves their box—and if they don’t, they find a new one (like I did in the middle of last year).
Their social media strategy is similar to their marketing strategy, as in, they don’t really have one. They give people what they need. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less. They don’t do things just for likes… they deliver information.
I left this session all fired up about CrossFit (and also really wanting to run back to CF Central Downtown to lift all of the weights). It really is an organization that is doing great things for the future of fitness and humanity and one that doesn’t particularly care about making a ton of money but rather cares about making people better… so I’ll leave you with this:
Does CrossFit attract great people, or does CrossFit makegreat people? I think the latter, only because if you count how many people checked off “I have had a life changing experience due to CrossFit” on their CrossFit games athlete page, you’ll find a lot have. CrossFit changes people, for the better… and that’s really all that a good brand needs to do.
Is this a new kind of attention deficit?
https://minusthenegative.com/post/iwantattentionicanthaveitiwanttostopicantdoit
