Google Hits a Home Run with Roberto Clemente Google Doodle

The Google Doodle for October 12, 2018, honors the legacy of Roberto Clemente. Many remember him as a Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder. But his lasting legacy is his passion for doing good. If you were alive on New Year’s Eve 1972, you didn’t need to be a baseball fan to be moved by the news of his death in a plane crash as he was flying to Nicaragua to help earthquake victims there. Fortunately, Google has kept his memory alive for the digital generation in the best way possible, a Google Doodle.

My Roberto Clemente Story

When I was 12, a friend of my dad’s invited me to spend a week with his family in Puerto Rico. So my mom dropped me off at O’Hare Airport one spring morning, and I flew down to San Juan by myself with in-flight music (mostly tunes culled from the Eagles Greatest Hits) to keep me company.

For a week, I lived in the San Juan area and got a feel for how residents lived as opposed to how tourists experienced the area. Every night, I fell asleep to the sound of kids playing basketball deep into the evening, and during the day, I wandered around the crowded neighborhood watching people live their days. Roberto Clemente’s presence was everywhere. He had been dead for four years at this point, but he was very much alive in Puerto Rico. Not a day went by without someone bringing up his name, perhaps when kids were playing catch in a park, or old men were drinking coffee in a cafe.

What I remember most: he was talked about, but his likeness was not branded on clothing, as if he were more like a god than a rock star. And no one discussed his achievements on the field. Instead, he was remembered for his compassion — the same compassion that inspired him to help earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve of 1972.

Well played, Google.

How Brands Can Be Cool by Going Retro

Sometimes a brand can unleash its inner cool by going retro. The Topps Company is a case in point. Topps has been manufacturing trading cards annually since Joe DiMaggio was playing for the New York Yankees. Since 2001, Topps has issued so-called heritage sets that depict contemporary players in cards that reproduce the design of some of its more memorable yearly editions. The 2012 Topps Heritage set features the baseball stars of today in the retro style of the Topps 1963 series, down to the brightly colored borders, inset photos, and cartoonish images on the backside. And Topps is among many other brands that create a sense of style and authenticity by celebrating their histories.

The sports industry often embraces its past. The Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association famously adorns its players in several styles of throwback jerseys as do many other professional sports teams.

Throwback jerseys are so popular in the National Football League that the Bleacher Report recently ranked them for the quality of their designs.

The Topps 1963 set has generated plenty of buzz among baseball card collectors not only for its design but for containing elements of suprise and delight. For example, some lucky fans will open up their packages of vintage cards to find reproductions of cards from famous stars like Willie Mays — actually autographed by the stars themselves.

And some cards deliberately contain errors in a nod to mistakes made in the 1963 set, such as this card that purports to be an image of Kerry Wood of the Chicago Cubs but is actually that of Aramis Ramirez of the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Wood/Ramirez “error” is an inside joke from Topps. The 1963 Topps card of Don Landrum actually depicted Ron Santo in the main and insert photos by mistake.

Many brands outside the sporting world connect with consumers through their histories. Coca-Cola does so in a number of ways, including the collectors column on its website, where collectible enthusiasts like Phil Mooney, Coca-Cola archivist, discuss their love of Coca-Cola collectibles. Bacardi recently released an archive of vintage images of the iconic brand to celebrate its 150-year anniversary.

Cartier, Motel 6, Life Savers are among the many other major brands going retro with major campaigns.

So why do brands go rertro? A recent New York Times article by advertising columnist Stuart Elliott refers to throwback advertising as “comfort marketing.” Elliott writes:

Anniversary campaigns are part of a trend inspired by the economy that could be called comfort marketing, as advertisers invoke misty, water-colored memories of the past to woo consumers into buying products in the present.

A major aspect of comfort marketing is what brand managers call authenticity: reminding shoppers who seek value in the provenance of merchandise to suggest a product is worth buying because its quality has been tested for decades.

Music Mogul Jermaine Dupri makes a similar point about how a brand can create an authentic connection by tapping into its past. While speaking at 2012 Portada Latin American Advertising and Media Summit, he told me and my iCrossing colleague Gaby Guzman, “A brand’s history is its style.” As Guzman reports on the iCrossing Content Lab, “[Jermaine Dupri] explains that often a brand’s history is at the core of who the brand is, and by getting in touch with their past, brands will generate that authentic connection with their audience Brands like Coca-Cola or the City of Miami have a long history that they can draw from to generate content and engagement.”

Note that both Stuart Elliott and Jermaine Dupri stress the relationship between having a history and being authentic. It feels phony and cynical when a relatively young brand attempts to go retro, an example being the Arizona Diamondbacks Major League Baseball team, which offers four throwback uniform jerseys even though the team has existed for only 14 years.

And a brand needs to choose its retro style wisely. As the sports world teaches us, some product designs are better left in the past:

The NFL Pittsburgh Steelers are responsible for the jersey depicted here, a throwback to the 1932 team’s uniforms. In the words of the Bleacher Report, the jersey makes the Steelers look like a “bumblebee prison football team.” On the other hand, the San Diego Chargers powder blue throwback uniforms (evoking the team look from the 1960s) are justly lauded for their sense of appealing, eye catching (if not NFL macho) style:

The San Diego Chargers, like Topps, have created an authentic connection with their fans by going retro — and have unleashed their inner cool.

Major League Baseball shows trust on Twitter

Major League Baseball trusts its Twitter fans. When Kansas City Royals Hall of Famer George Brett joined Twitter, the @MLB Twitter account posted this tweet:

 

If you’re not a Major League Baseball fan and don’t follow its rich history, the reference to “pine tar above the knuckles” is meaningless and perhaps confusing. But Major League Baseball trusts its fans to get the inside joke without needing to explain it. The 2 million baseball fans who follow MLB understand inherently that MLB is referring to the controversial 1983 “Pine Tar Game,” when Brett slugged a crucial home run against the New York Yankees – only to have the home run nullified by an umpire who ruled that Brett’s bat was coated with an excessive amount of pine tar. Brett’s angry reaction — charging from the dugout like a crazed bull — was captured for history (and would become a viral smash had the incident occurred now):

The Major League Baseball Twitter account informs, entertains, and celebrates baseball with a sense of humor, even with its About section (“We don’t understand the infield fly rule, either”). But most importantly, Major League Baseball trusts its fans by sharing content without overexplaining it. Do you?