| 07 December 2010
ESPN has suffered from tales of disrepute in recent years with several alleged incidents of sexual harassment by on air talent (Harold Reynolds, Sean Salisbury, Steve Phillips). It’s made Deadspin a go to site for those eager to see the decline and fall of the World Wide Leader. But Deadspin has nothing on the undisputed Champion of messing up ESPN's good name.
No one is better at diminishing the ESPN brand than ESPN themselves. So it is with no surprise at all, that we come to bury ESPNw, not to praise it. The new site, launched this week, with a focus on attracting women to sports is not only silly, it’s a patronizing effort that treats women separately from men.
Many women writers in the sports blogosphere (and twitterverse) are up in arms about the treatment. The reason is they already care about sports and no site geared towards them as women can compete with the sites that are geared towards them as sports fans.
The problem with marketing is that a company sees its product tapping a particular audience and leaving others cold. Rather than find new ways to grow the already won over market, they typically attempt to reinvent themselves with an eye towards attracting the market of uninterested folks.
This is foolish on several levels. First the brand dilution to draw people who previously passed on your product annoys your base. Take a look at any band that was solid in a niche and then released a crossover album and you’ll see that point. Their fans are outraged because they have abandoned the sound that drew them in as fans. Newcomers may like them, but find their older work inaccessible.
Draw it back to ESPN. Let’s say that ESPNw is a huge success and that it attracts a fair number of women who begin to discover that sports are interesting and enjoyable. Does that instantly translate to more page views at ESPN or more viewers of the various ESPN networks? Of course not. These new readers need to accept or reject the original product on its own merits.
Further, the drawing women to the joy of athletic competition should not be segregated from coverage of sports geared towards men. That tactic is bound to fail. Consider the reaction of one of the writers I follow on Twitter who happens to be a woman:
I’ve been watching ESPN most of my life. In fact, I probably watch it more than my dad, and he’s a huge sports fan. In particular, “They recognize it’s not [their brand],” really bothers me as a female who watches ESPN. I didn’t know ESPN wasn’t meant for me.
Kristi Dosh is down at the MLB Winter Meetings reporting for Comcast Sports and Forbes. Her last remark is perfect. When launched, ESPN wasn’t targeted. Sure it attracted a natural (organic is the buzzword if you’re wondering) following of young men in the coveted 18-49 year old demographic. But it also attracted women viewers, who enjoyed sports. It seems ESPN ignored that built in subset when creating a brand expanding effort. They would have been an obvious and vital resource.
Another stellar writer I follow on twitter, Blythe Brumleve writes about sports, among other topics at her blog GuysGirl.com, which “strives to show guys and girls that it’s OK for a woman to be girly and still love and learn about things that are ‘supposed to be for the guys’ bridging the gap between tomboys and girly-girls.”
To that end, Blythe wrote a book touting football to her audience, without talking down to women interested in learning more about football. In her own words:
There are plenty of books out there that are "Girl's Guide to Sports" that play down the intelligence of women as fans with books that say "what time is the best time to use the bathroom during a game" and "why you should learn sports for your man" but I wanted the book to focus on females who want to be fan for themselves. For the fans who never wanted to ask for fear of embarrassment or for the fans who want to expand their knowledge on the game. This book will have something for everyone from the wanna-be fans to the full on body painted fans.
That’s the essential difference. Her book was written by a woman who loves sports and geared towards all women. Can you say the same about ESPNw?
UPDATE: Rachel Dulitz, one of the sharp folks I follow on Twitter had a keen insight that I thought would be good to share:
They could have asked 2,000 women - if there were content on a website that focused on women or more female writers, would you be interested? I'd answer "yes" on a survey. BUT that in no way implies I want that on a separate website. I think that's where they went really wrong.
Rachel emphasizes that her comment is conjecture. And without empirical evidence we are all just guessing. The mistake made was to split off a valuable segment with little thought to the impression it would give - i.e. that women writers and athletes were separate but equal from the menfolk at ESPN.
Rachel also chided me - rightly so - for the ambiguity of my final analogy. I implied what should have been said explicitly. The idea behind the site I think reaches beyond the writers (all women) and editors/administrators (almost all women). No doubt they all love the sports they cover and sports in general. But like many corporations, decisions to launch a new brand are rarely initiated by those charged with implementing the decisions. My expectation is that ESPN's higher ups who are not predominantly feminine likely concluded that a giving women a site to themselves was the best way to attract them to ESPN. That thought animates my closing comment.
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