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What does knowing how to build a loyal fan-community have to do with being an impactful leader? Everything, apparently.
In this episode of High Octane Leadership, Donald Thompson sits down with J.C. Abdallah, Ph.D., a quantitative researcher studying fandom and persuasion, alongside creative partner Bob Batchelor to explore why understanding fan psychology is critical to leadership, how to get your message to your audience (not the other way around) and the counter-intuitive truth about building lasting brand loyalty.
This conversation ties together two seemingly separate worlds - sports marketing and leadership - to deliver a conversation that is sure to get you thinking about the art of persuasion and how to use it effectively in your leadership journey.
Future-proof your leadership with High Octane Leadership, a place where business leaders—whether by title or aspiration—share cheat codes for unlocking workplace excellence, lessons learned along the way, and insider tips for future generations of next-level professionals. With a career rooted in building people and businesses, Donald Thompson is an award-winning CEO, speaker, and author who empowers leaders to scale with purpose. Over the last 25 years, he has helped startups and enterprises alike drive cultural change, unlock performance, and deliver exceptional results through strategic leadership.
Find him on LinkedIn, and listen here to learn how you can become future-proof too.
High Octane Leadership Ep. 178
Why Leaders Avoid Mental Health Conversations with
J.C. Abdallah
[00:00:03] Donald: Welcome to High Octane Leadership with Donald Thompson. This season, we're diving deeper with more solo episodes, where I'll share the experiences that have led to recognition by Forbes, Fast Company, and others. Not as a boast, but as milestones on my entrepreneurial path. From growing multimillion dollar firms to successful business exits and building high performance teams with a global perspective. I'll reveal the insights and strategies from my journey and share them with you so that we can win together. Alongside these solo episodes, we'll have industry visionaries and thought leaders who will explore effective leadership. Ready to empower your leadership journey with real success stories? Let's embark on this transformational journey together. Hello, and welcome to another episode of High Octane Leadership. I'm your host, Donald Thompson. I'm joined today by doctor JC Abdullah, a quantitative researcher who studies the intersection of sports, media, and fan identification. His dissertation examined how NFL and college football fans engage with social media. A Pittsburgh native and a passionate Steelers and Penguins fan, doctor Abdullah teaches courses in sports communication, persuasion, and mass communication. JC, welcome to the show, and and thanks for being with us.
[00:01:26] JC Abdallah: Thank you.
[00:01:27] Donald: As, uh, one of the things as we dive in and also wanna share with our audience that my creative partner and good friend, Bob Bachelor, is on the line also. And so I've got two PhDs and DT hanging out together. And so, uh, Bob and I are gonna drive the questioning and the conversation, but we're very, very interested in this topic, whether it's the world of sports, politics, pop culture of really understanding that how do we make decisions, how are we persuaded, how are we moved and manipulated across these different things. And so, JC, one of the things I'm gonna start with as we jump out, and I got a chance to meet you when I was at Coastal Carolina, uh, talking with some of the mass communication students, and we chopped it up for about an hour and a half in the cafeteria just catching it. You gotta stick out at Coastal Carolina University for a very specific reason. Like, what's part of your brand within the organization that audience would wanna know a little bit about you?
[00:02:22] Bob: For me, it's pretty simple. So I take what I do to an extreme. I essentially live and breathe what I do. I am a Steelers fan through and through. I'm really a Pittsburgher. It's one of the things where I want everybody to know where I'm from because I'm so proud of where I am from. It's one of the things that is is so key to who I am. It's part of my experience. It's part of my understanding of what the world is because, again, you know, it's how we learn from our experiences as kids, the world around us. And my living and breathing in Pittsburgh for my entire life until I moved away, you have this feeling of of this identity. So I have this feeling of I don't want anybody to see me. I don't want a stranger to cross the street and see me and not know that I am from Pittsburgh. Right? Like, that's how I kinda feel about this. Because it's one of the things where it's, like, it's a great conversation starter, especially here in Myrtle Beach, because there are so many Pittsburghers, so many people from Western Pennsylvania down here. And it's one of the things where it's part of my trademark. It's funny because I had class yesterday, and I had a student ask me in my sports comm class. She said, I don't think I've ever seen you wear anything not a anything that isn't a Steelers shirt. How many Steelers shirts do you have? And I I said, I don't know. About 70. And she said, what? And I said, oh, yeah. That's not counting the jerseys either. And I said, you know, it's one of the things where it's like, that's just who it is. That's who I am. And that's kind of why I stick out here because it's one of the things where I don't know. Everybody kinda has their own trademark. And when you stick to it and it becomes who you are, as long as you're fine with it, there's nothing wrong with it. And it's funny because that's who I wanna be. It's not anybody who I don't wanna be. Right? I'm so happy with the fact that people know me as that Steelers professor. Right? Like, that's kind of the point.
[00:04:22] Donald: That is good stuff. One of the things you shared during my visit I'd love for you to talk about with the audience and unpack a little bit is, yes, you're a Steelers fan. Yes. That's a part of your identity. Yes. You want people to recognize that. Talk about the family underpinning of being a Steelers fan, how that connected with you and and important people in your life. I'd love to share with the audience because that's gonna lead us down the path of what creates this connection and community, but I'd love to hear it in your voice and in your story.
[00:04:53] Bob: I think one of the biggest things that we do as sports fans is understand that it's something that's bigger than us. It's something that is something that we can share with other people. It's something that we can really have a great connection with other people no matter what. It's one of the things where I think about my story. My story is kind of interesting because I have a my dad was an immigrant from Jordan. He moved to this country when he was 18 years old. I've always heard the story of when he moved to the country. He didn't understand football. He didn't like football for years. And he moved to Pittsburgh, still didn't like the Steelers for a very long time. This was also during the nineteen eighties where they weren't not the the greatest. So, you know, I could understand that a little bit. And, of course, he never saw football before he came to this country either. So, yeah, he didn't understand it. And then he had an accident at work. He had a workplace accident where he just kinda wanted to you know, he was at home recovering. He didn't wanna watch anything funny. He didn't really wanna be sad. He just kinda wanted to do something else. He wanted to be in another place. He wanted to escape. And it was 1995, and Steelers were really good at the time. Uh, we were going to the Super Bowl at the time, and my dad watched the Super Bowl and the run up to it and became a fan because it was just that's what he did on Sundays because he couldn't do anything else. He couldn't go to work. He couldn't do anything else. Right? So and I think the reason that story is so it's the reason it starts off like that is because, you know, I was a little kid when that happened, and I wanted to spend time with my dad. I didn't necessarily know anything about football. Again, you know, you're three years old. Sports fan shit doesn't really start until around five or six. You don't necessarily get it, but you wanna hang out with your dad. And what's the best way of doing that than on Sundays? You know, three hours on Sundays. What other event can give you unfettered three hours with a great family member? It's kinda one of those things where it makes me feel like I'm connected to him in that way. And that's kind of where this starts, this community of feeling of just our relationship with people around us and something that we can share with everybody. And our family is something that is massively important to that, and it's especially important in areas we can talk about this later, but I think I mentioned this before. You think about the areas of where you had to have family, you had to have these connections because life was pretty hard. The Rust Belt. You think about Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, all of these places have really great fan bases for good reason. It's because it connects those towns. It connects those cities with those people. Because if you think about it, those are the diehard fans for good reason.
[00:07:45] Donald: And I wanna add something or extend to what you were saying, JC. It's powerful. You talked about sharing an experience with your family member, and that's where it started. And then that becomes a shared experience with other people that are part of that community. And the thing that I wanna tie together, that shared experience, that escape, because life's pretty hard. And so I'd ask this question, and and then, Bob, you chime in wherever you'd like. I'm so excited. I can just go question, question, question. But what is fandom? And then why is it so important for non academics or business people to understand in terms of building community, building momentum for your brand, things of that nature?
[00:08:24] Bob: Fandom's about identification. It's about being able to identify with something that is personal to you, is very somewhat of a connection to you. Right? Like, you have some sort of association with it. So I think fandom is something that allows us to escape. Right? It allows us that ability to be in another environment, be in another world where we don't necessarily have to think about, you know, our everyday issues or everyday problems. I always think about this in terms of sports. If you think about sports, you think about it if you watch football, for example, because, again, I I'm such a football guy. I always think about it in football terms. There's a hundred and sixty eight hours of the week. Football happens three hours out of a hundred and sixty eight hours. What what happens that other hundred and sixty five hours? You know, what else do you do with it? You talk to people. You talk about the game. You talk about the team. You talk about the future. And that conversation with other people alone is worth the price of admission for fanship because, again, it's that feeling of connection. I'm gonna go to a store today, and I'm gonna wear a Steelers shirt, and somebody's gonna ask me today. I guarantee it. Is Aaron Rodgers gonna play on Sunday? Because it's one of the things that allows us to be like, hey. You know what? I'm gonna be able to talk to that person. I'm gonna be able to connect with that person in some way, in some manner. And fandom allows us to do that, and that's kind of that escape that allows us to do that, you know, for those hundred and sixty five hours. But even if you think about other types of fandom and, yeah, Bob, baby, you can talk about this as well. You think about things like comic books or things like Harry Potter. You know, why do you think Harry Potter is such a big fandom? Because it's one of the things where it's it's literally an entire universe where you can escape to. We literally have theme parks to escape to this magical world, and it's very similar. It kinda has a very similar mechanism behind it. We wanna see ourselves as that superhero. That's why we like Spider Man. That's why we like superhero you know, that's why we like Superman. Right? We wanna see ourselves in that area. Right? We kinda wanna escape to that. And I think sports and entertainment's kinda the same thing. It's a great way of of looking at it. And, again, that's why I think it's such a builder of community. Right? It doesn't matter what it is. If you like something and I like something, we can spend eight hours talking about it. That's all that it takes.
[00:10:48] JC Abdallah: I would definitely say that there's something to the communities, especially the big cities in the Rust Belt. If you look at the most intense fans, you have Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati. These are places where three of us, one thing we share in common, we've all spent a significant time in Pittsburgh. So we know the entire region you draw a circle a 100 miles from Pittsburgh, that region lives and dies with what happens on Sunday. And you can feel it. Monday morning, if you go to work in Downtown Pittsburgh and the Steelers lost or Steelers lose on a last second field goal. Oh my god. Downtown Pittsburgh is crying. You can feel it in the air and deflated. And people aren't recovering. They're taking three days to recover. I've lived in Cleveland. It's the same feeling in Cleveland. It's pretty amazing. And we all, who grew up in Pittsburgh, checkbox parts of our lives based on what the Steelers the first football game I ever saw was Super Bowl nine. I was six years old. First football game I ever saw, Steelers go to Super Bowl. And I know, like, significant I don't follow the Steelers that much anymore, but I can chart my childhood to what was happening with the Steelers. Back in the eighties, you know, when JC said the Steelers were so so, when I was in college at Pitt, Bubby Brister used to hang out in the same bars that I hung out. So I've sat down and talked smack with him for hours. And he and I had nothing in common, except he was a stealer. He's a hero. Guy was a hero. Jogger's first year, his rookie year, he's same thing. So it's an amazing thing. And then you have the explosion of technology. So if I say and the listeners might laugh at this. I would bet we all know what a furry is. I'm not gonna ask anybody if they participated, but you know what it is. You know why? Because the Internet, things like eBay, it allowed everybody's fandom and the the little intense communities, cult like communities they used to be involved with. It all brought it out into the open. So you can collect anything now. You can connect with other people via the Internet. Everything's wide open. And so that's why, like, what JC does is so important because the sports identity and community that he's studying, it transcends everybody's life.
[00:13:13] Donald: JC and, Bob, thanks for that. What I'm hearing consistently is that shared experience, that escape, that whether it's Harry Potter, whether it's sports, different things. What's the difference between a fan and a superfan? What jumps that?
[00:13:25] Bob: What jumps to that level? If you think about a fan, right, if you think about what a fan can be and I always I teach my students that there's kind of, like, three levels of fans. You kinda have these fans who are you can think about them in layman's terms as low, medium, high. The low involves fans generally. They may follow them in terms of checking box scores, or they might watch games with their friends. Then you have fans who, you know, do watch every game. You know, they tend to be involved. But these superfans that I'm talking about and, again, it's easy for me to talk about it because I am one. These are the people who it's not the three hours that I'm talking about. It's the hundred and sixty five other hours of the week that they think about this team. It's not just that I am a fan of this team. When you become a superfan, the team is a part of me. That is the difference between a fan and a superfan. It is no longer the fact of I am a part of the team's fan community. It's the fact that the team is literally a part of who I am as a person. It becomes part of your self-concept. When you talk about your identity as who you are, I am x, I am y, I am z, I'm a Steelers fan. I'm from Pittsburgh. It's part of who you are. It become that it becomes that inner part of you. Quick story about my dad real quick. The he had scars from his surgery in his arm, and he wanted to he and, like, the scars. He wanted to cover them up with, uh, tattoos. And he was like, what is something where they need two symbols that can symbolize who I am as a person or something that is very important to me as a person. Right? As an immigrant, he chose a bald eagle because he came to America looking for a better life, which he did, and he chose the Steelers logo. That's because that's who he was, and that's who we were. And it's one of the things where it's not just that you're able to wear a shirt. It's that you're wearing it on your body for the rest of your life. That's the difference between a fan and a superfan.
[00:15:31] Donald: And, JC, in the world of politics, it's all about persuasion. In the world of business, you're trying to create identity with your client to where they have that same feeling of the brand. Transition a little bit with me to some of the things you're teaching your students about how to think about creating these communities, sustaining that brand voice. What are some of the things in terms of persuasion that our leaders that are listening could help them be better at their jobs of creating communities, creating connection with their clients or their constituents or things of that nature?
[00:16:05] Bob: It's funny because one of the biggest things that I say in persuasion and I actually I say it just like, listen. If you never learned a a single thing in this class, you have to learn this. You never move your audience to your message. You move your message to your audience. You have to find a way to make that message resonate with your audience. You cannot force your audience to come to you. You have to go to them. The thing is is that, particularly when it comes to persuasion, a lot of people want to push, not necessarily extreme, but you're thinking about you wanna push one thing or another, and a lot of people are not willing to meet people not not even halfway. But one of the biggest things here is you have to give your audience some sort of ability to understand your message. They have to be motivated to understand your message. If they're not motivated, if they can't understand it, you're not gonna be able to get them on your side. You have to be able to move your message to your audience. That's the biggest thing. Like, it it's the fact of if I'm teaching twenty five 18 year olds, I'm gonna have to teach it in a different way than I'm if I'm teaching eighteen sixty five year olds. Like, the way that I have to approach material has to be different based upon who these people are. And that's why it's so important to know who your audience is and know what is important to them. Where are they from? What's their experience like? This is kind of a different thing, and I I'm gonna talk about teaching real quick because I really think this is important in in pedagogy, and I think this is important in everything else. The biggest thing that I do the first day of class is I have an introduction form that my students fill out. Who are you? And it's not just who you are. I wanna know where you're from. I wanna know what is your dream career. What are you going for? Like, what do you really wanna do? What's your favorite team? What's your favorite TV show? What's something that you think that is interesting about you that people don't know about? I wanna know you as a person so I can adjust my message to the people in my audience. Again, if I have a whole bunch of people from if I have a whole bunch of people from Western Pennsylvania, I might be able to say one thing or another that can resonate to them in a way that might not resonate with other people but allows them to remember something. Or if I have an ability to understand, hey. This person or these a lot of my students in this class really like a certain TV show or a certain movie or something like that, then I can adjust, maybe tip that off a little bit. But it's just knowing about who your audience is is important because you have to move your message to them. You have to know your audience, and you have to know what they wanna hear. If they're not motivated, if they're not able to understand you, you're not gonna be able to get to get them on your side. Plain and simple.
[00:19:03] Donald: Bob, did you have something?
[00:19:04] JC Abdallah: I think it's, uh, one of the fundamentals whenever I think about messaging, whether it's for an organization or whatever you're trying to achieve, you want to communicate clearly, you wanna know your audience, and you want to know what distribution channels do they want to be communicated to. So it's not just blasting messages out to everybody in the world. It's making sure that it's like some people don't wanna be communicated with Facebook, uh, media channel. So being able to know your audience to the point where you can communicate with them via the right channel, you're gonna be doing a better job. And knowing them well enough, at Workplace Options, for example, we weren't on the front end of psychological safety. We were more on the front end of inclusive leadership, but we knew that those messages would generate interest with our audience, and so we went all in. Like, if we had poker chips, we are all in on those two factors because we understood the audience and we had something interesting to say. So then that took two pieces off the equation, and we just had to figure out where were the best channels. And we went then all in on LinkedIn and grew the company LinkedIn from under 25,000 to a 150,000 and grew the newsletter from zero to 50,000 subscribers. So a lot of the ways that JC is looking at community building and particularly in sports directly applicable to the way that communicators and c suite leaders are should be thinking about messaging across the board.
[00:20:45] Donald: One of the things, and this is for Bob and to see, like, you use the word persuasion, and I'll come back to that for a minute. Depending on how the context, right, persuasion could feel manipulative. You're moving somebody into a cult. Persuasion could be manipulative. I'm trying to sell you a car that's a lemon used car. Or persuasion could be, I'm motivating you to be your best self. I'm motivate I'm giving you the tools and the tactics, right, that you can think bigger. How do you think about persuasion in the ethical components of knowing these things and building these communities? And and what have you seen, you know, for and against people using these in the right and wrong ways?
[00:21:27] Bob: Persuasion is a very big umbrella term, and I think it's really important that a lot of people remember that. Persuasion is not a dirty word. Persuasion is a tool that we use in order to do things that other people may not to get people to do things that they might not want to do in the first place. When you think about what persuasion is, it is literally getting people to do things that they're not already doing, something that they're not doing, something that they don't want to do because they're not already doing it. So you kinda have to give them to do something. In that sense, it is kind of a little, you know, murky about what is deception versus what is persuasion, what is indoctrination versus what is brainwashing, what is compliance gaining. How do you change things? And, again, it's like, are you changing a behavior? Are you trying to get them to comply? That's That's compliance gaining. Are you trying to change a an opinion? Are you trying to change an attitude about something?
[00:22:27] Donald: JC, back to what you just said before. You said compliance gaming?
[00:22:31] Bob: Compliance gaining. Yeah. So you gain compliance from somebody else. It's one of the things where persuasion is art and a science. I think of it in terms of this way. When you talk about deception or you talk about ethics, when you think about persuasion, I ask my students, do you think of that sleazy car salesman who's, like, selling snake oil? That's exactly what you think of when you think of somebody who's using persuasion for a negative way. Right? But you never think about it in terms of your doctor trying to tell you, hey. Listen. You should adjust your diet because you're overweight, or you need to adjust your something else because something else is happening. Right? The doctor is just as persuading you as much as the car salesman is, but we don't necessarily think about it that way. We think about it in terms of we're getting advice. We're getting something from a higher authority. It's all about understanding what that message is. Again, it's not trying to be negative. It should never be a bad thing, and I think a lot of people have that misconception. It's so negative when it comes to persuasion because we think about things like indoctrination. We think about things like brainwashing. We think about things like coercion, for example. Now listen. If you don't have the free will of saying no, that's no longer persuasion. You're not persuading somebody. And I think we can understand that's a negative. You have to meet certain criteria in order for something to be considered to be persuasion. If not, then it's something else because that's not what we're talking about. And I think a lot of people, especially my students, when they come out of my class, they say, you know, I I didn't understand that persuasion was so many different things. And I tell them on the first day, it's a 100 different things, but it's the same thing at the same time. It's so weird. It's like a paradox.
[00:24:21] Donald: Well, what does that mean? Look at okay. Because I'm not an academic. Right? So if you say it's a 100 different things and then it's the same thing at the same time, I'm like, uh, what?
[00:24:28] Bob: So if you're trying to gain you know, if you're coercing somebody and you're trying to you're not giving them the option of saying no, and then at the same time, you are giving them the option of saying no, it's kind of the same mechanism, but there's something different about it. And it's those little differences, that's what makes it different. It's those little different things that talk about it. And, again, I talk about it as persuasion being a science and an art. There's a science to it. It's not necessarily a mathematical formula, but there's things that if you want something to be done correctly, you have to do it this way. If you do it incorrectly, you're going to have a very bad time trying to get people on your side.
[00:25:10] Donald: So here's the thing back to fandom a little bit, and I'll let you both jump in. So I'll use the Dallas Cowboys as a example. Uh, so Dallas Cowboys fan. Every year, they think they're going to Super Bowl. And every year, they raise in valuation of what the club is worth, but they're actually super average all the time. But their fans always believe this is our year. But the behavior of their organization, the way they draft, the way they pay players, it's not a well run football organization. It's a well run marketing organization. Right? But their fans are total believers. How do you build that kind of sustained enthusiasm in spite of facts? Right? Like, spite of data, in spite of facts, they're all in, man, buying merchandise and shit.
[00:26:03] Bob: Jerry Jones is a shrewd businessman. So when he bought the Cowboys in 1989, he bought the Cowboys for a 140, 150, 160,000,000, somewhere around that area. Okay? They're worth $13,000,000,000 right now. That is a 9000% return on investment. Part of the reason that Jerry Jones was able to make that team worth so much money and a lot of people actually don't know this. So this is actually a little bit different. When the NFL made the, like, merchandising apparel back in the late nineties, they had the team sign a contract. 27 of those teams signed it. The old the twenty eighth team was the Dallas Cowboys, and Jerry Jones was like, I'm not gonna give you any part of this money, so I'm just gonna merchandise my own money, or I'm just gonna merchandise my own merchandise. And that's exactly what he did. To the Cowboys for a very long time, it was really funny. I believe this happened up at I don't know if he still owns it or not. I I'm not a 100% sure. But I believe this was through the the Reebok area at least, where you could have, like there would be 31 different styles of the same shirt, and then the only one that wasn't available was the cowboys. They would have, like, the different style because it was the Jerry Jones one. It was, like, almost all 32 teams available except for the Cowboys because of Jerry Jones. Because, again, that's the shrewd business portion of it. You're talking about the Dallas Star? It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. People know what that is. You wanna talk about brand, that's an incredible brand. The Dallas Star itself is worth if you put a net worth to a brand logo, that's probably the number one right there because it's so recognizable. It's so funny. And here's the other thing too. It's such a generic star, but everybody knows what it is because they're so good at marketing that brand. I wanted to mention something really quick in terms of the cowboys. It's not Jerry Jones. This kinda started in the seventies. And it starts with how we understand why people are fans of certain teams. And I wanna talk about the cowboys and the Steelers in the nineteen seventies because the way that we understand understand why are Steeler fans so big, why are Cowboys fans so why are they everywhere? Well, it starts in the nineteen seventies. It starts with media. It starts with how we understand and recognize these brands. Right? The more that we see it, the more it's in front of our eyeballs, the more that we're able to affiliate with it, the more that we become loyal to it. The Cowboys and the Steelers were always on TV in the nineteen seventies. If you ask anybody who was a fan of football and maybe necessarily wasn't necessarily a big family fan, born in the sixties or seventies, they're gonna say they're probably a Steelers or Cowboys fans. Later on, can you kinda see the shift to the niners, to the Cowboys again in the nineties? If you think about it in terms of things like baseball, this is actually a really important thing that I tell my students because a lot of people again, they're young. They don't necessarily remember. The time of the Ted Turner, TBS Atlanta Braves and the WGN led Chicago Cubs where you could see those games nationally. And you didn't have to be in the local market. You could see the Braves. You could see the Cubs. And it led to an explosion of Braves and Cubs fans all over the place in the nineteen nineties and early two thousands. It's about getting your logo in front of eyeballs. That's all it is. It's about getting people to recognize who you are because knowing is half the battle. We say that with a lot of things, but that's true with everything.
[00:29:48] JC Abdallah: It always takes time. And Don and I, we've had this conversation for five years. I think you could boil down everything down to awareness. And CEOs look to their CMO, and they want fast results. Like, why aren't we in front of x y z? My thinking is always, like, how long you got? Because unless you're already a name brand, and if you're not known by either by looking at the logo or a single name, like you're Jordan, Beyonce, Microsoft, if you're not that, everything's an awareness game for you because your audience is so diluted and so bombarded with a 100,000 messages each day. If you're gonna build awareness, you're gonna have to be dedicated. You're gonna have to be committed to the long term. And the CMO is the quickest in and out of the c suite of all the c suite leaders because the boss is wants things now and wants it fast, and marketing is not a fast game. It's decades, and most companies don't realize that.
[00:30:58] Donald: Bob, I would add to that. And I took this note while you're talking. Right? If you wanna build fast results, it's gonna take a long time. If you're gonna do it, do it well. I remember Grant Willard a few years back. Grant's my mentor, very good friend, and really gave me my break in the software business many, many years ago. And I'm I'm forever indebted to him for that. Couple years ago, he said, Don, have you watched this Netflix series, Drive to Survive? And I was like, no. He said it's about f one. And I was like, what's that? And I was like, no. Haven't watched it. What's that? Don't care. And then he was like, no. No. You need to watch this. And I said, why do I need to watch cars riding around a shack? And he says, it's not about that. He says, it's about the teamwork. It's about there's only 20 of these chairs in the world. It's about as the fastest grower. So he changed the narrative about what I was negative about to what would be my hook is about the teamwork. How do you get a car in and out, right, of a pit stop in under three seconds? I was like, what? And so now I watched this drive to survive season one, season two, season three. I'm now falling in love with these characters, and then five years later, I spend a lot of money. And I go to my wife and and youngest daughter Diana, we went to our first f one event in Mexico City. I now am a part of that cycle. I have a a Ferrari hat because Hamilton now drives for Ferrari. I've got a f one cap. I've got a f one shirt. So now I'm a part of the merchandising system, the fan system, and now part of that community and excited about those things. And I think that, Bob, to your point that you're always trying to do is, like, yes, you can have speed in brand building or community building, but, really, you have to have a long term thesis, a long term thought process for the kindling to catch. And everybody's wanting the fire to catch, but you have to actually build the foundation, then you could put some kindling on the foundation, and then that thing can catch. But then you get that brand loyalty.
[00:33:09] JC Abdallah: Yep. And the kindling, the only way to catch fast now, there has to be a transcendent person or thing happen. For f one, it was this Netflix series. In music, it was the emergence of Taylor Swift. You never could have guessed that. Her her early part of her career, you could never guess where she is now. So it's Jordan essentially carrying the torch and taking the NBA even further. Now football's been so good at marketing for so long, it had a jump start. So how do you do that in a b to b realm? It takes a lot of money. I've been in different place. Why aren't we thought of in the same light as McKinsey? And I'm like, McKinsey spent how much money collectively has McKinsey spent marketing itself? Okay. Give me a $150,000,000, and we'll reach that fast. You got a $150,000,000? Because they have decades. Like, just look, 30 best selling business books. Probably, if you took the top 50 best selling business books of all time, a McKinsey person's been probably behind 20 of them. You can't buy that fast unless you have a lot of money.
[00:34:20] Donald: Now what you can do faster in a b to b context is realize what will have long term value for building community and fans. For McKinsey, it was the sharing of knowledge and expertise. So they were one of the forefront leaders is sharing through thought leadership, documenting their process, and creating that McKinsey way. And they invested in that sharing, which then raised their credibility so they could charge premium prices. And when I think about the sports analogies and different things, nothing to do with being a fan in professional sports is cheap.
[00:34:58] Bob: Not anymore. It's funny. I literally was talking about commodification of sport yesterday with my students. And I had mentioned the NFL and the throwbacks and all of these things of, like, okay. We're gonna come out with these jerseys, the Color Rush jerseys, these throwbacks, these alternate jerseys. And I'm just sitting here just looking to myself, I'm really gonna have to spend another $150 on this jersey. Like, come on, man. So but that's the thing. They get me. The day that that Aaron Rodgers jersey was available on that Steelers website, I bought it. The day that when I went back home, I was like, I need to get one of the throwback jerseys, you you know, the the 1933 jerseys. And I said to myself I said, I'm gonna get it. It doesn't matter. Like, it's part of my drive. And here's the other thing too. I always think about it this way, and here's kind of go back to what you had mentioned when you say it takes a long time for this loyalty for brands, we're talking about sports fans who have been sports fans for almost their entire lives. When I talk about what I'm going through, the way that I do things, the way that I make my purchase decisions, the way that I do things based upon me being a Steelers fan, that's me being a Steelers fan for decades. And it's really important to remember that when you think about things like brand loyalty, for example, it starts when you're a kid. That's why companies market to kids. You try to get them early because that's how you get lifelong brand. I mean, that's really what it is. You get kids to start thinking, hey. You know, Jordans look good. Nikes are good. Then you're like, okay. You have your parents. Can I buy Nikes? Can I buy Jordans? And then when you're an adult, you're like, well, I guess I'll buy Nikes now. And that's kind of the point. It it's about building this long term relationship. The question is always I always like to think about it this way. I'm no business person by any means, but I like to think about it this way. Would you rather have a flash in the pan customer who wants to buy something for a lot for a really short time, or would you want a customer who's long term who buys a little bit, but they're constantly buying things? That's the question. The question is is do you want the quick buck, or do you want the loyalty of a audience of somebody who's like, listen. I'm never gonna use any other brand. You ask anybody about brand loyalty, it's because it's who they are. Again, it's weird. I like to think about this in terms of where I'm from, and I don't ketchup other than Heinz. I will not eat any other ketchup other than Heinz. Alright? I refuse to do it. I will throw the other stuff away. The reason is is because when I was a kid, that's all we ate. That's all we had. And you go in any restaurant, it's all Heinz because it's a brand loyalty that's like, hey. You know what? As a kid, that's you know, as a kid, it's my ketchup. I gotta eat it. When I was a kid, they came out with the green and purple ketchup. You remember that? So what you know, I was like, you know what? It's kinda weird, but I like it. It's cool. Let's do it. It's ketchup. It's It's tomato paste and puree. Like, who cares? Right? Like, it's not that big of a deal. But, no, I want corn syrup in my ketchup. Tell me. Come on. So that's the thing. It's it's one of the things where it's like, it takes a long time for people to become not just fans or not just purchasers of products, but long term fans and long term purchasers of products. We're not just talking about people who buy things. We're talking about people who continue to buy things from you, and that's the difference.
[00:38:39] Donald: As we I could talk to you all day, just like I've been for an hour and a half in the in the cafeteria at at the college. That's not it. Bob, as we land the plane for this part of the this conversation, what would you like to share? What would you like to ask JC that maybe I didn't hit on? But as we land the plane, I wanna give you some space to help us get there safely.
[00:39:00] JC Abdallah: This has got me thinking about so many different angles. And I'm thinking, I don't want it to seem negative because I'm thinking about the work that we do in thought leadership. And I think that the the thing is it doesn't have to take decades, but that most people, they're not going out on a limb and putting themselves out there in a way they should be. People have earned the credibility. Like, there are CEOs out there, and I believe this firmly. There are CEOs out there who have been successful, lead large corporations that could stand up to the things they don't like happening in The United States right now and lead a coalition of people in a different direction. So it's not that it would take that leader decades to build their brand. They've just never taken their brand essentially public. They've never gone out into the world with their brand in a way that's different than, you know, hunker down, lead your company, that kind of thing. So that's what I've been thinking about based on this because it's not the only way to be successful is to spend a lot of money on advertising or billboards or something or have decades to wait. It's that's that a lot of people just need to put themselves out into the arena. Like, I think one of the things we always say, if there's a baseball game going on and you left your glove at home, you don't get to play. And if you don't get to play, you're not hitting the home run-in the bottom of the ninth. So you have to have your glove to go be on the field to see maybe there's magic gonna be happening. That's part of it with branding for organizations. You've gotta get your reps and put yourself out there in a way through interesting content, interesting messaging to create those fans, super fans.
[00:40:44] Donald: That's powerful. JC, I'll give you the last word as we end our time together, and and it won't be the last. I've been, uh, invited back. I'll be with you all at Coastal Carolina, uh, for Humanities Week. I couldn't be more excited. I'm pretty pumped about continuing to build a relationship with with you all. What have I what would you like to share that maybe I didn't ask or that you wanna leave the audience with, uh, about some of these topics of fandom and persuasion and and brand building?
[00:41:11] Bob: Last thing I wanna talk about is I'm really a big fit. So this community aspect is something that I super important to me because communities are so important for the the vitality of our society, for us as humans. I mean, we're human beings. We are social creatures. This is how we have survived is through groups, and it's through connection with other people. And when you think about sports and, again, I I like thinking about sports always, sports and communities. I think about a quote. It's a quote from Jim Wexell from, uh, Rooney, a sporting life that talks about sports. The city's sporting excellence was rooted in the sand lots that dotted Western Pennsylvania. That sporting life helped generations of men cope with their lives in the mills and mines at a time when Pittsburgh was still referred to as hell with the lid off. When you think about that, it's not about winning or losing. It's not about seeing the game. It's about going to a place and sharing three hours with people that you love in an environment that you're free from, am I going to have a steelworker accident today? Am I going to die in the mines? It's one of the things where it's like, this is part of who we are. This is who we are as people. And the reason that I always think about this in terms of Pittsburghers. Right? The reason that we are the way that we are is because that's how we grew up. That's who we are. We are tough. We are hard nosed. We like the cold. And the city and the team of the the Steelers themselves, I think, are just such a perfect example of who we are as people. And that's true for everybody. I'm talking about myself as a Pittsburgher, but if you're from Boston, you love Boston. If you're from New York, you love your borough. If you're from any other place, you love the city that you're from because that's who you are. That's who you are. That's where you're born. That's where you're raised. If you're somebody who's kept their homestead there for a while, it's somebody that you can go back to and be like, hey. Listen. This is where I am. That home, that feeling of comfort, whether that be sport, whether that be with community, whether that be with family, whatever that be, that feeling of comfort, I think, is something that is really important for a lot of people. And that's, in essence, why we love sports. That's why we love groups. That's why we like talking to people, and that's why we love doing what we do. That's why I love doing what I do.
[00:43:52] Donald: JC, I'll let that be the last word. I am thankful for your time, appreciative of your knowledge, the passion that you share. Right? I'm very similar when I talk about business or leadership or different things, And it's cool. As I kinda land the plane for us, we talked about that feeling of connection. We talked about that feeling of family feeling. And one of the things that has really stuck with me lately is I think about motivation to do things. We all need something to look forward to. And whether it's that football game, whether it's time off to read a book if you're not into sports, whether that is time to spend with your family or friends, drinking bourbon at a local bar, we all need something to look forward to that is outside of the daily grind of trying to take care of family, trying to pay a mortgage, trying to plan for the future. And I think that connectivity, when brands think about persuasion and marketing, how do you create a brand that always gives you something to look forward to? How do you create that experience? And so, Bob, JC, thank you very much for spending time with us, and this was a great discussion. I could I could talk to you all day, but we gotta wind it at some point for editing purposes, but very, very glad to to have spent time with you both.
[00:45:15] Bob: Thank you so much.
[00:45:16] JC Abdallah: Yeah. Me too. Thanks.
[00:45:23] Donald: Thank you for joining us on High Octane Leadership with Donald Thompson. Today's episode is a step in our collective journey towards leadership excellence. Remember, every story we share and every insight we gain is a piece in the puzzle of our leadership journey. For more insight and detail, hit the subscribe button so that we can stay connected. For deeper information and more episodes, go to donaldthompson.com. Continue to lead with vision and purpose, and until we meet again, embrace your role as a high octane leader in the ever evolving world of business.