Patrick Hynes of the American Spectator explains why the president’s feud with the National Football League reminds him of the 2016 campaign.
Roger Goodell is not a man who likes to admit defeat. Just ask Tom Brady. And yet, the intensely stubborn, wildly unpopular commissioner of the NFL might as well have unfurled a giant white flag and personally run it out of the tunnel when he sent a memo to NFL owners on Tuesday.
The subject was the mass kneeling for the National Anthem protest that many NFL players, coaches, and executives have undertaken, and which President Donald Trump has criticized, mocked, and vilified. …
… Trump’s rout of the NFL on this issue is in many ways the mirror image of his 2016 primary performance, when he caught so many opponents flatfooted. Republicans were badly out of touch with their base. Trump knew it and exploited the gap. And now he’s proven the same was true of the leadership of America’s dominant sport, to their great chagrin.
I write these words not to trumpet Trump or to issue any kind of an I-told-you-so. The results are simply stunning. The results are also an important marketing warning that needs to be made to most businesses and other organizations.
Are you still in touch with your audience, or have you perhaps “evolved” and left your audience behind? You might want to give that question some serious thought and not dismiss it too quickly. I mean, if huge brands like the GOP and the NFL can lose touch with their audience and make strategic blunders this large, any business can.
