Competition = Drive = Goodness
With the recent melodrama on the US Women’s Ski team, I started thinking about competition and drive. It sounds as though everyone expects Vonn and Mancuso to be best friends and sacrifice for one another. Yes, they are teammates, but they are also competitors. They are individually striving for Gold because they know when they go home at night, it’s their medal, not the team’s.
This individual drive needs to bleed into the marketing and PR world. An industry, like a ski team, strives for the greater good, but is also looking out for their own interests. If everyone on the ski team practiced the same techniques and got the same times, no one person would advance, just as competitors in an industry. A little healthy competition can be good for the whole.
For example, Client A and Client M are working in the shoe industry, both striving to make a non-slip tennis shoe. Client A hires a world-famous engineer, and in an effort to keep up, Client M wants the same engineer, the same materials, the same everything. This isn’t going to get either shoe company a breakthrough, just a lot of the same thing in the market place. A company needs to foster a proactive and not reactive mentality by striving to try new things to break that ‘world record’ in the industry. From what I’ve read, Vonn and Mancuso are very different individuals who go about skiing in two very different ways—one learns by the book, while the other has natural skill; one uses commercial endorsements to further her career, while the other relies on excelling her sport; and so on… Yet each lady has medaled this year.
Instead of worrying about competitor initiatives and copycatting, be bold and be proactive. Strive for Gold every time, because someone has to get Silver and you don’t want to be it.
Olympic Games Go Social
As a Canadian, hockey is seemingly a part of my DNA. So imagine my disappointment when I realized one of my classes conflicted with Canada’s opening game against Norway. Devastation. But thanks to Twitter, I was able to follow every goal, assist and major action from my laptop.
These games have been pegged as the “first social media Olympics.” On Twitter, fans can connect directly to Tweeting athletes through a published list of verified Olympic athletes. Sites like Twitter-Athletes and NBC’s Twitter tracker are two other sources of news.
Facebook is not to be left behind. The official Olympic Games fan page has about 1.5 million fans, collecting status updates from Olympians like skier Lindsey Vonn and speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, as well as adding daily photos from Vancouver.
The great thing about these sites is fans now have the ability to connect directly to the athletes, giving everyone the feeling that they have the “inside scoop” about what’s going on in Vancouver. No matter where you are in the world, through social media, fans can feel like they are part of the Olympic Village.
