Transcript

Bennie F. Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this special live episode of AMA Marketing And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennnie F Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, diving into conversations with individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected.

We hope to introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know. Through our thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. This afternoon, I’d like to welcome our very special first guest, Jen Martindale, the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the one in only Chicago Cubs.

Jen has spent a career working with global brands, innovative nonprofits, and founder led companies. Her marketing, communications, and strategy expertise includes consumer brands, arts, entertainment, professional sports, and multi-unit retail and restaurant chains. Jen, welcome to the podcast. It’s so special that you’re able to take the time today and join us. You’re right at the heart of the season. How does it feel every spring to start a new?

Jen Martindale 

Thanks for having me, Bennie.

Yeah, well, we are a few weeks into the regular season and thankfully the Cubs are off to a strong start. So feels good right now. But the season is long and I think that’s one of the beautiful things about baseball is every day is a new day and a new game and an opportunity to have fresh hope. And so I’ve learned a lot working in baseball for that reason. It’s just approaching every new day as an opportunity.

Bennie

Well, I think that’s a great metaphor and think of marketing and the work that we do. Now you’re in a place where you’re working with multiple story brands at the same time. So you have the club itself, which is a storied brand, but you also have your stadium, which is a brand in and of itself. How do you navigate this kind of history and the future in that space?

Jen

You’re right. The Cubs are going to celebrate our 150th franchise anniversary next year. Wow. So we are truly a heritage brand and Wrigley Field, our home, is now 111 years old and so it is two historic brands and a big topic of conversation is that healthy tension between revering the past and moving into the future. And when it comes to Wrigley Field in particular, we like to say that, you know, field is not old. It’s timeless. And I think we think of ourselves a lot like Disney World in that way, where when you visit Disney World, there’s certain touchstones that are always there, right? So there’s always going to be the it’s a small world ride. There’s always going to be Cinderella’s castle. But they are finding ways to contemporize the experience of being at Disney World so that it’s perhaps more frictionless or more exciting. There’s always something new to check out. And that’s how we think about the Home of the Cubs is there’s certain touchstones that will never change the marquee, the manual scoreboard, the beautiful ivy wall, but our goal is to make the experience feel fresh every time you’re there.

Bennie 

So when you think about that, how do you approach the ambition of creating a new touchdown? So you have this portfolio of touchdown experiences, right? But as a marketer, you’re always thinking of what’s next and what can we create. So how do you approach that?

Jen

Yeah, well, I mean, to that end, like we don’t change for changes sake. You know, we’re always dealing with a lot of intention and it’s got to be because it adds what I like to say is nutritional value to the fan experience or it eliminates a pain point. If it doesn’t do one of those two things, it’s probably not a good fit for the Cubs or for Wrigley Field. I think every sports team is grappling with the same thing right now, which is the fracturing of the media landscape and figuring out how to navigate that, how to reach the right people because it’s no longer as easy as the 1980s when Cubs games were broadcast every afternoon on Superstation WGN across the country. And so finding ways to create a new front door for the brand where one doesn’t exist anymore has been a huge challenge but a big opportunity.

Bennie

Now coming to the Cubs, this wasn’t your first kind of sports marketing experience. So talk a bit about your time in New Orleans.

Jen 

So I came to sports a little later in my career. I’d say in the back nine of my career versus a lot of people, I think, in the industry came up wanting to work in professional sports. You know how Tupac used to say the thug life found me. Sports found me. I did not find the sports. And so coming into it later in my career, you know, it was a delightful surprise to find one of the things we search for as marketers is to create an emotional connection between the products we’re selling in our audience. And I’ve marketed a lot of things. It doesn’t matter if it’s toothpaste or dog food or cars. You’re trying to find that thing that transcends the rational to build that loyalty. What I learned in New Orleans is that emotion is baked into the cake of sports, right? And so our fans are so passionate and they care so much, sometimes too much. Sometimes I wish to…

Bennie 

Can you care too much?

Jen

Sometimes they can care a little too much. But that’s the beauty is that our fans always tell us what they think. In New Orleans, people are very vocal about what they think. And so learning how to bring a community together for a shared experience, but also recognize there’s highs and lows to that experience that roller coaster ride is really important. So I loved working for the New Orleans Saints and the Pelicans. They’re two very different brands with one wonderful owner. And I think it was really baptism by fire of working with the NFL and the NBA at the same time. And I think I’m one of maybe a handful of people who’ve ever led marketing for an NBA franchise and NFL franchise at the same time. And I wouldn’t recommend it for people with high blood pressure.

Bennie

Right. So now you’ve hit all three of the major sports.

Jen

I have I just gotta I gotta get a hockey feather in my cap at some point I or soccer I like to play I don’t know I’ve gotten a little glimpse into the pickleball world lately and it’s more competitive than I realized so what the Michael Jordan of pickleball is on the Chicago team by the way

Bennie

Or pickleball or or yeah not pickleball. So. App comparison there, guess, right? So, but I’m interested in this comparison. So when you’ve worked at, you know, sports teams, they’re all under this federated model. And that we talk about a lot of times where there is a kind of larger brand that you’re a part of, but you’re affiliated with in this space. So your work is still in concert with the work of your competitor slash your other colleagues. Right. So how have you been able to navigate that, you know, kind of having these kind of core focuses for your brand for the Cubs, but you still have to deal with the other team across town and with my Nats in DC. So when you’re thinking about marketing and branding, how does that come into play?

Jen 

Yeah, I mean a few things come into play. One is I would say in Major League Baseball, think most of the teams work pretty collaboratively together on the business side of things. I’m sure on the baseball operations side of things, they’re a little bit more, you know, firewalled in terms of how they communicate. But I think we very much have an all boats rise mentality. And the more successful baseball is and the more people are interested in the base in baseball, the better for all of us. Right. So I think we start with that shared understanding of our goal is to get as many people interested in the sport of baseball as possible. Once we click below that, I think that there’s such nuances to each market and baseball’s a pretty local sport. If you think about the NFL model, although every major market has a team due to the nature of the media rights, it’s really a national sport at the end of the day. And you can be a Commanders fan sitting in California and through NFL Sunday ticket, you’re still able to watch your Commanders. But baseball’s really probably of the big leagues, the most localized one that’s left. And so I think that enables more collaboration between the teams because I’m not worried about my friend Kim, who’s the CMO of the Nationals, stealing my fan from me. It’s so rooted in geography that at the end of the day, we feel like we can have that sort of exchange of ideas with each other. 

Bennie

It’s a space for best and emerging practices as well. Absolutely. To share in that. Absolutely. So when you think of kind of volume, so you’ve had a chance to work in marketing for an NFL, which you’re talking about eight to 10 games a year, to then the journey that is baseball. You know, what pressures does that put on you as a marketer for your teams to kind of have to show up that many times?

Jen

Yeah, it’s very different. I mean, in the NFL, every game counts, right? Because there’s less than 20 regular season games a year. And so internally, it’s, you know, a little bit less of a grind to get through the season. And then externally, it’s easier to keep the fans engaged because there’s more meaning, I guess, to every game. And in baseball, you know, as I alluded to, there’s games almost every day for three seasons. People say baseball is a summer sport. Yeah, we’re a three season sport. We start in the spring. It might be snowing. Hopefully, we end deep in the fall, it might be cold again. It’s a three season sport and I have a ballpark that seats 40,000 people and we need to fill it 80 times a year, right? And so there’s a lot more pressure on us to be thinking about that very real foot traffic in baseball than there was in NFL purely by volume of the amount of games that we have each season.

Bennie

So I want to talk a bit about your roots. So we talked about coming to sports later on in your career, but you started off with a storied Chicago agency. You started off working with Leo Burnett. Talk a bit about that part of your career and then kind of what led to this transition.

Jen 

Yeah, so I did have the pleasure of spending over a decade at Leo Burnett here in Chicago. I like to say I grew up at Leo Burnett. Working at Leo Burnett was really like getting my real world MBA and in transparency, I do not have my MBA. But I got to be in the room with so many storied brands that passed through that agency. And I also got to work with some really incredible strategic and creative minds while I was there. So I really feel like it was the groundwork for everything I did.

I realized it was time to leave the agency world when I didn’t want my boss’s job. And maybe some people in the room have had that feeling before, but when you’re looking to make your next step and you look at your boss, who you love and adore and is really good at what they do, and you think, I don’t want to…don’t want to do that.

That was my sign that it was time for me to figure out my next move. And I actually, when I left Burnett, I ended up spending several years in the nonprofit sector. I made a total change from working with Fortune 500 companies at Leo Burnett to running marketing for two different museums, one here in Chicago. And then I went out to the Bay Area and worked at a museum in San Francisco. So I took a total departure from the for-profit agency world, went nonprofit. And I really think a lot of what I learned on the nonprofit side set me up for success on the sports world.

Bennie

I was going to ask you, what did you take with you from your agency bag to a non-profit experience to now a community-based sports experience?

Jen

Yeah, and I think community is exactly the right word is when I was working in the arts I really learned that you are trying to bring a community together for a shared experience or shared feeling and that’s not very different from what we’re doing in sports now. So I did that and I loved it and then I went to work for a private equity based restaurant brand that was going through a period of rapid expansion which was another new tool to put in my toolkit and I learned all about the important things about you know, what is your go-to-market strategy?

When you enter a new city, how do you think about audience development in a highly competitive sector like multi-unit restaurants? You know, thinking about the basics of the four P’s we all learned about back in school, foot traffic, EBITDA, things that I never had to worry about until I worked in the restaurant sector. So I have a unique toolbox that I brought with me to sports. You know, I think it’s cool to have a nonlinear career now. I used to be really anxious about it when I was younger and I had friends that were like very focused and knew exactly what they wanted to do and we’re going to orient themselves towards it. And I think it’s my superpower now that I’ve worked in a lot of different sectors and tried a lot of different.

Bennie

So true, because you’re bringing all that to bear. When you’re in sports, you’re doing hospitality, you’re doing brands, you’re having agency, plus entertainment and excitement with it. I’m going to ask this question a bit. We talked about your roles and the teams you’ve worked with, but now that you’re in sports, you have kind of an additional team. If you think about communities and fans, talk a bit about creators of roles in your work today. What you see in terms of the fan base helping to drive your brand and your content.

Jen 

Yeah, I mean, we all know we don’t control our brands anymore. They belong to they belong to our customers. They belong to our fans. I mean, we have about 150 million self-identified Cubs fans. And as I said, they a lot of them care very much about the team. And so they are often the greatest source of our inspiration and the greatest source of our content. We know almost weekly now I have a social listening report that shows up in my inbox that lets me know how the vibes are, guys. I have to get a vibe check report and understand how the fans are feeling, what am I walking into the next day in terms of are they happy, are they sad, are they nervous, are they excited, and how are we going to use those learnings as a springboard for what we’re going to do. But they tell our story just as well, if not better than we do. And so I think the incorporation of user generated content continues to be a big win for us every time that we do it and using real stories of people too. You know, when you have such a wonderful 150 year old, 150 history, like we’re able to get stories out of people of, you know, my grandfather used to bring me here when I was five years old and we watched so and so play or I’m going to bring my daughter here because I want her to grow up a baseball fan. And so stories that are rooted in the truth of our fans are always the best, but we always love sharing their content.

Bennie

And it’s amazing, and you have deeply committed fans everywhere. Everywhere. As we talk about, I live in DC, and full disclosure, I’ll out one of my friends who is a super Cubs fan. you may have already met him, but we’ll make sure you get a chance to Manu Raju, who’s reporter on CNN. Manu absolutely lives and breathes a Chicago Cubs.

Jen

Okay, we gotta talk so we can, I can send a little something to Manu.

Bennie

He has his twins completely laced in Cubs gear. I love that. In the heart of nationals territory. Yeah. So we give him credit for that.

Jen 

I mean, I got to tell you, like, I meet Cubs fans everywhere. Nothing makes me happier than I’m walking down a street in a random city and I see a W flag flying. So for those that don’t know, the W flag is our victory sign. And it was born from, you know, many, many years ago before radio or television. People wanted to know if the Cubs had won the game and we would hang a flag with a big W on it outside of the ballpark. And people going by on the L train would see the flag and go home and tell their families that the Cubs had won that day.

So I love seeing Cubs flags around the city and also globally. We just got back from Japan last month where we opened the MLB season versus the Dodgers and we have millions of fans in Tokyo.

Bennie

Yeah, you know, baseball culture in Tokyo and Japan is amazing and to have that connection to start off to really have Major League Baseball double down on that was incredible. So when you think about your marketing team and your career, what’s your W flag? What are you hanging out that you’re most proud of and signals to everyone that you and your team are winning?

Jen 

Well, I mean, there’s I won’t say the things that we know are obvious and I’m looking at my team right now, which is we’re always looking at ticket sales. We’re always looking at attendance. We’re always looking at, you know, how people are vibing with the team. But I would say a great example of us having a win was we just launched our first new uniform in three years. And for the Chicago Cubs, that’s a big deal because it’s a heritage brand. Right. We’re more like the Yankees. We don’t roll out new uniforms every year like you might see in the NBA or with some of the other teams.

Bennie

Can you ever win with that? I’m just wondering, just ask me for a friend.

Jen

No, you can’t. I’ve ruled out lot of uniforms in my time so far, you just gotta let it wash over you. Everyone’s an exit.

Bennie

There’s not that much legacy in the Pelicans uniform, right?

Jen

No, Cubs fans though they care a lot and they tell us what they think and I will say we scored a W. I think we have like a 90 % positive sentiment score on the new uniform, which for the Cubs is a big W. And we worked cross-functionally to just create a wonderful experience to introduce our fans to the uniform, which is inspired by Chicago blues music, which is a really unique touchstone for our community. So everything from holding the launch event to Kingston Mines, which is one of our more revered blues clubs.

We just opened a record shop at Wrigley Field that’s got a curated selection of blues records to elevate and celebrate that community. We have live blues music at the ballpark. I think it’s a W recently that we’re really proud of.

Bennie

That’s incredible. the only question for that is, so when are we going?

Jen 

Well, we can go tonight. We have a game in about 90 minutes if you want to come with me.

Bennie 

Excellent, you have to let me know when there’s the Nats crossover. So, you know a lot of our listeners are students in marketing, either undergrad or grad students are coming in, and it won’t surprise you, one of the top areas that people are interested in is sports and entertainment marketing. What advice would you have for someone starting off today and looking for a career in sports and entertainment?

Jen 

That’s a great question. And I talk a lot of students myself or early career professionals. And I think things that these students need to keep in mind is because working in sports is so desirable and there’s only so many teams, right? There’s a finite number of franchises. I would say one, don’t be afraid to take a position in a sports adjacent field. Right. So that might be a minor league team. That might be a sportswear brand. That might be, you know, a food and beverage company that works in the sports space, like just to get more additional exposure. And secondly, I would say most of the leaders I’ve worked with in sports didn’t start in sports. What they did was they proved themselves and made their mark in their respective fields, whether that’s marketing, accounting, know, business strategy, do really well in your chosen discipline, and then you will be attractive to sports. Don’t feel like you have to start in the sports industry to eventually get there.

Bennie 

So when you think about the partners you’ve had, what surprises you the most? We talked about having to have this adjacent experience, but what have been the brands you’ve been able to work with that weren’t the expected? We know we’re going to have certain soft drink companies, and we’re going to have certain food brands in there, but who are some of the marketing partner opportunities that have really kind of surprised you?

Jen 

Well, I would say I’m really lucky that I have a wonderful set of colleagues in our corporate partnerships department that we work collaboratively with, but that is really why they’re here and they’re here to identify what those next big exciting partnerships should look like. And I think our goal is to always find teams or partners that one, hopefully they love the team and are invested in our success. But secondly, these are teams that probably share our values as an organization. These are teams that want to innovate and try new things together that’s really important to us. And that these are organizations that care about Chicago. And I think as long as we meet those criteria, it’s gonna be a really fruitful partnership.

Bennie 

It’s gonna be one that helps to elevate the brand and keep the space going. So we’re not gonna hold you up because you have to get to a game tonight. But we’re definitely gonna talk more about marketing and community and fans. So if you had one last piece of marketing advice for our audience of marketing fans, what would it be?

Jen 

I think something I’ve learned in the last five years or so of working in professional sports is that there’s so many lessons that other brands can take from sports teams. And I talk a lot about this idea of creating brand fandom, which I think is really possible. And some things I always ask marketers to think about through the lens of sports is think about your heroes and villains, right? In the case of the Cubs, like our Hall of Famers and legendary players obviously are heroes, but our the Cardinals in St. Louis down the road. Much love to our friends from St. Louis, but they’re kind of the villains in our story. And so as a brand, I always encourage people to think about what is your brand for, but almost more importantly, what is your brand against? What is the antithesis of your brand? And another thing I ask people to think about is the legends and lore behind your brand. I don’t think people unpack that enough sometimes. So in our case, the most famous legend is probably the Billy Goat curse. The reason we didn’t win the World Series for over 100 years is because we didn’t allow the gentleman to bring his billy goat into Wrigley Field. And that’s part of the legend that makes our team lovable. So think about whether it’s your founding story, whether it’s about a specific experience that your customers have had with you. Like, what are the legends and lore that you can tap into? And then the final one I think about is moments of magic. Like, we just had a magical moment at Wrigley Field last night where we won a walk-off game and extra innings. And those things can happen all the time in sports. But little moments of magic exists all the time for every brand if you look for them. So look for those moments of magic.

Bennie

I think that’s a great way to end. Looking for moments of magic in your brand, in your fan and community, and leaning into marketing. Thank you so much, my friend. And thank you all for joining us for this episode of AMAs Marketing / And.

Jen 

Thanks for having me.