There was an article in the New York Times on Saturday that
gave me a few interesting thoughts. The
article talked about fans of the Memphis Grizzlies who create team t-shirts and
caps and other swag for sale outside the stadium that display quotes from the
players or slogans from the team.
One of the first things that jumped out at me is the
intellectual property issue. With so
many people rushing out to trademark every pithy phrase they might say (Taylor
Swift doing this to the most extreme), it makes me wonder what the team and the
players think about this and what they will do about it. The reason Taylor Swift trademarked all of
her song quotes is so that she has the sole right to sell things like t-shirts
and caps with those phrases on them.
This is the “hard ass” strategy perfected by the music industry back in
the days of Napster.
But there is also the Seth Godin model where you give
everything away for free, establish yourself as a leader by the sheer volume of
sharing (which only happens if the content is good), and make money on the back
end.
The NYT article focuses more on the personal stories, but
they seem to imply that the Grizzlies have a silent agreement to let the fans
have their fun, even at the expense of their own licensed t-shirt and cap
vendors and their own profit from sales of licensed products. They are benefiting from the increase in fan
engagement, so it may not be 100% altruistic.
But it is not the usual first reaction, so I respect them for that.
A second thought I had was the huge increase in volume of
potential quotes to use because players are such active tweeters. Every tweet is a potential t-shirt. Just the right size, and easy to market by
copying the player’s own hashtag. One
story from the article is Tony Alley making a great defensive play and shouting
out “1st Team All Defense” and then of course following that up with
a tweet. The next game, there was a
vendor who already was selling unlicensed t-shirts with #1stTeamAllDefense
prominently displayed. Tony Alley is
also the source of “Grit, Grind” and “I don’t bluff” quotes that have made
their way on to t-shirts.
So put these two together and we get to my third thought. What does Tony Allen think of private vendors
taking his words and making money on them?
He could easily hire a merchandising company to scan his quotes,
trademark the good lines, and make their own swag. He is leaving a lot of money on the table based
on the sales volumes that are implied by the Times article. Has he not thought about this? Did he miss the business school course that
Taylor Swift is drawing from?
