Melissa Vazquez
Journal #2/ Article #2
“Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather than to pick a strategy that is more efficient,” said Palmer. “The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.” – Michael Lewis, Money ball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. That was the quote that came to my mind when and while I was reading this article. But before reading this article, I had no idea how marketing can just like baseball in many ways. Let alone, did I think or believe that you can use the “Moneyball,” method within marketing. But just like baseball, I think you can use that method because at the end you are trying save tons of money while trying to market your product the best out in the field.
In order to have your marketing team use a “Moneyball” method you need to able to trust your team, trust your gut and trust your data. I personally believe now after reading the article and seeing the movie marketing and baseball are so likely in many ways. In baseball and marketing, you got to be able to trust your team with the decisions that you guys make. As well as that in both you have to be able to trust your gut with either what player you decide to sign or what you want to market. As well as in both you have to trust your data that you have on either players or what the market tells you about the products that are being marketed out there.
In Moneyball, Beane was success in what he did because he trusted his team. He put the right people on his staff and allowed each one of them to develop themselves within the organization that ends up helping him out in the long run. Just in marketing, the most successful marketers are teaming up with IT counterparts. So what these successful markets need to do is be able to trust their team which means that have to trust these IT counterparts on their team. They have trust them enough where they can grow within your team because they can be able to help you succeed and save you some money at the same time.
In Moneyball, Beane quickly became an outsider within the baseball world, which could have ended his career but he trusted his guy and stuck by his decision without even looking back. So I believe that in marketing the same thing needs to be done. If markets were to do the same thing today they just learn more about the data that is out there. If they were to step outside the box the same way Beane did they would learn about all the rules that govern the marketing data. In which, they would be able to apply they learn into the way they do their marketing just the same way Beane applied what he learned to his baseball team. With baseball, people tend to trust the numbers that are in front of them and they never question them what so ever. They don’t question if that player is going to be good just those numbers tells you how good he is. They don’t question if by the time he goes to your team if he is going to be hitting at the same number he was hitting before. So what was done within the movie Moneyball was that they were not afraid to question the assumptions or they broke down all the unnecessary barriers that lead their team to success. That is exactly what needs to be done with marketing. They have to be able to question the assumptions. They have to be to trust their data and even question it, as in a way if they do something different what way is their data going to go.
Overall, after reading this article and reading another article that tied this together for me, I realized that marketing should take a money ball method into the way they do things. Marketer would be able to use this method they will not only save tons of money but they would have different methods than others that might be marketing the same thing as them. They would be able to see the bigger picture much better if they were just to take the same chance that Billy Beane took with the Oakland A’s. It might only one marketing team to do this that will have every other marketing team want to try their way as well.