You can’t create experience, you must undergo it

David Beckham, the football superstar, recently visited the Philippines to give cheer and deliver services to survivors of super typhoon Yolanda in the city of Tacloban. While many of our countrymen are unfamiliar with him, hundreds of survivors rushed out of their tent shelters to give a warm welcome to the global celebrity, who is on his second visit to the Philippines in his role as goodwill ambassador for the UN Children’s Fund.

Beckham, without a doubt, is a global icon. He has moved from ordinary footballer to being one of the most famous sportsmen in the world as well as a ubiquitous celebrity brand. Married to Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, David has been associated with a variety of top brands throughout his career, and in recent years, he’s turned his attention to fashion, fragrances, book publishing and recording.

In the book Brand It Like Beckham, author Andy Milligan provides fresh insights into modern brand building. He shares judgments that swerve between extreme admiration and unwarranted derision of a sportsman who is completely likeable as a human being and passionate in just about everything he gets involved in. His sharp perceptions on how the celebrity industry works and how to make his reach bigger is brilliant in today’s criteria of good brand PR. Here are noteworthy takeaways from this little branding reference:

• Focusing on what you’re good at is the first order of branding.  Beckham is a great brand because in the first place he is a great product: something that is different, dedicated and constantly striving to improve. Brands are like footballers in this respect: play off your past and you will soon be out of the team. What makes Beckham such a hot property is that he is more than just a superb footballer. He can cause a phenomenon simply by getting a new hairstyle. As reported, after he shaved his head, thousands of young men, from Manchester to Tokyo, trooped to their hairdressers to be scalped. He has promoted Coca-Cola, Adidas and Vodafone, among many other big brands.

• Managing a brand like Beckham is an organized process covering an array of factors. Being a celebrity, he is no longer just an endorser of other people’s products, he is a brand in his own right, and as such has learned and continues to learn how to manage his own brand persona. He works hard at his image and has been “good value” for many of his endorsed products. It is his most powerful role --- and the way to expand his brand after he hangs up his soccer boots. “Products rust, buildings age, people die, but brands endure,” says Sir Hector Laing of United Biscuits.

• Brands are built on core values that people admire and are communicated through a personality that people like. Beckham as a celebrity brand is molded the same way. He is clear about his purpose and values, and acts accordingly. Milligan says, “The Beckham brand was built on three pillars: football, fashion and ambassadorial roles. And he always talks about giving something back.” Charity work is part of the development of that side of the Beckham brand, which is why he’s often regarded as quite down-to-earth — even though he lives a multi-millionaire lifestyle — and hasn’t forgotten his roots. This makes him so successful with so many different audiences around the world. “A brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos states.

• Beckham manages his identity with the same meticulous attention to detail and awareness of his impact as a typical brand. Every look, every syllable of his name, every stitch of his clothes and every follicle of his hair is part of his brand identity and needs to be treated with care. Trend-spotters mark him out as a “metrosexual” — a heterosexual urban man who enjoys fashion and grooming products, and even activities such as parenting, that are traditionally associated more with women.

• The best brands set out to do what they say. So it is with Beckham as a brand. He makes sure he has a clear goal, stays true to himself and makes sure he gets the maximum amount of credit for what he has done. Milligan declares, “He and his wife are very shrewd people but the shrewdest thing they do is take really good advice, and the best people take really good advice.”  In that sense Beckham behaves in exactly the way a corporate brand wishes it could behave.

• Commercializing the Beckham brand requires critical thinking.  It covers not only how much he can earn right now, but also how any deal is going to help him achieve his brand goals and sustain his revenues in the long term. He has shown by the way he has allowed the commercial exploitation of his brand to develop that he understands all the keys to great branding. He demonstrates marketing savvy that enables him instinctively to make or accept decisions that generate cash and build image.

• Beckham is known by the company he keeps. Managing relationships with clubs, other celebrities and even national teams is all part of Beckham’s brand building. He has to choose his partners with care, and manage them with even more care.  He has consistently made astute choices for his co-brands and they have been well managed, achieving not just maximum revenue, also but optimum image transfer — the most important benefit that co-branding can bring.

• Protecting the Beckham brand is not about firing off letters from layers. Truth be told, it is a complex proactive process. As the owner of the legal rights to his own brand, he understands the language of brand protection every bit as well as a traditional brand owner, and is every bit as aggressive in defending his brand. “As a celebrity brand all you have is your reputation, your brand; you do not have anything else. You have to understand and protect that intellectual property, because if you don’t, everyone will take advantage of it,” Nic Couchman, sports and image rights lawyer, declares.

• Having a strong brand gives Beckham options to develop in the future. But to achieve this, he needs to think quickly, plan carefully and move as swiftly as he can while he still has the advantage of a lot of goodwill. Just like other celebrity brands, he can’t live on his reputation for very long. The tome The Future Brands pronounces, “If you don’t plan the future you want, you get the one that turns up.”

Is there nothing tattooed Beckham can’t do? He has morphed over the years, from his ever-changing hairstyles to his confidence on the pitch. Watch out what’s next from this 37-year-old sports idol and issue advocate.  A brand is a promise and an experience. And as Albert Camus eloquently quips, “You cannot create experience; you must undergo it.”

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