Authenticity is key to any market segment, global sports included. Online sports management education tells us, if you’re going to market towards a particular group of individuals, if you’re going to segment a given group, then you have to ensure that you’re doing it authentically. If you are coming at it from a marketing perspective and you’re throwing out a message that you think only they will understand from your own perspective, not only are you going to be in danger of not properly communicating with this segment, but you could be in danger of perhaps offending this group.
A famous example or a series of examples used within sports management education, speaks of an incident perhaps about 10 or 15 years ago, where they had the whole concept of “shrink it and pink it.” This was a group of male marketers who just assumed that female consumers would like anything small and pink. Without interacting with this segment, they just made it smaller and they made it pink, assuming that female sports fans would like any given product that was small and pink. As we know, that’s not the truth.
All female consumers are definitely not all the same and they’re not all going to prefer anything that is small and/or pink. Not only are you not properly communicating with this given segment, but, in fact, you could be in danger of offending them. A lot of females were up in arms over these “shrink it and pink it campaigns.” It was the idea that, “They don’t get me, and this is in fact the opposite of what I like. If you’ve shown, on a continual basis, to not understand my preferences, then why would I want to continually consume with you in the future if it’s been clearly understood that you don’t understand me.”
