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Please forgive me, but I’ve been in marketing almost my whole life, so I tend to look at things from a marketer’s perspective. Back when I was selling stuff for a living, I noticed that paradoxically, the more I felt I needed the business, the more successful I was at selling. Maybe the same thing holds true for college basketball recruiting. I’ve read a lot of articles today about what a coup it was for Duke to acquire Amile Jefferson yesterday, but maybe the real story is that unlike Kentucky, Duke REALLY, REALLY needed Jefferson.
Think about it. Duke doesn’t look like it’s going to be particularly strong in the front court and its bench is pretty thin. Jefferson definitely plugs a hole in the latter, and, perhaps if necessary, helps in the former, too. In other words, Duke might have been more motivated by need (read: desperate) than Kentucky or even North Carolina State.
Another aspect of all this that interests me as a marketer: Amile Jefferson did an outstanding job of building public brand equity just by not doing something. Do you think the whole college basketball world would have been waiting with baited breath on the decision of an admittedly talented, but relatively skinny 6’7″ forward if he had made his announcement the first three days of the signing season? In this case, playing “hard to get” made Amile Jefferson a household name, at least in sports. That’s smart marketing. So maybe if the basketball thing doesn’t work out, he can get a job with Procter and Gamble after college. I guarantee that unless his college career is more impressive than I expect, it will be the last time that Amile Jefferson will be on the front page of the paper in Philadelphia for not deciding something.
What do you think?
