A Meaning-Driven Brand
June 5, 2012
One of the apparent conclusions of the MHSAA online “Have Your Say” opinion poll conducted five years ago that continues to guide us today, is that the character of school sports is key to the appeal of school sports. This is true for both sponsoring school personnel and for those participants and spectators regularly involved in school sports. This suggests that to keep our core customers, we must preserve our core characteristics. That whatever changes occur in school styles and structures, we must maintain by our policies and programs the features and values which our core customers have experienced and both want and expect to continue.
It may sometimes feel that we are swimming against the current of public opinion when we enforce rules that define student eligibility or the limits of competition and travel, but the development and implementation of such restrictions might be essential to the expectations of our core constituents for the experience they remember for themselves and want for their children or team.
Just because schools change, it is not necessary that rules of school sports change as well. Sometimes, perhaps. But not always or even often. Leadership must always consider the program without a rule before we do away with the rule.
It is not too strong to state that schools seek MHSAA membership precisely because there are rules. In fact, schools formed the MHSAA to be their vehicle for making and enforcing rules. Just as participation by students is more valuable to them and their schools where standards of eligibility and conduct are higher, so is membership by schools in an organization more valuable where such standards are developed and enforced.
The Culting of Brands is a good book with a bad title in which author Douglas Atkin writes about the success of “a meaning-driven brand.” He says, “The product carries the message and then becomes it.” These kinds of brands, he says, are really beliefs. “They have morals – embody values.” They “stand up for things. They work hard; fight for what is right.”
Ultimately, it is exactly this that is expected of the high school brand of competitive athletics in Michigan.
Mandate Mania
January 13, 2017
In the closing days of the last session of the Michigan Legislature, our public servants introduced many bills that had no chance of passage before the year ended and the bills died. Many of those legislative initiatives were to appease local constituents, and they were merely symbolic gestures.
Introduced during this session-ending period when style points matter more than substance were two bills that caught our attention.
- House Bill No. 6026, introduced on Nov. 9, 2016, would have required public schools to demand at least two hours of instruction concerning sexual assault and sexual harassment prior to every student’s graduation.
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House Bill No. 6052, introduced on Nov. 29, 2016, would have required public high schools to demand at least 40 hours of instruction on “sustainability and environmental literacy.”
These are not bad things, of course; but I’m concerned about the increasing burden on our schools.
Not all opponents of these bills should be cast critically. Regardless of the importance of the issues, there is a practical limit to what public schools can be expected to do – especially after their resources have shrunk and their school year has been shortened.
Personally, I would like all schools, both public and nonpublic, to teach all children a second language in early elementary school. I would like students to be “drown-proofed” before they reach middle school.
But I want not one of those things mandated without first removing an existing mandate under which our schools are being forced to operate at this time. No entity can do a good job at some things if it’s being asked to do everything.
I wish all members of the Michigan Legislature who have a mandate in mind for our state’s schools will pause to look for an existing mandate to sunset before proposing any new requirements.