The San Siro fails to earn its branding Spurs
My son is a passionate Spurs fan, so when Peter Crouch nodded home Spur’s winner against Manchester City in the penultimate premier league game of last season sending them, for the first time in their history into the promised land of the Champions league I thought aha, is he in a for a great 18th birthday treat. The excitement and anticipation was palpable as we awaited the draw. Who would it be in group stages, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich? I relished at the opportunity to arrange a lads and dads away day to one of these giants of European football. As names came out of the hat, it turned out to be the current European Champions themselves, Internazionale FC or to use their more common English name Inter Milan. So a visit to the San Siro, one of the world’s most iconic stadiums was on the cards.
The problem was that every Spurs fan on the planet also had the same idea so tickets were scarce and hotels and flights were scarcer still. Nevertheless after calling in some old favours, scratching a few backs, and plain old begging I managed to organise the trip. My son texted, Face Booked, and told everyone he knew that he was going to the San Siro. The banter was rife, “so where is City playing on Wednesday night? Ashton Gate, ha I’ll be in the San Siro” was the typical boast. And we weren’t the only ones drooling over the prospect; ITV had the television rights to the game so Adrian Chiles was doing his baby-faced best to build-up the pre-game excitement. As the pilgrimage to this cathedral of football drew closer, the expectation increased to biblical proportions.
As we got off the bus outside the stadium the initial impression of the Stadium did not disappoint. It loomed large above us like a modern day coliseum, floodlit and ready for the gladiatorial battle to come…. And then we stepped inside. Well for anyone, that has visited modern day sports arenas the similarity of walking through a reinforced concrete, multi-storey car park will not be a surprise, however many of these stadia have subtly disguised this aspect by adding brightly coloured, paint, cafés, bars, and clean toilets. In fact, compared with the bad old days of the eighties and nineties, modern football stadiums are reasonably pleasant and safe places to be. Unfortunately this does not apply to the San Siro. It was drab, dark, dirty, the toilets were, lets say very basic and there were absolutely no facilities at all, nowhere to buy a drink (of any type), no food and the stewarding was minimal. In short the whole structure was tired, lack-lustre, indeed a dinosaur amongst modern stadia and in need of significant re-investment .
So what’s all this to do with marketing I hear you say. Well, in my eyes the San Siro could be a metaphor for brand complacency and is a lesson for any company that has spent time, effort and money in building their brand. If customers are attracted to your product or service through your brand’s reputation the very least it must do is meet their expectation, but better still it must wow them, and seduce them into being part of your brand building process. You must turn customers into brand advocates, who blog, Twitter and Face Book your reputation around the world. The San Siro failed to do this and although some may argue that it is the football that is the product here not the stadium, you try telling that that to the Inter or AC Milan fans who are undoubtedly passionate about their football heritage or the thousands of fans, from all over the world, who dream of visiting Wembley or Old Trafford, even if it is just for the tour of an empty stadium.
Nevertheless this did not detract from a fantastic visit to Milan, and whilst the result did not go Tottenham’s way, a cracking second half hat trick by Gareth Bale ensured that my son and I had a night that we will always remember.
