Optimism, resilience, and teamwork learn like search phrases for an inspirational sports activities film, however strive surviving a profession in advertising with out them.
Opening the ultimate and, by far, sportiest day of ADWEEK’s Brandweek occasion in Phoenix, Ariz., on Thursday, Minnesota Vikings evp and CMO Martin Nance used his profession as a large receiver within the Nationwide Soccer League to tout the pillars of “the athlete mindset” as they apply to the advertising trade. Having beforehand labored as a marketer with PepsiCo’s Gatorade, he additionally used Megan Rapinoe, Mike Singletary, Michael Jordan, Simone Biles, and others to point out how that mindset helps followers and customers make investments themselves in manufacturers and groups.
“We at all times discuss this concept of combating apathy … this notion that your staff performs on a Sunday, and also you form of simply shrug your shoulders. You’re probably not within the outcome, win or lose,” Nance stated. “We need to ensure that if we win, you’re celebrating, you’re high-fiving together with your family and friends. And if we lose, you’re feeling it. You are feeling invested. You are feeling a bit disillusioned.”
Nance’s years of highschool soccer in Maryland Heights, Missouri, led to him enjoying vast receiver with future Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger at Miami College in Ohio in the course of the mid-2000s. Initially drafted by the Buffalo Payments in 2006, Nance frolicked with the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers—incomes a Tremendous Bowl ring with the latter in 2009.
After soccer, Nance acquired his grasp’s from the Ross Faculty of Enterprise on the College of Michigan and a certificates in govt training from Harvard. He labored for the NFL in 2011 after which moved to Gatorade as its senior director of promoting and sports activities intelligence. In 2021, Nance was employed by the Vikings as chief advertising officer.
All through that journey, he stated, he discovered methods to make the parts of the athletic mentality that served him so effectively throughout his enjoying days have an effect for entrepreneurs. As an example:
Teamwork
Even athletes in particular person sports activities thank the individuals round them—coaches, trainers, brokers—once they win. Multifaceted advertising groups even have totally different particular person specialists and capabilities, however want one another to succeed.
“In sports activities, in enterprise, in model advertising, you may’t win alone,” Nance stated. “The best groups, whether or not on the sector or in model advertising, they’re constructed on belief.”
