Cricket South Africa's Protea Fire Brand
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The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Sport Management College of Arts and Sciences 2017 Cricket South Africa’s Protea Fire brand Luisa Mazinter Michael M. Goldman University of San Francisco, [email protected] Jennifer Lindsey-Renton Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.usfca.edu/sm Part of the Sports Management Commons Recommended Citation Luisa Mazinter, Michael M. Goldman, Jennifer Lindsey-Renton, (2017) "Cricket South Africa’s Protea Fire brand", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 7 Issue: 1, pp.1-20, https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-05-2016-0081 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sport Management by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CRICKET SOUTH AFRICA’S PROTEA FIRE BRAND It was 24 March 2015 and Marc Jury, the Head of Commercial and Marketing of Cricket South Africa (CSA), and his project team behind the #ProteaFire brand campaign could hardly bear to watch as the Cricket World Cup semi-final match between the South African Proteas1 and the New Zealand Black Caps advanced to the last over2. Having never reached the final of a Cricket World Cup before, despite being rated the team to beat several times, the Proteas looked like they were in the driving seat having set a tough target of 298 runs for the New Zealand team to chase. Yet some impressive batting by the Black Caps and missed chances by the South Africans meant that the New Zealand team went into the final over needing an attainable 12 runs. The tension in the boardroom at CSA heightened further when the Proteas’ number one bowler, Dale Steyn, began limping from what appeared to be a calf strain two balls into the over. With just four balls left of the rain-shortened match, New Zealand needed ten runs to win. As Steyn ran in to bowl, the New Zealand batsman, Daniel Vettori, stretched for the ball and sent it to the boundary for four runs, leaving his team with just six runs to get. The next ball saw Vettori miss, yet he sprinted down the pitch for an additional run, leaving the home team with five runs off two balls to win and the New Zealand batsman, Grant Elliott, on strike. As Steyn ran in to bowl the penultimate ball, the entire South Africa held its breath. Jury, who had a deep love for the game of cricket and a strong reputation and track record in the sports business industry, was anxious about the game, as well as the broader #ProteaFire brand campaign. He wondered how the performance of the Proteas on the field would translate into results for the brand off the field. Had his management team built enough momentum behind #ProteaFire? Were their plans adaptive and resilient enough to overcome possible on-field disappointments? He leaned in to the cricket broadcast, hoping Steyn would take South Africa to its first Cricket World Cup final. Cricket in South Africa Cricket was a game played in 103 countries using a bat and ball on an oval field, with two teams of eleven players each. By 2011 it was believed to be the world’s second most popular sport3, after football/soccer, and was expected to generate $2.5 billion for the governing International Cricket Council in the eight years from 2016. There were three different formats of cricket (Twenty20, one-day and Test4), so depending on the format played a game could last anywhere from three hours to five days. Although the rules and the way the game was played were quite different from baseball, the essential concept of cricket was similar: each team scored runs in successive innings, with the opposing team bowling and fielding. The winning team was the one with the most number of runs after an equal number of innings5. Although the game of cricket grew in South Africa after its introduction to the country in 1808, the Apartheid policies of the government led to South African cricketers being isolated from the rest of the world from 1970 to 1991. Given the negative connotations from the Apartheid era, the national cricket team’s name was changed from the Springboks to the Proteas in the same year6, although a similar renaming was decided against for the national rugby team. 1 The Proteas are the South African national cricket team, named after the national flower of South Africa. 2 An over constitutes the bowling of six balls. There are 50-overs per innings in a one-day World Cup game. 3 Ridgers, B. (2011). And the silver goes to…, The Economist. Available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2011/09/ranking- sports’-popularity [Accessed 11 April 2015] 4 Test cricket can last up to 5 days, one-day games have 50 over each, and Twenty20 games have 20 innings each 5 “An Explanation of Cricket - Basics,” Purdue, 2009, https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/hosking/cricket/explanation.htm#basics, accessed April 10, 2015 6 Matloff, J. (1995). What’s in a Name? A New S. Africa Alters Its Symbols. The Christian Science Monitor, Available at: http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0109/09051.html [Accessed August 7, 2015] The Protea Fire idea In 2010 the South African cricket team were seen to be a talented outfit that was yet to fulfill its potential to be the number one ranked side in the world. The team captain, Graeme Smith, along with some of his senior teammates and team management, were concerned that the Proteas, while successful, were not playing as a cohesive unit. Smith attributed this in part to the fact that the team name had been assigned to them and that no team culture had been handed down through the generations, thanks to the legacy of Apartheid. It was during a conversation held between Smith and the then team psychologist, Jeremy Snape, that the idea for Protea Fire was born. According to Smith “it was time for us to turn our diversity into a strength and to create our own unique identity using the Protea as our unifying symbol”7. Smith and Snape began researching the Protea flower, discovering that the origin of the name came from the Greek God, Proteus, who could see into the future and could only tell the truth. They also learnt that the flower is extremely resilient, needs fire to regenerate itself, and is very adaptable. These four attributes – truth, resilience, fire and adaptability – were to become the core of the team’s values, to which ‘fast’ and ‘Ubuntu’8 were added9. Smith and Snape decided to take the team for a three-day strategic getaway, during which time they shared their findings and led exercises which underscored the values and ethos of what the Protea Fire concept meant.10 Marc Jury recalled the idea from Smith: “The team really got behind the idea of these core values; there was a discernable shift from the guys playing for a salary cheque and their own individual performances to something more meaningful, which was playing for their country and their fans. The idea of Protea Fire is one that has grown into a legacy; it’s become a way of life for the players. When you get picked for the Proteas you don’t get a sheet of paper listing the values, it’s instilled in you through a way of life, the environment, how the guys operate, and the respect they have for each other.”11 Igniting Protea Fire Initially the Protea Fire concept was held closely within the team, who used it to foster a strong sense of team spirit and camaraderie.12 The impact it had on the racially and culturally diverse squad was evident in their successes over the years, with the team becoming only the second in history to simultaneously become number one in all three formats of the game in August 2012.13 In 2013 Jury heard about Protea Fire for the first time. Although the Proteas team were often ranked as one of the best in the world, they had suffered disappointing knockout round losses in previous World Cup tournaments, and had attracted the unwanted tag of cricket’s serial “chokers”14 (see Exhibit 1). Jury had joined CSA in late 2012 after working with SAIL, a sport, sponsorship and entertainment firm that was the existing exclusive commercial agent for CSA. He also had a strong market research background and had the reputation of going to every meeting prepared with facts and figures. Jury approached the team management to ask them if they would present the Protea Fire concept to the Exco, and it was at a 7 CSA. (2014, 9 November). How did ProteaFire start? Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yShcIfg69NE [Accessed 10 April 2015] 8 Ubuntu is an African concept which translates into ‘human-ness’ or ‘humanity toward others’. 9 Ibid. 10 Interview with Marc Jury, 31 March 2015 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 McGlashan, A. (2012, August 28). Amla ton leads SA to third No. 1 spot. Available at: http://www.espncriciinfo.com/england-v-south-africa- 2012/content/story/579730.html [Accessed 11 April 2015] 14 Kallis, J. (2015, March 12). Proteas tarred with same brush of failure. Available at http://www.cricket.com.au/news/feature/jacques-kallis- south-africa-cricket-world-cup-chokers-proteas/2015-03-12 [Accessed 11 April 2015] 2 strategic session in early 2014 that the team agreed that the time was right to share Protea Fire with the country.