Frank White means so much to the Royals that they built a statue to honor him. Maybe Dayton Moore needs to walk by that statue a time or two today. (Image credit: ljworld.com)
When I was six, my brother took me to Game 6 of the World Series at Royals Stadium. I don’t remember much of the game, but I remember the 9th inning. I remember the missed call by Don Denkinger that left Jorge Orta standing safe at first. I remember Dane Iorg’s bloop single. I remember my brother holding me up on his shoulders so I could see Jim Sundberg slide under Darrell Porter’s tag for the win. I fell in love with the Kansas City Royals that day. Today, I love them a little less.
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The biggest mistake a company can make is to decide on a direction without its customers in mind. And when it happens, you can almost always trace the decision back to one of two things — lack of understanding and ego. This week, my Kansas City Royals are the latest PR case study on what not to do and how to piss off your customers. This is a case study that has lack of understanding and ego written all over it.
The decision
The Royals fired team legend Frank White from the broadcast booth Friday. If you’ve ever lived in Kansas City, you know that George Brett and Frank White are like gods around here to Royals fans. They were the heart and soul of Royals teams in the 70s and 80s that won a lot more than they lost. That won a lot more than this team has in the last 20 years.
If you want to understand how Royals fans feel about Frank, you only need to hear the 9th Gold Glove story. In fact, if you listened to any Royals broadcasts the last three years, you would have heard it. Because Frank tells it often…with a beaming smile on his face. White won eight Gold Gloves in his career and should have won a ninth. The year in question, he made only four errors. And yet somehow, Mariners 2B Harold Reynolds won the award despite making 17 errors. But that didn’t matter to Royals fans. Feeling Frank was cheated, they made him a 9th Gold Glove. A Gold Glove Frank still has to this day.
Back to the decision. And let’s frame it around the lack of understanding and ego red flags mentioned earlier. Word is the Royals fired White because he was too negative in the broadcast booth. Have you seen the Royals play over the last several years? There has been plenty to be negative about. In addition, that shows a compete lack of understanding of what most fans want — honest analysis of how the team is playing on the field. The majority of fans don’t like homer announcers. The majority of front office sports execs do.
Word is also that Royals GM Dayton Moore and President Dan Glass made the decision. Why in the world do the general manager and president need to be involved in decisions about the broadcast team? Shouldn’t they be focused on the players, and in the Royals case for next year, the starting pitching staff? Answer: It’s all about ego. Dayton and Dan have always had an issue with Frank for some reason. But no matter what those issues were, he let his ego get in the way of one crucial fact all of us in PR know well. Perception is reality. And someone, even Dayton and Dan themselves, should have understood how negatively the fans would react to this. There’s that lack of understanding how fans feel rearing its ugly head again.
The silence
The Royals announced White’s firing via a press release. Since then, they have said nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Their silence is deafening. But the fans…we are NOT being silent.
Check out the Royals Facebook page. None of them support the decision to fire Frank. Not one. What the comments do show is a microcosm of how Royals fans feel about this decision by Moore and the front office. Sick to their stomach. Sad. Upset. Pissed off!
Looking at it from a pure PR perspective, the Royals made another huge goof this morning when the published a post asking fans to buy All-Star Legacy Bricks. There are currently 33 comments on the post. Every one of them mentions Frank. And every one of them mocks the Royals for firing a legend and then asking for fans’ money. Talk about your PR nightmares.
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The most fitting way to close this post is to share an excerpt from The Kansas City Star that once again highlights how ego and lack of understanding can blind companies from seeing how their short-sighted decisions can impact their perception long term:
White knows this is a sad story. He grew up a few miles from what became the Truman Sports Complex, and worked on the construction crew that built Royals Stadium. He is the ultimate success story of the old Royals Academy, playing 18 seasons with eight Gold Gloves, five All-Star games, and helping win the team’s only World Series championship in 1985.
None of that seems to matter now. Two entities that should live happily ever after instead are effectively at each other’s throats in one of the saddest stories in recent Kansas City sports history.
The only thing that’s sadder is how Moore and Glass, the former of which is doing so many things right on the field to bring the Royals back to respectability, felt it was ok to disrespect a Royals legend and the team’s entire fan base off of it.
December 3, 2011
Public relations