10 Things Corporations Can Learn from Pro Wrestling

Thanks to WWE

When I was younger, I loved pro wrestling. I used to watch the WWF (pre­cur­sor to the WWE), and rev­eled in the fights and back sto­ries of The Ulti­mate War­rior, Andre the Giant, Jimmy “Super­fly” Snooka, The Mil­lion Dol­lar Man, Sting. I also loved the Marty Jenetty and Shawn Michaels of the Rock­ers, laughed at the funny antics of the Bush­whack­ers. I was a big fan of the Hit­man Hart of the Hart Fam­ily, and I saw Hulk Hogan beat wrestler after wrestler start­ing from his best friend Andre the Giant, to his other best friend Randy “the Macho Man” Sav­age, to Yokozuna, and even­tu­ally saw fear in his eyes as he lost to The Undertaker.

I loved wrestling. It was some­thing that kept me up at night. I remem­ber lin­ing up in video stores to rent the lat­est Wrestle­ma­nias and Sum­mer Slams and Royal Rumbles.

It was sim­pler times. I knew the fights were scripted, but I did not care. It was a telen­ov­ela hap­pen­ing right before your eyes–the dif­fer­ence is that the pro­tag­o­nists were not mestizo/spanish look­ing damsels in dis­tress; they were men in span­dex, with out­landish per­son­al­i­ties and strange back sto­ries. It was (and I think, it still is) com­pelling television.

Here is Sam Ford talk­ing about more lessons we can learn about pro wrestling:

Sam Ford is a research affil­i­ate with MIT’s Con­ver­gence Cul­ture Con­sor­tium and Direc­tor of Cus­tomer Insights for Pep­per­com, a PR agency, in their Man­hat­tan office. Ford was pre­vi­ously the Consortium’s project man­ager and part of the team who launched the project in 2005. He holds a Mas­ter of Sci­ence degree in Com­par­a­tive Media Stud­ies from MIT (2007) and a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree from West­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­sity (2005), where he majored in Eng­lish (writ­ing), news/editorial jour­nal­ism, mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies, with a minor in film stud­ies. Ford has taught courses on pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ism, pro wrestling, and soap operas at MIT and WKU and has pub­lished work on these and other areas of U.S. pop­u­lar cul­ture and tele­vi­sion. His work focuses on media audi­ences and immer­sive story worlds. Ford has also worked as a pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ist, win­ning a Ken­tucky Press Asso­ci­a­tion award for his work with The Greenville Leader-News and pub­lish­ing a weekly col­umn enti­tled “From Beaver Dam to Brook­lyn” in The Ohio County Times-News. He also blogs for Peppercom’s Pep­per Dig­i­tal. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @sam_ford.

Recently, writ­ing about the death of the incom­pa­ra­ble Capt. Lou Albano, jour­nal­ist Phil Reis­man with The Jour­nal News wrote: “Some­body once said that to under­stand Amer­ica, you have to under­stand pro wrestling.” If you’re look­ing for the quote, it’s inex­plic­a­bly now removed from his story. Maybe his edi­tor didn’t agree with that state­ment from “some­body,” but Phil thought it sounded about right, and I concur.

If we buy into the fact that cor­po­rate Amer­ica needs to under­stand pop­u­lar cul­ture to really be able to relate to its audi­ences and com­mu­ni­cate effectively–Grant McCracken’s idea of the “chief cul­ture offi­cer” that I wrote about last week–then what bet­ter place to start than pro wrestling? It’s very exis­tence feels like an anom­aly, with fans load­ing are­nas by the thou­sands and gath­er­ing around tele­vi­sion sets by the mil­lions to watch (pri­mar­ily) men per­form­ing the illu­sion of one-on-one sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion, while most fans know that what they are watch­ing is for show.

I’ve spent most of my life watch­ing pro wrestling. I wrote my hon­ors the­sis at West­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­sity on under­stand­ing the busi­ness model of World Wrestling Enter­tain­ment, study­ing how and why fans engage with the show at live events and how wrestling demon­strates shifts in Amer­i­can mas­culin­ity over time. I taught classes at WKU and at MIT on the cul­tural his­tory of pro wrestling, the lat­ter of which World Wrestling Enter­tain­ment part­nered with me on. And I’ve even par­tic­i­pated in quite a few pro wrestling shows myself, play­ing the self-involved owner of a small-town Ken­tucky wrestling pro­mo­tion who found greater riches on the East Coast.

Through that work, I’ve found wrestling often acts as a car­ni­val mir­ror to our cul­ture, stretch­ing and mag­ni­fy­ing the under­ly­ing fears, prej­u­dices and ten­sion points amongst us. How­ever, I think wrestling pro­vides all sorts of learn­ing that cor­po­rate Amer­ica should pay atten­tion to as well. So, with­out fur­ther ado, here’s a list of what we as cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tors can learn from the world of pro­fes­sional wrestling:

1. An Appro­pri­ate Level of Spec­ta­cle Is Cru­cial: In pro wrestling, steel cages are always 15 feet high. Tall com­peti­tors are nearly 7 feet tall. Crowds are always “hang­ing from the rafters.” Wrestling shows pull out all the stops to make their shows as dra­matic as pos­si­ble. On the other hand, wrestling pro­mot­ers can’t overdo it. Case-in-point: the now defunct-World Cham­pi­onship Wrestling put on a live three-hour tele­vi­sion show every week, with the announc­ers con­stantly pro­claim­ing it was “the biggest main event in the his­tory of the show.” Even­tu­ally, noth­ing they did could feel spe­cial any­more. While cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tors may not want to be so guilty of exag­ger­a­tion and hyper­bole, big events should always be con­ducted with a dra­matic flair. How­ever, it’s also cru­cial to save that drama for the par­tic­u­larly “big” moments (in the case of the WWE, big pay-per-view events like Wrestle­ma­nia) so that it will be truly effective.

2. Humor and Charisma Always Make a Con­nec­tion: Many a wrestling vil­lain has sud­denly become a hero because of his gift of gab on the micro­phone. Even when audi­ences don’t want to, they often can’t help but be won over. Like­wise, many wrestlers pushed to be fan favorites, or “faces” in wrestling par­lance, are met with silence if they don’t have that nat­ural con­nec­tion. Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tors have to value that human con­nec­tion and can­not under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of wit, charm and authen­tic­ity. As they say in WWE, the best per­form­ers are those who “play them­selves, with the vol­ume turned up.”

3. Cre­ate a Seri­al­ized Con­nec­tion with Your Audi­ence: With the WWE, every expe­ri­ence seems to be push­ing to the next one. The tele­vi­sion show pro­motes the pay-per-view event. The PPV pushes fans to inter­act through the Web site. Add in the DVDs, the video games, the mag­a­zines, the books, etc. Each expe­ri­ence is designed to be sat­is­fy­ing in and of itself, but it’s always push­ing the audi­ence for deeper inter­ac­tion. In short, there is no one-off cam­paign; the expe­ri­ence is most suc­cess­ful when the wrestling pro­mo­tion focuses on devel­op­ing a long-term rela­tion­ship with the audience.

4. “Shiny New Objects” Don’t Last: In the “old days” of regional wrestling, big attrac­tions like the 600-plus-pound Haystacks Cal­houn would be brought into the local pro­mo­tion on rare occa­sion. Any­time a pro­mo­tion tried to use these gim­micks as a full-time draw, though, audi­ences quickly tired of see­ing some­thing just because it was new or dif­fer­ent. Com­pa­nies must learn the same. Sales gim­micks, bold state­ments and new dig­i­tal plat­forms may gain some momen­tary inter­est, but if there’s no deep thought, skill or strat­egy behind it, the inter­est will wane quickly.

5. Your Audi­ence Uses You as an Excuse to Build Com­mu­nity: Wrestling pro­mo­tions thrive on a regional level by bring­ing local fans together as much to talk to one another as to watch the show. National wrestling pro­mo­tions like WWE draw on this by encour­ag­ing fans to see them­selves as a group and con­nect with one another. Sim­i­larly, com­pa­nies have to think about how their brand and their prod­ucts res­onate in people’s lives and act as fuel in their relationships.

6. Your Audi­ence Is Always Per­form­ing: My research has found that wrestling fans almost always openly indi­cate they know wrestling is scripted, yet many of them come to are­nas to per­form as if they are sports fans watch­ing a legit­i­mate com­pe­ti­tion. Coleridge called this ele­ment of the­ater “the will­ing sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief.” As a per­former at pro wrestling shows myself, I’ve often been astounded by the per­form­ers in the stands, those fans who often get so into their roles that they put those of us “on stage” to shame. As brands lis­ten to what their audi­ences are say­ing online, it’s impor­tant to always be cog­nizant that any­one writ­ing or speak­ing about your brand or your prod­ucts are per­form­ing and try­ing to draw an audi­ence for their own purposes.

7. Take Every Oppor­tu­nity to Lis­ten to Your Focus Group: WWE king­pin Vince McMa­hon has famously said that he didn’t need to con­duct focus groups because he had his focus group in the arena sev­eral nights a week. While wrestling fans will widely debate just how much Vince lis­tens to his “WWE Uni­verse,” that sen­ti­ment is cru­cial for brands to think about: espe­cially in a dig­i­tal age, there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties than ever to lis­ten into what audi­ences are say­ing about your brand and the top­ics that are impor­tant to you.

8. Your Audi­ence Will Tell You What They Think: Wrestling fans aren’t shy. WWE fans are famous for chant­ing “bor­ing” when their atten­tion fades even a lit­tle. Fans of Philadelphia-based Extreme Cham­pi­onship Wrestling reg­u­larly chanted “you f***ed up” any­time a wrestler botched his per­for­mance. Brands who have active audi­ences online have prob­a­bly learned the hard way how often pas­sion­ate cus­tomers will tell every­one around them, and the brand, what they think. The key is to under­stand that this feed­back is cru­cial and, if any­thing, should be encour­aged, if your goal is to develop a long-term and trans­par­ent rela­tion­ship with your tar­get audiences.

9. Don’t Ignore Sur­plus Audi­ences: Wrestling has alter­na­tively been seen as pro­gram­ming for male chil­dren, teens and adults through the years, but its draw has always expanded well beyond the tar­get demo­graphic of the day. The WWE has had some suc­cess mov­ing with cul­tural trends and cap­i­tal­iz­ing on a rise in female fans, His­panic view­ers or inter­na­tional audi­ences over time. Like­wise, brands should never become so focused on one niche that they ignore sig­nif­i­cant new opportunities.

10. Lis­ten­ing Could Lead to New Busi­ness Mod­els: For years, wrestling fans recorded weekly tele­vi­sion shows in their area, archived them and traded them with other fans across the coun­try. Over time, the WWE took note of this inter­est and built a busi­ness model around it, buy­ing up the archives of the wrestling pro­mo­tions of yes­ter­year and build­ing DVD releases and a subscription-only video-on-demand chan­nel based on this mas­sive back­log. The les­son for all brands is that audi­ences are often vocal about new prod­ucts or mod­i­fi­ca­tions they need, and the most suc­cess­ful brands are the ones who lis­ten closely to those needs and seek to address them rather than admon­ish or dis­cour­age inno­va­tion or mod­i­fi­ca­tions from their cus­tomer base.