Marketing and Movies: Moneyball

"You're not even looking at the problem!"

Photo by Jose Morales on Unsplash

Happy Monday, y’all! I am SO excited for this new series, Marketing and Movies. Once a month, I will review a movie that I love, and talk about the movie, as well as some of the key marketing and business lessons you can learn from the film.

Before we get started discussing Moneyball, please go ahead and click that Like button for me, as that will help raise visibility of this issue on Substack. Thank you!

Also, please note this issue will include spoilers for Moneyball. I will try not to give away too many key details of the movie, but I would advise you to watch the movie if you haven’t already seen it, before you read this post. It really is a wonderful film!

Moneyball follows the 2001 offseason and 2002 season for the Oakland Athletics. This was a historic season for the A’s, it saw them set an American League record with 20-straight wins. But the focus of the film is the new strategy that GM Billy Beane used to assemble the A’s 2002 roster, which would be dubbed Moneyball.

As the 2001 season closed with a disappointing loss to the Yankees, the on-field disappointment spilled over to the off-season. Three of the A’s top players were lost to other teams that could afford to offer them more money than the As had. Beane (played by Brad Pitt) went to visit the team owner and asked for more money so he could make the As more competitive. The owner flatly told Beane no, and suggested he calm down, put the loss behind him and do the best he could.

Beane understood that he was playing, as he would put it, ‘an unfair game’. He was trying to compete with organizations that had double, sometimes triple the payroll that Beane had access to. Clearly, Beane understood that he needed to think differently if he wanted compete against richer teams.

Beane then meets with his scouts to get their ideas on which players the As can add to their roster to make the team more competitive. In doing so, Beane becomes painfully aware that his scouts are looking to solve an entirely different problem than Beane is:

That idea was still on his mind when Beane takes a trip to visit the Cleveland Indians in an attempt to trade for a few players. Beane had some players in mind to acquire, but he noticed that every time he pitched an offer to the Indians GM, one of the assistants would whisper something to the GM, and the deal would get killed.

Frustrated, Beane left the meeting, and went to find the Indians assistant, Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill), who had killed the deals. In the parking lot, Beane corners Brand and asks him why he wanted to keep those players. Brand then began to explain how he analyzed players differently. He explains that most baseball teams try to buy players when they should be trying to buy wins. This incorrect assessment of where player value comes from led to some players being overvalued while others were undervalued.

Beane is struck by the conversation he has with Brand, and immediately hires him to join the As. Together, Beane and Brand begin to rebuild the As roster by focusing exclusively on players who had the ability to play well, who were also undervalued for whatever reason. Some were pitchers who threw funny, others were hitters who had a ‘weird’ swing. Beane didn’t care why they were being dismissed, as long as they could produce, and were affordable, Beane wanted them.

Predictably, this new approach wasn’t appreciated by the As scouts, the manager, or really anyone within or outside the organization. Beane’s Moneyball approach to assembling the As lineup was roundly criticized, and that criticism only intensified as the team struggled mightily to start the season. Perhaps the biggest criticism came from As manager Art Howe, who was adamantly opposed to Beane’s strategy for re-building the club. At one point, Howe tells Beane he is going to play the players he wants so he can explain himself when he interviews for jobs in the offseason.

The two players causing the most friction for Beane and Howe were Carlos Pena and Scott Hatteberg. Carlos was a true first baseman and a potential all-star. But Hatteberg got on base more often than Pena did. So Beane wanted Howe to play Hatteberg at first base over Pena. Howe flatly refused, causing continuous strife between he and Beane.

With the As 10 games out of first, Beane was at a crossroads with his new strategy. He decided to trade Pena, in an attempt to force Howe to play the roster as he had built it. This led to this pivotal scene between Beane and Brand where they decide to fully commit to their Moneyball strategy:

With the roster in place as Beane wanted it, the As immediately started winning. On August 13th, the As start their historic 20-game winning streak. I don’t want to get into the details of how this is handled in the film at all, because you need to watch it. One of the interesting parts of the film is the coverage of the streak includes real game footage and real calls from the As broadcast team. The coverage of the streak is the heart of the film and when it ends your initial thought will likely be “That’s bullshit, no way it really happened that way.” But it did, the streak, and especially how it was set, was made for Hollywood.

The streak would end up being the high point of the season for the As. The As would again fall in the playoffs, and as soon as the As season ended, the same criticism returned in the media, for Beane and his Moneyball approach.

After the season ends, the Boston Red Sox owner John Henry meets with Beane and offers him their GM position. Henry watched what Beane did in building the As roster and noted how he did it with a fraction of the payroll that other teams had. Henry noted the criticism that Beane was getting for his Moneyball system and noted how people in baseball were attacking him because his way of building a roster threatened their very existence. Henry added “I know you’re taking it in the teeth out there. The first guy through the wall always gets bloody”.

Beane takes the offer from Henry and returns to Oakland. Brand finds him and asks him how the meeting went. Beane slides a piece of paper over to Brand that contains Henry’s salary offer to Beane. Brand looks at it, and says “That makes you the highest paid GM in sports history.”

However, Beane did not take Boston’s offer. He decided to stay in Oakland, and remains in the Athletics front office to this day. Boston would go on to implement Beane’s Moneyball approach, and would win the World Series two seasons later.

Before I move on from the film, I wanted to acknowledge Mychael Danna’s excellent score for Moneyball. Danna also scored The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I will be reviewing in November, but in my opinion he did a far superior job with Moneyball. The music does a wonderful job of enhancing every scene and brings tension to the events being told and makes them more important and memorable.

What are the marketing and business lessons you can learn from Moneyball?

I see two key lessons, and both are more business lessons than marketing. But both are so important, I think they are worth covering.

First, there’s having the courage to try something new if your current strategy has proven not to work. Beane faced a ton of resistance to his Moneyball approach both within the Athletics organization, and in the sport of baseball. He was trying something new, and quite honestly a lot of people wanted to see him fail. These people wanted to see him fail, because if Beane’s system worked, it meant THEIR system was obsolete. You saw this in the scene with the scouts, they were evaluating players one way, Beane wanted them to evaluate them in another way. The head scout gets upset, tells Beane he needs to leave the scouts alone and ‘let us do the job we know to do’. The scouts weren’t willing to put their pride aside and do what was best for the Athletics organization, they wanted to stick to the ‘old way’ of doing things. Their way. Whenever you offer a new solution to an old problem in business, you will see similar resistance.

That leads to the second key lesson, to commit to your strategy and give it a chance. When the Athletics actually did start losing, that just increased the pressure on Beane to drop the ‘moneyball’ approach. But Beane trusted in the strategy that he and Brand had developed, and committed to seeing it through. Beane understood that his strategy would only work if everyone bought in and committed to it. As you can see in the clip above, Beane asks Brand if he believes in Moneyball or not. Brand says he does, then Beane asks why are we even talking about this then? Let’s see this through.

We see this every day on Substack. What is one of the most important lessons that successful writers here try to teach us? They all say to stick with your writing, even when growth stops. And most of them point out that growth WILL stop at some point. Unfortunately, many writers give up on their Substacks at that point.

The ones that succeed are the ones that kept pressing forward when they hit resistance. Which is really one of the keys to success in life in all areas, if you think about it.

I hope you enjoyed this first edition of Marketing and Movies! It’s a blast to write these and also share some of my favorite movies with you at the same time. Next month I’ll cover V for Vendetta. Which will be published about 2 weeks before the US elections, what could go wrong? Lol. On Thursday, Paid subscribers will get an analysis of one major brand that launched a brand ambassador program, not for its customers, but rather for its employees.

Have a great week!

Mack

PS : One more great scene and lesson from Moneyball: After the Peña trade and the As begin their win streak, Brand is in Beane’s office watching ESPN. ESPN is praising the As for having won seven in a row, and they attribute the win streak to manager Art Howe. Brand rolls his eyes and asks Beane “Did you hear that?”, commenting on how ESPN was giving Howe credit for the turnaround.

“All I heard was ‘seven in a row’”, Beane replies. Good reminder to block out the noise and focus on the results you want to achieve.