What the Kansas City Chiefs can learn from the Royals

Do the Chiefs have a marketing problem? The answer to that question is a simple yes, but the reasoning behind the answer is complicated.

The Kansas City Chiefs don’t have a single player in the top 50 in jersey sales. That is the Chiefs’ fault. If you want fans to spend $200 or more for jerseys, then you have to connect the players to those fans. You have to make the fans feel as if those players are a member of their family, and help make fans feel like they are a part of your team. After all, if you are a part of the team you want to dress like the team and, thus, you want a jersey.

The problem is the Chiefs don’t seem to understand the concept of moving from personnel to personal. This is odd, because all they have to do is look across the street to see the masters of team/fan interaction. The Kansas City Royals are experts at public relations and endearing the fans to their team and it’s not hard to see why.

The Royals do not hide or put limitations on their players and how they interact with the fans or press. Manager Ned Yost does a weekly radio interview on 610 Sports with Bob Fescoe and it’s can’t miss radio. He answers tough questions with real answers; he doesn’t hide behind clichés or coach speaks. Even during other shows and press conferences he’s candid and not afraid to speak his mind. Yes, he backs his players, but he’ll show his frustration and emotion when the time calls for it. As a fan you feel like you are getting the truth and it helps you understand why the lineup is like it is or why he made the move he made. Even if you still disagree, at least you know his reasoning and can see things from his perspective.

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That kind of honesty and insight into the game helps you feel more in touch with the game as it’s being played because you know how Ned’s mind works. But that won’t help sell jerseys or make you stick behind him during a losing streak. During those same interviews they will talk about Ned’s hunting trips with Jeff Foxworthy or how his wife got on to him the night before for not bringing home milk after a game. They start talking like a bunch of guys having a beer while sitting around a lake doing some fishing. It’s not just that one show you hear from Ned either. You hear him on 810 as well as other 610 shows and he’s great. His press conferences are even must listen to whether he’s talking about spanking people or harassing a beat reporter like Josh Vernier for a laugh. You get to know the man behind the uniform and you begin to feel like he’s more of a friend than some celebrity.

Compare this with the Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. It is rare you hear Andy talk anywhere besides his scheduled weekly press conferences. When he has those he’s so predictable that Fescoe even has a game on his morning show where he plays quotes from weekly press conferences and callers try to decide if they were from that week or the year before. When he does give other interviews, it is all coach speak and clichés. I can’t name one of Andy’s closest friends, nor do I know anything he does in the offseason. I don’t see him as a friend, I see him as my team’s coach, nothing more.

The same thing happens when you compare the players from both teams and how they interact with fans. You’ll hear interviews with Royals players daily on the radio. Like Yost, they are candid and honest interviews where you get to know the players as men, not just as celebrities you see on TV. When the Chiefs play primetime games, you see guys like Hosmer on the sideline cheering them on. When at charity events and reporters are there, they aren’t robotic with their answers. They are themselves and you can hear that.

Chiefs’ players are rarely heard or seen outside of Chiefs sponsored events. When they do give interviews, they are full of clichés and boring non-answers. I don’t feel like the Chiefs ever let you get to know the players behind the helmets. The team doesn’t allow the players to show who they really are or allow the fans to embrace them as family the way the Royals have. There were Royals on stage at the Garth Brooks concert last week. Where were Chiefs players?

The Chiefs use to feel like family, but now they just feel like my favorite football team.

The Chiefs haven’t always been this way either. I remember when I was a kid there were banners of the player’s charities all around the field. You could see what Neil Smith, Joe Phillips, and Derrick Thomas were doing in the community. Those players did more interviews and were more candid than they are now. Can you imagine Andy saying the things about a team the way Marty Schottenheimer talked about the Raiders? The Chiefs use to feel like family, but now they just feel like my favorite football team.

I’m not blaming the players at all! In fact I’m not even saying the Chiefs are bad with fans, because they aren’t. They are involved in many great charities around KC and do all kinds of things to help the city. The game day experience is fantastic and as a season ticket holder I’m treated better than I deserve. Their support staff and customer service people are second to none when it comes to answering questions and working to solve problems. So it’s no question the team deserves your love and loyalty as your favorite team.

The issue is with letting the players and coaches be themselves. I don’t know if they want to dump Gatorade on the player of the game like Salvador Perez does, but doing a postgame interview like that on the field would be nice. Let the fans acknowledge the player on the field and let the player acknowledge the fans. Can you imagine 76,000 people singing happy birthday to Eric Berry the way the Royals fans did last week for Lorenzo Cain?

I beg the Chiefs please let the guys do interviews without a Chiefs PR guy present. Let reporters ask any questions they want and let the players be honest and open. No, I don’t want someone throwing a teammate under the bus, but at the same time I don’t want to hear your looking forward to the challenge anymore. I’d love to hear Andy talking about his wife yelling at him for not taking the trash out after winning a playoff game like Yost did.

Just let us get to know these guys like family. Let us listen to our heroes sound like an old friend from high school. I’ll be a diehard Chiefs fan who wears red and gold no matter who puts on the colors. I’m going to cheer and scream and bang my seat like a mad man to help my team win. But after the last four years with the Royals I’ve learned I don’t want to be a fan of my favorite team anymore. I want to support my friends and family. I want to cheer for the Chiefs because they feel like family, and you are always there for your family.