Hasta La Creative!

What’s the logical second act for a baseball player who has won a Roberto Clemente Award, two Hank Aaron Awards, five Silver Slugger awards, and five Golden Glove Awards? Content marketing, of course.

At least, that’s what Derek Jeter seems to think, having launched The Players’ Tribune just four days after playing his last game as shortstop for the New York Yankees. The site invites athletes to pen their own stories, presenting themselves and their ideas directly to fans. It’s a noble cause, but the site also has business ambitions, as Jeter’s publishing team has said it eventually will host branded content. These are still very early days, but if the site sustains its current quality and momentum, Jeter may turn out to be as good a marketer as he was a baseball player.

For one thing, Jeter understands the disintermediation of traditional media that is driving the rapid growth of content marketing. Thanks to the convenience and speed of digital publishing, brands don’t have to rely on traditional media channels to get their messages out to the audiences they want to reach. They can go straight to the source. What Jeter’s website shows is that celebrities managing their personal brands crave direct contact with audiences just as much as corporations do. As his introductory post on the site explains, he and other people in the limelight are often overly guarded in their interactions with reporters out of fear that “any statement, any opinion or detail, might be distorted.” Why not cut out the middleman?

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