Quesenberry defines the concept as having all three sides of a corporation’s structure (the operations, marketing and customer service sides) on the same page when it comes to how their brand will be portrayed. A strategic business unit, or an “SBU,” is “a fully functional and distinct unit that develops its own strategic vision and direction,” Quesenberry says.
By having consistent branding throughout the different facets of a corporation, ‘silo syndrome’ would be avoided. Quesenberry defines silo syndrome as “when a department or function, like marketing, develops its own culture and has trouble working with other functions such as operations, customer service or sales.”
If a company can establish the same attitude, goals and voice through all of their platforms, they will be seen as a strong, unified brand that people can latch onto. One company that has mastered the concept of being a ‘strategic business unit’ is The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website run by Bill Simmons.
The Ringer was founded two years ago by Simmons, who holds a unique position in the world of sports media. For those who don’t know, Simmons began as a blogger back in the late 1990s. After being hired by ESPN in the early 2000s, Simmons brought several groundbreaking ideas to the world’s biggest sports news magnate, such as the '30 for 30' documentary series and Grantland, a sports and pop culture blog.
What made Grantland special was that it thought about sports differently. Simmons hired a cast of young, up-and-coming writers to make sports content fun again. Their content was creative and off-the-beaten-path, as they avoided some of the archaic constructs of typewriter journalism and produced stories that would make the reader excited to play along.
When ESPN let Simmons go (and subsequently rendered Grantland extinct) in the fall of 2015, Simmons set out to continue this brand by creating his own website, The Ringer. While many of his writers at Grantland were hired quickly by other publications after their time at ESPN (as their Grantland experience had helped them make a name for themselves), Simmons now has an equally talented cast of writers at The Ringer to push more creative content. They still think about sports differently, in a very unique and specific way, and they push the envelope on content ideas like never before.
I know what you’re thinking: This is all great, but what does it have to do with SBUs?
Well, as it turns out, The Ringer has one of the tightest-knit strategic business units among mainstream sports media corporations.
Their brand, as described earlier, is one of ‘fun.’ Their goal is to approach sports coverage in a fun, innovative way that changes the way people think about sports. This brand shines through clearly in the way in which The Ringer uses social media.
By using their Twitter account to not only post content, but also push the personalities of their writers, interact with readers and take innovative approaches to content itself, The Ringer does on social media what they aim to do with their website (aka, their version of ‘operations’). Their approach to customer service is interlinked with their approach to writing, which is interlinked with the way they market their content.
In my next blog post, I will examine specific ways in which The Ringer pulls this off, perfectly exemplifying what it means to be a ‘strategic business unit' in the sports media world.
In my next blog post, I will examine specific ways in which The Ringer pulls this off, perfectly exemplifying what it means to be a ‘strategic business unit' in the sports media world.
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