Brad Pitt says it all in a scene from Moneyball. Speaking about the number-crunching sabermetric approach to baseball, he says “it’s a game changer”.
Pitt plays Billy Beane, general manager of the also-rans Oakland Athletics, a second-rate team in the American League.
Beane (Pitt) accidentally meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a dorkish Yale economics graduate who can crunch baseball on-base percentages (OBP) in a way that’s eerily similar to quantitative computer analysis of equity transactions.
Brand’s OBP sabermetric approach is, to use Beane’s phrase, a game-changer. The Oakland As go on to win 20 straight games in the 2002 season, with the result that the Boston Red Sox try to poach Beane.
I’ve never watched a baseball game in my life, but I couldn’t stop watching this movie – and not just because of scene-stealer Pitt.
It’s the story of a new way of doing things, a new way of playing the game.
The point is that there’s a new way of ‘doing’ communications, and it’s not about sitting on first base, waiting for the media to hit a home run for you.
It’s about sniffing the wind, and knowing that the game has changed. The news cycle has changed fundamentally. Forget weeks of preparation. Forget perfect product flogs that take 15 sign-offs.
The winners in this new game are those who set the news agenda every day. That’s right. Every day.
There’s no prizes now for hitting a home run after everyone’s gone home. The pitcher is hurling balls every minute, and the winners are those who strike and run.
It’s a game-changer. The question is – are you striking out, or striking home?
Phillipa Yelland
story development
Chris Hocking Strategies