BY MIKE GUSTAFSON//CORRESPONDENT
There’s a famous quote that goes like this: “90 percent of success is just showing up.” Variations of the quote differ (Google it) but the idea remains the same: Showing up breeds success. Showing your face, interacting with people, letting people know that you are physically present and “there” is important. According to Woody Allen, the alleged author of the famous quote – a guy who knows something about success -- “showing up” means everything.
Just ask Ryan Lochte. His “just show up” theory to popularity is no more evident than it is this week, at the 2011 ConocoPhillips USA Swimming National Championships. He gets mobbed wherever he goes, mobbed by
screaming throngs of fans, but doesn’t back away. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Lochte approaches them.
Since the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, sports have dramatically changed – especially our sport of swimming. FINA banned full-body suits. Unparalleled levels of popularity permeated throughout our sport, attracting new fans and participants. But maybe the biggest change has been the explosion of social media. It is a venue that allows fans to “interact directly” with their Olympic superstars – something needed in our world of limited mainstream media coverage.
The social media aspect has been positive for fans and athletes alike. It has allowed people to “get to know” their favorite athlete, see behind-the-scenes looks at their athletes. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s up-to-the-minute.
But Ryan Lochte has won his success with being there. Showing up. In person. Interacting, face-to-face.
No other swimmer has seen his celebrity status explode like Ryan Lochte. He’s become infinitely more popular since pre-Beijing. Sure, he’s a phenomenal swimmer. He dominates the pool like an aquatic super hero. Lochte also has the cool, easy-breezy swagger that attracts fans -- the confidence that swimmers are famous for, magnified in the magnetic Lochte.
But Lochte doesn’t really “blog.” He Tweets occasionally, but he certainly isn’t writing any online novellas. He has a fan page, but doesn’t have a billion people managing his “online presence” like other famous athletes. So what gives? How has Ryan Lochte become such a popular swimmer on the pool deck?
Popularity is not a chicken vs. the egg theory. It’s not, “Well if I become a faster swimmer, I’ll become more popular.” It doesn’t always work like that. Not always. Just being fast doesn’t mean you will connect with a potential fan base – to make people actually care about you. But Ryan Lochte’s fans are perhaps the most die-hard passionate street team of fans you’ll ever meet. Why? Because Ryan Lochte has always been one of those guys signing each and every autograph, taking each and every picture, handing and giving away his medals to adoring fans.
In other words, he shows up. He’s there, smiling at you, shaking your hand, telling you “thanks for the support.”
Ryan Lochte understands the value of winning fans over, face-to-face, one fan at a time. He’s done so throughout the 2011 Grand Prix series. He’s doing so now, at the ConocoPhillips USA Swimming National Championships.
It’s a lesson for swimmers hoping to achieve the outside-the-pool success that Lochte has. Sure, Lochte has a great, unusual personality. He has his own suit line. He wears custom-made t-shirts with funny sayings on them. He wears weird, green alien shoes.
And now he’s the most popular swimmer in the world.
1 comment:
I find it comical just how he "shows up," particularly in the twitter realm. Humor blogs and similar sources are constantly screenshotting his tweets (my personal favorite reads, "The game isn't always fair but thats the thang though!!" His success with interaction in the twitter world, most of the time, is his ridicule by others. Yet, it attracts people to him, and what he's actually here to do: swim, and open up more eyes to the sport. Each fan is smiling at him, perhaps holding back laughter, but certainly in pure admiration of his ability to so easily communicate in a world where someone of his status simply cannot talk to each and every fan that approaches him. He truly is the master of the media.
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