Being illogical costs money.

This year alone, we:

Opened a physical retail store for an NPSL team

Did an ad campaign on the crazy back page of the City Pages with…

…an 800 number we set-up to Rick Roll that team up I-35

Had a promotion where we sold match tickets (and a bandana) to dogs

Brought over a bunch of Dutch street artists to do some semi-permanent murals

One of the reasons I was excited about getting involved with Minneapolis City was to test a belief. Over the years, I have seen the ideology of rationality take over business decision making. Like any ideology, it distorts thinking. The current trendy distortion is turning everything into a problem that can be modeled on a spreadsheet and attributed to textbook-rational causes: optimization, economies of scale, test-and-learn, or any one of those MBA buzzwords.

Since it’s all the same management consultants advising all the same companies, they all end up doing the same things. In the name of competition, they’ve homogenized themselves around the same best practices and key metrics. (6)

This isn’t the set-up to make fun of MLS for giving all the teams the same white jerseys. It’s a larger and completely serious point: I believe that Minneapolis City will be successful and sustainable long term because companies are treating sports as a rational, corporate business while love—which is what sports are all about—is fundamentally irrational and human.

People want to fall in love with a community, not be a brand ambassador for a corporation.

The issue is that corporations think in rational, measurable, fit-it-on-a-spreadsheet ways. For example, there is no ROI-based business case to be made for flying Kamp Seedorf out to do murals for our players.

We did it because we love our players, want to celebrate them, and think street art is cool. We hope that it got noticed. We hope that it showed what this club is all about and acted as a sort of beacon to people who share our values. We hope it did a lot of great things, but we did it because it was awesome and we fell in love with the idea, not because it was an efficient marketing expense.

Love can’t be measured in terms of efficiency. The very concept is ridiculous. An efficiency mindset would tell you to buy fresh flowers on February 15. However, despite the obvious savings, it is not smart to buy your sweetheart flowers the day after Valentine’s Day.

I have no doubt that flash TV ads and $10,000/month billboards on major highways are surely more efficient than silly back page City Pages ads and street art murals. It’s just that it’s hard to fall in love with efficiency and, even if it’s nicely packaged by a top tier ad agency. The whole efficiency marketing apparatus creates a level of distance. It’s similar to when you were a kid and your grandma told you that for Christmas she didn’t need a present and just wanted you to make her a card. She didn’t need a flashy gift because the point is love. (7)

Love is a bunch of soccer fans building the club we always wanted.

And, especially in soccer, where supporters are typically independent-minded, with a visceral dislike of manufactured hype and a stubborn unwillingness to defer to corporate authority, Minneapolis City is an interesting value proposition for people who want to get DIY as well.

It would be nice to have a bigger budget, though.