Winning Time: Turn Your Marketing and Sales Teams Into a “Magic” Duo

Winning Time is HBO’s compelling biopic of the Los Angeles Lakers’ Showtime legacy. In the first few episodes — when they brought home five championships thanks to Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — the Forum arena’s manager and president, Claire Rothman (Gaby Hoffman), struggles to find a winning strategy to galvanize ticket sales.

To do so, 19-year-old Lakers’ assistant and future exec Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson) insists on selling a “fantasy” to excite fans. Instead of a marching band and family-friendly spirit squad like other teams have, they end up creating the first NBA dance team — led by a young Paula Abdul. Along with this, they open a Forum nightclub and invite celebrities to sit in the front row for TV cameras.

The young Buss understood an essential truth of marketing, which remains just as true now: Communicating mere utility isn’t enough; you have to generate excitement, stir emotions, and create something memorable. (For example, GEICO’s massively successful cavemen campaign didn’t list the details of car insurance, and Duolingo’s hilarious dancing owl took the company from thousands to millions of TikTok followers in a matter of months.)

The Lakers didn’t fill seats just by telling fans that Kareem was great at shooting and Magic was great at passing; they created a multimedia spectacle, and the fans’ enthusiasm inspired the players to even greater heights.

You want your product to sell like hotcakes, but sales and marketing are like an all-star duo. Just as Kareem needed oh-so-sweet passes from Magic to hit those shots, your marketing team needs to set up your salesforce for their own slam dunks.