Blog · Archive · Exercises
Winning customers through relationship-marketing word of mouth
December 2022, a thought exercise: what happens if you apply relationship marketing to a football club? It's an extreme case, and precisely for that reason it shows clearly where the leverage lies — and why almost nobody uses it.
Published 8 December 2022 · revised 16 August 2026
The exercise
A club has two customers: fans and sponsors
Beyond the pitch, a sports club's commercial goals are two: a steady stream of revenue from fans and a portfolio of sponsors. Both are pursued today the way any customer is pursued — by buying attention.
But a club has something almost no company has: thousands of people emotionally invested in its success. Each with their own network of contacts, and none of them ever asked.
The three levers, in order of strength
Financial reward. A payment for every useful introduction. It works, and it's the weakest of the three.
Exclusivity. Privileged seats, early access, a meeting with the team. It can't be bought at any price.
Belonging. Fans don't move only for the benefit: they move because they care about the club. It's the lever no other organisation has.
One word at a time
Why even there someone needs to keep the ledger
The 2022 article already said as much, using the Italian name for the role: "Direttore delle Referenze". It's the same job.
The law
Activating one person is an addition; activating an organisation is a multiplication — but only if someone inside the organisation is designated to receive it. Without that, the promised leverage is lost in internal friction. It's the Fourth law, the Law of Multiplication.
Ten thousand available fans and nobody profiling and following up with them produce exactly what they produce today: nothing measurable.
The name, and the two currencies
The role is called Referral Director — "Direttore delle Referenze" is the same thing in Italian, and it's also the name of the public register the profession is now registered under.
As for the reward, the 2022 intuition about exclusivity has become structure: the unit of exchange is the Match Credit, a right to an introduction that changes hands, and the mechanism behind it is delegated reciprocity.
Ten thousand fans are an addition. Someone who governs them is a multiplication.
The first step
Where your company stands, with a number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the Relational Capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no sign-up. Your browser calculates the score and it appears immediately, with the areas where you're losing the most points.
The extended report then arrives by email and within one working day a person calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the Stoic Analysis AIRA-DX© makes sense for your company. It's free and limited to twelve a week, so it isn't owed to whoever takes the check-up: it's decided together.
Prefer just to talk? The number is 0549 888808.