Cindy

Droog

Read Cindy's bio and previous columns

November 3, 2008

Are You Ready for Some Suitball?

I’ve invented a new game. It’s called Suitball.

I’m the official announcer for Suitball, and it will air every Tuesday night so as not to compete with Monday Night Football.

You might think, given the name, that Suitball is a little like the old Corporate Challenge. When I was an intern at Kirby Vacuum Cleaners, I played for their volleyball team. We played in a tournament for a couple of weeks against some other Cleveland-based companies, and it was a lot of fun.

But we didn’t get to play against Bissell. Or Dyson. It was a little too nicey-nicey for me, and I wasn’t any more motivated playing there than I am today, playing against my eight-year-old nephew. (As long as he doesn’t actually beat me, of course.)

No. Suitball is for companies who really are in competition. And every Tuesday night, I’ll talk about these companies. It won’t be like some lame CNN show where we review stock market prices while hundreds of others run across the bottom of the screen and the viewers fall asleep clutching their Fidelity statements.

And it definitely won’t involve fake “feature stories” where the companies actually paid thousands of dollars for the MSNBC crew to come in and shoot b-roll and throw the president a couple of softball questions. (Trust me. The networks pitch me these “stories” all the time.)

What I’m envisioning is more like a football game. We pick two competitors, bring them out onto the field, toss a coin to determine who starts the show, and then, we start keeping score.

I’d like to pilot the show with a Mary Kay versus Avon episode. First, we bring the chief marketing officers out onto the field. We showcase the results of their teams’ work. Not the creative execution. There are enough advertising industry awards for that. But the actual numbers. Business growth. Sales team satisfaction.

Of course, one win is just that. For next week, Avon will have to go up against Arbonne, and then Bare Escentuals, and all the other cosmetics sold by your neighbors and coworkers. There will be running statistics on Suitball.com. People will have to hire bookies to place their bets. And eventually, a Fantasy Suitball league will allow you to pair IBM’s Chief Financial Officer and Amazon.com’s Chief Technology Officer on the same team.

You’ll think you’re unstoppable, but then the CTO from barnesandnoble.com will have a good week right before Christmas, and throw your whole league entry fee down the toilet.

What gets me really excited about Suitball is wondering what the tailgate parties will be like. When Sprint plays against Verizon, will the whole network show up? Will the mid-level accounting managers put a beer can up a turkey crevice and grill it while they sit around their Nissans in branded lawn chairs?

Of course, this will lead to all kinds of newsworthy stories. When the star rookie marketer for Reebok gets arrested for a hit-and-run resulting in an injured cat, it will be on the cover of Star. When Northwest or Delta (or NorDelt, DelWest, or whatever they decide to be called) Airlines plays American Airlines and a bench-clearing brawl happens, and both heads of security get suspended, Suitball will make the cover of USA Today Sports.

After the pilot episdoe, I’d like to get two companies who are in a current lawsuit against one another out there. They’ll agree that whoever loses has to settle. Years of wasted time will be saved, and employees won’t have to shred any files. Tons in legal fees will be avoided.

The bottom line is that there simply isn’t enough exciting, visible competition in the workplace. No coach sits us down with tapes of the opposing team’s performance last week, and gives us a pep talk. Nobody follows our careers unless we’ve sold them a book.

Suitball will solve that problem. I just hope my team doesn’t end up with the “privilege” of a first draft pick next year, if you know what I mean.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # CD111. Request permission to publish here.