Leaf 10: Marketing Worth Standing at the Door For: Lessons from Milwaukee

Pictured: The front door of our first house. (Not pictured: Wisconsin family screaming out this door in October 2011.)

I wasn’t alive in 1982.

But a lot of people in Wisconsin were, and they still talk about it. Especially lately, like it was yesterday.

They talk about Harvey’s Wallbangers, nicknamed after the team’s power-hitting and their manager, Harvey Kuenn. They talk about being one win away from the World Series championship. And they talk about game seven, that the St. Louis Cardinals won. 

I can’t imagine how that stung. But Milwaukee Brewers fans stuck around.

That team lost the World Series and they’re still a beloved one. Milwaukee even had a parade for the Brewers after the loss. Think about that. It’s classic Wisconsin … truly believing in your team. Even after losing, fans had the mindset that they had the better team, and they celebrated it.

“It showed the class of the fans of Milwaukee,” said Robin Yount.

Logic had the scoreboard, but mindset and empathy owned the parade.

And it’s been mindset and empathy that’s taught Wisconsin fans how to wait.

We’ve all been to an event, family get-together, or a party in Wisconsin where someone says, “Well, I suppose, we should get going … “ and then they proceed to stand by the door for an hour. One more story. One more goodbye. It’s the typical Wisconsin goodbye that takes way longer than it should. Because leaving means admitting it’s over, and deep down we all know it’s not.

Brewers fans have been saying the Wisconsin goodbye to the World Series for 44 years. They still remember. They’re not ready to forget it and leave. They refuse to walk out the door.

That’s a powerful mindset—to keep believing when the result doesn’t change.

I can tell you where I was standing on one of those nights we’ve been waiting. At a door, of course …

It was October of 2011, and my husband and I were living in east central Illinois.

A long way from Miller Park, but our fandom hadn’t faded. That’s the thing about being a Wisconsin fan. You can move away, but the Brewers don’t stop being yours. You never say goodbye.

My parents had made the six-hour drive from central Wisconsin to come visit for the weekend. It was a beautiful fall Friday evening, and the Brewers were playing.

They’d won the first two games of the NLDS against the Arizona Diamondbacks, lost the next two in Arizona, and came home to Milwaukee for a winner-take-all Game 5.

Arizona tied it in the ninth, so it went to extra innings. The four of us were standing closer to the TV than should be necessary. No one had to explain what this meant to anyone else in the room. You could feel it—and see the nervousness on our faces.

Carlos Gómez singled and stole second. (People there said everyone in the stadium knew he was going to run, and he did it anyway.)

Then Nyjer Morgan hit a single up the middle, and Gómez raced home …

Brewers won. Game over.  

The Brewers were headed to the NLCS for the first time in franchise history as a National League team.

Our front door was open, with the screen door letting fresh air in. And we were screaming out the door. I guess it was to make sure everyone knew what just happened. In a nice neighborhood full of Cubs and Cardinals fans, we were probably the only ones cheering for Milwaukee that night, and we were definitely the loudest.   

We didn’t think twice about who could hear us, though. It didn’t matter.

We just stood at the door and screamed.

Later that year, we moved back to Wisconsin.

The one door we were finally ready to walk out of was the one that led home.

Let’s logically look at the facts for a minute …

So how does such a “small” team end up in the World Series? If we continued that story based on logic first, it wouldn’t add up. And yet … here we are.

It’s proof that logic only gets you so far. We’re led to think that winning is determined by size and budget. If you work in marketing, that probably sounds familiar. And it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The winning formula has nothing to do with size. It starts with mindset, and it’s all about the order. I call it The MEL Method and it’s how you can create marketing with meaning. Not by adding more, or by getting bigger, but by putting the most important elements in the right order.    

Mindset Comes First (And Fuels Momentum)

Momentum is something you feel, not something you buy. You don’t see numbers on a scoreboard (or a marketing dashboard) and get momentum. It’s built over time, and it’s built on belief.

In 1982, the Brewers lost the first two games of the ALCS and had to win three straight at home. In 2011, they led the Diamondbacks 2-0, lost both games in Arizona, and came home for that winner-take-all Game 5. This year in 2026, they swept the Dodgers in the NLCS after being swept themselves in 2025.

None of those teams had logical proof it would work. What they had was a belief that kept the next game from feeling like the last one.

That’s what mindset you can’t buy looks like—it’s what you believe before the results show up.

And it fuels momentum, because belief is what carries you from one game—or one campaign—to the next.

In marketing, mindset is what you believe about why you exist before the dashboard shows it. It’s what keeps you moving when a campaign misses, a quarter dips, or a competitor outspends you. Most marketing starts with the tactics, but the marketing that lasts starts with a belief. We don’t lose momentum because we lack tactics, tools, or technology—we lose it because we get lost in the noise and we stop believing in our approach after one bad result.

You can see it in this year’s Brewers team. The Dodgers swept the Brewers last October, and players say that loss still fueled them this season. Matt Arnold, the team’s president of baseball operations, told reporters before the NLCS that regardless of the economics, the clubhouse believes, and so does he.

You can see it in the fans too. We stood in the doorway for 44 years, with nothing in the results telling us to stay.

Purpose and performance don’t have to compete. They compound, but only if the belief is there to keep the momentum going.

What do you believe before it’s been proven?

Empathy Keeps It Real

Think about that 1982 parade again.

The organizers decided early, before the World Series ended, that the city would celebrate no matter what. The players weren’t thrilled, but then they saw the crowd. And while that seems like a strategy on the surface, it was really a city that knew its team well enough to know what it needed (even after a loss).

Brands get the chance to do this too, but sometimes we forget because we focus on logic first. The campaign flops, the launch slips, or the message doesn’t land the way we planned and we consider it a failure. But learning can be a win in of itself, and what you do next matters. Customers remember who shows up anyway.

Empathy is what makes people stay, even when the results don’t go your way. You can’t fake it, schedule it, or buy it. You earn it by getting close to the people you’re serving.

The Brewers work like that too. Arnold, a former scout, says you’ve got to get to know the player and be around them. Before Game 1 of this World Series, the scouting department presented directly to the players. Marketing has a version of this. We’re surrounded by dashboards that tell us what people clicked. But getting close means asking why and getting in a room with them. How often do you get in a room with the people you’re serving? Most of us don’t do it enough.

Empathy is what I felt in our living room in 2011, with the four of us standing inches from the TV. No one had to explain what that Game 5 meant. We all just knew. And that’s the reaction you want when you write something for people: “That’s exactly how I feel.”

Who would stay if you lost?

Logic Belongs Last

Logic would have said a small market can’t compete. The whole premise of my new book, Go SMALL and Grow, explains why this is wrong.

Milwaukee is the smallest media market in baseball. But this year, the Brewers finished with the best record in the sport, and then swept the Dodgers, one of the biggest spenders in the game, a year after the Dodgers swept them.

Marketers do the opposite all the time. A campaign underperforms, so we change it. A number dips, so we panic. From the outside, the Brewers look like they treated last year’s sweep as information, not a verdict.

Look at how they build a roster. More than half of the players on this year’s postseason roster came from other organizations. Some were passed over. Some had numbers that said “not quite.” Finding players like that is their specialty. Most seasons, they have at least a couple stories where a player no one else wanted becomes someone they can’t win without.

The numbers aren’t lying. They’re just not asking why. In marketing, that’s the campaign that looks like a dud on the dashboard until someone gets close enough to the audience to see what it’s actually doing.

The Brewers have strong analytics. They sit alongside scouting and development, not above them. Data is a good translator because it’s interpretive, but it needs mindset and empathy to tell it where to aim.

The scoreboard said the Brewers lost in 1982. The parade said something different. Logic told you the result. Mindset and empathy told you what it meant.

And in 2011, logic could explain Carlos Gómez’s steal and Nyjer Morgan’s single. It couldn’t explain why a family was screaming out a front door.

That’s the sequence. Logic can tell you what happened. Mindset and empathy are why anyone cares.

Are you using data to decide, or to understand?

If the Brewers aren’t proof that SMALL still wins, I’ll give up cheese curds for a year. (Please don’t make me. I love them. That’s how confident I am here.)

For me, watching the Brewers in the World Series feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I made that comment on a fan’s post, though, and was corrected in a Wisconsin-nice way that made me smile …

“Not once-in-a-lifetime, Melanie.”

“First in a lifetime.”

Good point.

That’s empathy from fans that understand each other.

What You’ll Need:

Ask them where they were. Who they were with. What they remember feeling.

Then don’t fix it, add to it, or look anything up. Just listen.

Listening and Learning are two of the five letters in SMALL. This is how you practice them.

If this story sparked a thought, a question, or even a gentle disagreement, I’d love to hear it. Tell me what resonated—or what didn’t.

I’d love to make this a conversation so we can learn and grow together.