CHAPTER 3The Path to Loyalty
Growing up just south of Cleveland, Ohio, Ashley was raised as a sports fan, ushering for the local baseball team, now called the Guardians, and cheering on Bernie Kosar and the Browns, who mostly lost, every Sunday. In 1995, the team's owner, Art Modell, petitioned to move the Browns out of Cleveland. The “Dawg Pound” fans, including Ashley, were at first shocked, and then furious at what they considered to be the “theft” of their team. Even Pittsburgh Steeler fans, Cleveland's most fervent rival and “football enemy,” protested. Congress held hearings. In the resulting legal battle, Cleveland won the right to keep the name and team colors, and Modell won his bid to move the team for the 1996 season. Fans like Ashley lost trust in the team's owner, and as a result, loyalty to the team suffered for decades.
When the Brown's owner “stole her team,” Ashley learned painfully about the relationship between loyalty and trust. If you break trust, you lose loyalty. And conversely, if you build trust, you build the path to loyalty. Her uncle and fellow Browns fan, Fred Reichheld, published his first book, The Loyalty Effect, shortly after the Cleveland Browns moved. At the time of the book launch, Ashley remembers her dad (Fred's older brother) proposing to Fred that he should market the book specifically to Browns fans. Fred ended up including a small orange ...
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