Talk is abloom about a Hollywood ending in Wales. No, it's not a bunch of actors who came and shot a rom-com that was then played on repeat in households. It is just two actors making things bright for a football club that was struggling to get its game back.
Ryan Reynolds, one of the two, did not hold back after the pivotal win: “One thing that’s running through my head over and over again was at the beginning, people said ‘Why Wrexham, why Wrexham’; this is exactly why Wrexham, what’s happening right now, is why.” After 15 years, the club was promoted out of the National League and into League Two.
Reynolds admittedly invests in things that he has zero ideas about. He's worse than Ted Lasso at this — Lasso is beginning to pick up strategies, albeit under the pretext of liquor-induced delirium. Be it a wireless company or football, there's not much in common between these and the Hollywood actor (where he comes from, the sport is called soccer). But he found a thread that ran across all of these areas: brand foundations. This was something he could work around.
With a marketing company and icon value of his own, he became the very face of these brands. He stepped out, tapped into the best of stories to spin for ad content, and kept his presence extremely active — if you go to a Wrexham match, chances are, the camera pans more to the actor than to the players on ground sweating through the whole ninety minutes.
Reynolds calls his approach, "emotional investment." The financial side of things isn't too different from the decisions that others in business make. According to him, everything takes off well when you pool your efforts toward building a good creative. This is, undoubtedly, the equivalent of ad budgeting and strategizing that all companies do. But there's a catch — Ryan Reynolds, with his own brand value alone, captures enough attention as a growing company would through a fraction of a Super Bowl ad. In that sense, the question — of whether you should learn investing from him — does not really appeal. The pedestals are quite different, and the resources, quite stark in contrast to one another.
Better still, Reynolds sees these investments as a transitory stage. He steps in, boosts the brand, and sells it off for a greater return. It's a great deal, to be honest. You invest and your returns come back even stronger.
The biggest takeaway of Ryan Reynolds' seemingly random investments is indeed his focus on brand foundations. None of these companies — or clubs — were, at their core, faltering. There was enough substance to back it up. All it needed was a significant push toward getting noticed. Wrexham was, in its good ol' days, a great team. But it slipped and never came back up. To boost its morale and supply it with more talent, it needed an investment like Reynolds'. It perhaps wasn't an 'emotional' investment. It was well thought out and driven by a scout for canvases that aren't entirely blank — it was an absolute necessity to have something to grip onto.
The formula is simple, after all: find a space with potential, add your value to it, make it grow, then exit with your rewards.
