What makes a good endorser?

Is it important for an athlete to use and believe in the product he or she endorses? Does that make the endorsement more authentic, and therefore, more convincing?

Years ago, I might’ve said yes, but every day the endorsement world becomes more of a Show Me The Money kind of culture, and a real connection between athlete and product matters less.

As true as that might be, athletes (and their agents) still try to put the right spin on it. When Michael Beasley signed with Adidas last week, Steve Reed, his business manager, said "Mike has agreed enthusiastically to endorse Adidas and wear the shoe as he has done his whole playing life."

Thing is, as reported by Darren Rovell in his SportsBiz blog, photographic evidence of Beasley shows him playing in Nikes more than any other shoe, including a pair of Jordan Aqua VIII's for games against Wisconsin and USC in last year’s NCAA tournament.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26874362

So they’re saying the right thing, even though it may not be true, and they’ll get no flack for it. Because it’s understood that endorsers are paid to endorse. When we would talk to 13-24 year old athletes about this stuff, they automatically assumed that the sports stars they saw shaving with Schick or wearing a Tag Heuer were doing it because they were getting paid to do it. The trickier and more important question was around sports-related products like Gatorade, which can affect performance on the field.

Gatorade chose their endorsers very carefully. For ten years, the only celebrity endorser they had was Michael Jordan. And after that, they associated themselves with only the most elite, and more important, most championship-winning athletes. Jeter, Hamm, Manning.

For Beasley and Adidas, it’s a little different. It’s more about exposure than anything else. No skepticism there. Just wanting get in with the cool kids.

Mark Cuban is authentic

Before we talk more about insights and sports ads, let’s go back to the subject of authenticity in sports. Which brings me to Mark Cuban.

Sure, he’s way out there. And he’s crazy controversial. But he has enough money to not care what anyone thinks about him, and let’s hear it for someone who stands up for what he cares about, right or wrong, good or bad.

He has fire and passion and cares about doing sports right, and to me, that’s authentic. You probably don’t like AJ Pierzynski unless you’re a White Sox fan, and I can guarantee you don’t like Bill Laimbeer unless you’re a Pistons fan, but you can’t deny that they bring/brought something valuable to their teams. A no-BS, do what it takes attitude. Often annoying, and easy to hate. But always entertaining, and most important, a crucial spark to an inspired performance.

I’m not saying this from a sports marketer’s pov, more from a sports fan’s perspective from afar. I don’t know enough about Cuban to talk about him like an expert. What I’ve seen is this: he’s a rabid sports fan, he’s insanely competitive (and sometimes just insane), and he speaks his mind. Not a real good combination for corporate America, which probably explains why he’s ranting on sidelines and not pitching toothpaste.

You may know that Cuban was in the news again recently with the whole Josh Howard/National anthem incident:

http://nba.fanhouse.com/2008/09/16/josh-howard-isnt-about-celebrating-the-star-spangled-banner/

As he always does, Cuban steadfastly stood behind his player on his blog (“Try being in a position of always having to be “on” and checking for cameras, because if you let down your guard, any soundbite, even one as short as 11 seconds, can turn into headline news across the country, no matter what the context. “) But interestingly, he removed the posting on the subject, then added a new posting accompanied by hundreds of vitriolic emails he received during the controversy.

http://blogmaverick.com/2008/09/19/i-made-my-point/

Did he back down? Quite the contrary. He was making a point about free speech.

I’m not a fan of, or a hater of, Mark Cuban. The fact that he means well may mean nothing to you because you just may think he’s an ass. And that may be true. But sometimes his kind pops up in sports (Hello, Ty Cobb?). It doesn’t make him any less authentic. Perhaps it makes him even more authentic.

Does that mean he would be the right guy to buy my beloved Cubbies? That’s another story. He’d certainly give it his all. Would that be such a bad thing

Great Sports Ads Come From Insights, Not Facts

Facts are not insights.

Facts are democratic; insights are autocratic. Facts are out there for anyone to possess; insights, when used right, belong to only one owner. And even more important, they can define a brand.

Great insights start with the simplest of truths and clearest of facts.

Creating an insight is taking a fact and making it relevant to the person to whom you’re speaking. Insights are facts made a whole lot more interesting.

Let’s illustrate this discussion using Michael Jordan, the greatest spokesperson any brand has ever had (except for Hanes. Not authentic. MJ with Kevin Bacon? Cuba Gooding? Who’s next, David Hasselhoff? We’ll talk about that another time).

Watching MJ perform was always awesome. Riveting. Made you want to stop whatever you were doing and watch. That’s a fact.

The insight that Nike derived from that fact was that when Michael drove the lane and put up a shot, since you never knew what ridiculously original and creative thing he would do on the way, the world pretty much came to a halt. From this insight, Nike created Frozen Moments, a beautiful dramatization of that thought.



A powerfully insightful ad and a compelling visual articulation of why MJ was so damn great. More on this topic to come.

The best sports ads aren't necessarily on your TV (Part 1)

Think you’re seeing the best sports advertising in the world as you lay on the couch flipping between the Maryland-Cal and Michigan State-Florida Atlantic games? Uh…no.

Check these out. Nike/Europe ads done by Weiden and Kennedy in Amsterdam, aimed at university aged women.

http://www.paranoidus.com/projects.php?p=250

If you live in the advertising world, you know Weiden and Kennedy. If you’re a brain surgeon or some other useless profession, Weiden is the agency that’s done just about all of the Nike advertising for just about ever, from the ground breaking Heritage spot to Bo Knows to Mars Blackmon to Frozen Moments. They don’t nail it every time, but over time, they’ve done it best.

Empowerment is the theme here. Not an earth shattering positioning, but the way they bring it to life is very cool. Please refrain from ingesting hallucinogens before you watch. Otherwise, crank the volume.

Great Sports Ad = Tingle?

A comment from one of my recent posts talked about The Tingle. The commenter’s simple criteria for a great sports ad is whether or not s/he gets a tingle when seeing it—or chill bumps, scalp fizz, however you describe it. OK. But I would argue that any and all Tingles would remain dormant if the ad you’re seeing is afflicted with fakeness. You’ll know it when you don’t feel it.

The last Tingle I got was from the Nike basketball TV commercial that aired during the Olympics, featuring Marvin Gaye singing the Star Spangled Banner intercut with images of the US Olympic basketball team.



Using that old footage was pure genius. The unique look of the film, Marvin’s pure and blissful expression as he sang, the funky arrangement of our national anthem, the sincere, animated hooting and hollering of the crowd behind him…it just made me smile. Gave me chill bumps.

The way they weaved in the mostly high speed (slowed down) footage of the current basketball players was artful and athletic. And the ending, with the players coming together and raising their intertwined arms and hands, was Knute Rockne, George Patton, and Mike Krzyzewski rolled into one, with Francis Scott Key providing the voiceover. Not too shabby.

It was one of those ads I’d look at when I was doing work for Gatorade and wish I’d done. Nike at it’s best. And every frame of it Authentic.

But…just for your consideration, here’s a question to consider as you watch the ad:

What was it selling?

The Nike brand? A specific Nike product? Nike Team USA gear? Team USA? The Olympics? Kobe Bryant (He is a Nike endorser and many people felt that he dominated the ad)? Marvin Gaye? Francis Scott Key? All of the above?

Does it matter? As a sports fan, it made me like Nike. Isn’t that good enough?

Is anything really authentic in sports advertising?

I yak about authenticity being the end-all, be-all in sports advertising.

But consider this possibility:

Nothing in sports advertising is truly authentic. Because my definition of authentic may differ from yours.

We once shot a Gatorade spot called “Get Up,” featuring the James Brown track of the same name. It was about athletes who return to action, more fired up than before, after getting knocked down. One of the vignettes showed a catcher getting a throw from the outfield and blocking the plate. The throw comes in high, and he runner slams into the catcher, who gets sent flying but holds onto the ball, still dripping Gatorade’s trademarked colored sweat.

The group of us who were responsible for making the ad had days-long debates on whether or not the baserunner should barrel over the catcher or try to slide around him, since the throw came in high. Serious disagreements and strong opinions. Pens were thrown. Paper was ripped. It was nuts!

Ultimately, we agreed to disagree , but the losing side was not happy and felt we had compromised the ad with action that wasn’t as authentic as it could be.

Did we get crazed letters? No. Did it make the ad any less good? No. Did it put a chink in Gatorade’s armor of authenticity? Some would say yes.

Truth is, we make stuff up when we make ads. We have to fake it. When you fake it poorly, you get busted. When you fake it well, you look like you know what you’re talking about. Which makes you even more authentic. Ironic, isn’t it?

So who’s to say what’s truly authentic?

Authenticity. Seriously.

In 2005, we made a Gatorade spot called Winning Formula. It was created to demonstrate the precision behind the formulation of Gatorade and the science involved. To prove how the smallest of differences can profoundly affect an outcome, we changed three iconic moments in sports history: we made Michael Jordan’s shot over Craig Ehlo roll out of the hoop, we caused Joe Montana’s pass to fly just over Dwight Clark’s outstretched hands, and we made Derek Jeter’s flip to Posada a fraction too late to nail Jason Giambi at the plate.



To recreate these events, we did ridiculously comprehensive research. We talked to cameramen who shot the original video to get the right film stocks, camera lenses, and angles to make sure it looked absolutely real.

We plotted the angles to make sure the balls matched the flight of the balls that Jordan, Montana, and Jeter threw. We had the actors who played the ref and ump watch the original footage over and over so they could call Montana’s pass incomplete and call Jason Giambi safe at home with the exact same motion that the original ref and ump called the touchdown good and Giambi out.

The jerseys are exact replicas, down to the shoes. The playing surfaces were recreated to the original specifications, down to the chalk marks, floor markings, and height of the grass. Even the haircuts were perfect matches. And even if you couldn’t tell that by looking at the film, we’d have done it that way.

Gatorade was so successful for so many years because they respected authenticity above just about everything. Because without it you’re a cheater and a pretender and nobody should ever trust you as a sports authority ever again. Even if you do it just one eentsy weentsy little time.

Seriously.

I truly believe that if we had missed on anything, we would have been called out, and the commercial wouldn’t have been so believable—or received as much positive buzz. The irony is, to make this spot feel completely real, we had to do a tremendous amount of faking. But that’s movie magic. You’re watching it all the time without knowing it. And it’s a big part of making sports ads authentic.