Have you ever watched Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor play volleyball?
OK, yes, they look hot. They’re tall and muscular and wear thin pieces of fabric some would call clothes, others would call illegal in 12 states. Little boys in California stash volleyball magazines under their beds in anticipation of some pre-bedtime alone time.
But c’mon. That’s not what makes Kerri and Misty spectacular.
I mean, have you seen them play volleyball?
These women aren’t just incredibly talented athletes. They’re incredibly competitive talented athletes. If they were up 20-0 in a match they wouldn’t let up, and if they gave you and your really tall friend Karch a 19-0 lead they would still find a way to crush you. I never saw them play a match where I wasn’t sure they were going to win.
So I can’t imagine they’re happy to see the AVP’s new campaign, which Darren Rovell mentions in his Sports Biz blog. As a sports fan, and a supporter of equal rights for women-—especially in sports--I have to wince, too. This sets women back a few decades.
Somewhere, Kerri Walsh is wincing. And Bobby Riggs is chuckling.
As hard as it must be to be Nike because of the demands for them to be excellent every time they make something, it’s harder to not be Nike. Trust me. We felt it on Gatorade.
But Gatorade is a functional beverage. And while we had opportunities to major in emotion and minor in function, we mostly had to find ways to give people the functional reasons why they should drink it, and still make it cool (thank you, Keith Jackson).
On TV, Nike basically just does pure brand advertising. They sell coolness and authenticity. Anyone who tried to go down that route has to live up to their standards. And they quickly find out how hard that is.
So here comes Dick’s with a need to sell a shoe that helps you perform.
They don’t talk a whole lot about the shoe or the properties that help you perform. They just make a point that this shoe may feel good, but it performs like a champ. And that baseball’s not about feeling good, it’s about performance.
Huh?
OK. Strange logic gap aside, I give them credit for not making another oversaturated high speed film about shoes that help you terrorize the ball and dramatically slide into third with a triple every time you come up to bat.
It’s a funny spot. But it falls short when it comes to the coolness and authenticity that Nike chasers crave.
They use Jimmy Rollins, which is a nice surprise. Especially since he has nice comedic timing. He makes the spot good. And do you know how I knew it was Jimmy Rollins? Because one of the guys says, loudly and clearly, “JIMMY ROLLINS!!”
YES IT IS. AND THERE ARE FOUR GIANT DICK’S SIGNS AND A NIKE SWOOSH IN THE BACKGROUND TOO. And there are a lot of Nike shoes, too. And today is Thursday.
Listen. If you’re a baseball fan, you know that’s Jimmy Rollins. If you don’t know it, you’ll find out. Too bad Weiden & Kennedy, the agency that’s done so much great Nike work, often featuring athletes who you don’t know (yet), couldn’t convince Dick’s to stop taking their obvious pills. They felt the need to make sure everyone knew who this potentially anonymous looking baseball player is, since they were paying the former MVP a lot of money to stand in their store and get hit by baseballs.
Wait… are those really baseballs? Could’t be, right? They wouldn’t really do that. But the way I saw it, they looked fake. If I’m wrong, tell me. But they look like foamy rubber balls bouncing off his chest, and Nike would’ve found a way to make sure they didn’t look fake.
You could argue that when Michael Jordan retired (each time he retired), he opened up a world of possibilities for other NBA players. But MJ did have Scottie, and there were even times when he needed the spot up jump shooters like Bobby Hansen and John Paxson to win a game.
But Tiger Woods IS golf. Golf fanatics will watch the sport regardless of who’s playing. For the rest of the world, he’s what makes golf interesting. He’s what makes it popular.
And now he’s back, after almost a year away from the game rehabbing his injured knee.
I would argue that Tiger Woods is the single most dominant athlete in the history of a sport almost completely waged by individual competitors. There’s probably never been a sport whose fans and managers missed one of its own so much, and there’s probably never been a sport where the competitors were so glad to see one of its own go missing.
This ad from Nike captures that feeling perfectly.
Sometimes, the assignments you think are going to be easiest can be excruciatingly difficult. I don’t know if that was the case for this ad, but the pressure of having the greatest athlete in the world raises the bar quite a bit. It’s a nice, fairly understated TV spot, with quality performances from the other golfers, and most important…
…they remembered one of the most important tenets of a successful ad: end strong. The first 50 seconds are nice to watch, but the ending is laugh out loud funny.
Toger is such a huge asset for sports marketing. It’s nice to see such a great property used so well.
Welcome back, Tiger. The other golfers may not be so glad, but Nike sure is.
In their decades long attempt to catch up to Nike, Adidas is launching an online TV channel. According to Advertising Age online, “The player is designed to encourage Hulu-style sharing and can be embedded in blogs and other social-networking sites via an Adidas-branded video-player module.”
For now, it just feels like they’re selling stuff.
Sure, they need to get it up and running, so they’ve loaded it up with some slick videos starring Dwight Howard and Gilbert Arenas and featuring Adidas products, with the hope that soon, others will join in and post their own videos.
The secret to Nike’s success over the years was that they made marketing materials, especially TV commercials, that connected you to the Nike name vs any one certain thing.
They sold coolness. They got you to want to be on their team. That’s what sports is all about, right? Be on the best team. Or at least be a part of it. Who wouldn’t want to be with these guys?
They grew their brand by creating emotional bonds with consumers. And grow their brand, they did.
When I worked on Gatorade, we wanted the same ending, but we couldn’t do it the same way. Gatorade is a functional product that we not only needed to sell, but we also had to explain why you should use it. It’s obvious that you need shoes to play sports. You can’t go barefoot. But you could drink anything.
So even when we made almost purely emotional spots, we still needed to make sure the functional message came through. Hence, colored sweat, even if it’s just for one second. Like in this spot.
As much as we tried on Gatorade, we could never be like Nike, because we had a story to tell, and it made sense for us to tell that story, because people wanted to know why they should drink Gatorade over something else.
So while Gatorade had “Be Like Mike,” “I like Nike” was good enough for the guys out in Beaverton.
Adidas has never fully appreciated the fact that in their category, you’re not selling products, you’re selling a brand. They've made some very nice ads over the years, and clearly have forward thinking ideas. But they haven't been consistent enough.
They should stick to capturing people’s hearts, and letting their brains follow.
I like funny ads that have a point. And I like when superstar athletes are used well in marketing. And I love the combination of the two.
Usually, it’s a result of digging deep into an athlete’s psyche and uncovering the insight that makes him or her special, then turning that insight into something surprising and fun.
Sometimes, it’s purely using what you’ve got on the surface. A dude who’s an athlete that you like purely because you like him as an athlete. And when he gets together with his athlete friends, you just let the funny happen.
So I've really enjoyed the T-mobile campaign that has featured Charles Barkley and D-Wade. It’s well written, well shot, and well edited. The performances seem genuine and I laugh at just about every one.
But let’s hear it for the passage of time. It makes all ickiness in the world of sports go away. Just ask Marv Albert. T-Mobile has brought Chuck back, this time with Dwight Howard too.
It’s funny! Not crystal-ball-in-the-nuts funny, but smart, real, fresh dialogue funny. Good for those guys. I love everything T-Mobile’s doing with these guys, except for the part where they pulled the ads for a while.
C’mon, T-mobile. We knew you were going to put Chuck back on at some point. Next time, put away the pretense and just let the boys play.
In this America, in this millenium, with the amount of celebrity stupidity that fills the news, is it really such huge news that a 23 year old had his picture taken with a cell phone camera while taking a bong hit?
The really important news was around which marketers decided to stick with him and which would throw him out quicker than stale bong water. Kellogg’s dumped him, Subway kept him. More to come. Personally, I think he’s the stiffest, most ineffective eight-time gold medal winner in history, and I never would’ve signed him to any contract in the first place with the amount of cash brands were paying him. I would rather have put my money on this guy.
Who woulda thunk it? Beast on the court, humorous soft touch off it. That really is amazing.
On the surface, I’m with a lot of fans who love this spot. It shows a side of LeBron that we don’t normally get to see. It’s surprising. And funny.
So on it’s own, it scores. But it’s a continuation of the NBA’s “Amazing Happens” campaign, and needs to be evaluated in that context as well. Here’s one of the spots from last year:
Very different. Very, wonderfully amazing. Makes me interested in the NBA. Makes me want to watch more NBA action.
And more than anything else, it makes me feel that NBA players are uniquely interesting and pretty spectacular and just kind of cooler than those other somewhat inferior professional athletes.
I’m drawn to their personalities in an unexpected way. That’s a pretty hard-working ad.
So when LeBron sings Time After Time, I’m loving it and I like him a whole lot.
But it doesn’t make the NBA feel all that amazing.
So far, 2009 is the year of the teaser ad in sports. First, G. Now, this:
The rumors are flying: LeBron is leaving to play basketball; Lebron is going to the Knicks/Lakers/Maccabi Tel Aviv Electra; LeBron is co-starring with Hugh Hefner in a reality show called "The Girls Next Door to Lebron..."
I like it. It gives me just enough information to care and wonder, and not enough to give anything away. Hail Nike.
Even though I played soccer from 1st through 10th grades, I’ve never been a rabid fan of the Beautiful Game. But I appreciate a lot about it: the stamina, the athleticism, the amazing goals…and maybe most of all, the fans.
One of the best sporting events I ever attended was at Highbury a few years ago to see Arsenal play. The energy in that stadium rivaled the old Chicago Stadium during the playoffs…and this was an early, regular season game. The drum beats made my heart pound, and the chanting made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, even though I couldn’t understand what they hell they were saying.
But what I could understand was the passion, the commitment, the involvement of those fans with their team. I may not concede that soccer is the best sport in the world, but it’s hard to argue that the fans rule.
Nike has taken advantage of that incomparable fan passion to create a soccer spot that I not only understand, but love. It features lovers and haters of futbol phenom Ronaldo.
Could they have done this with any single American athlete? Doubtful. To engender a massive amount of heartfelt passion, you need to start with something that a lot of people are very passionate about, and I’m not sure any American athlete would qualify. Except maybe David Beckham.
What happens when your morning mug of coffee is accompanied by a mug shot of the celebrity endorser in whom you’ve invested millions of dollars? There's not enough cream ‘n sugar in the world to make that particular cuppa joe taste better.
But is it bitter enough to pull the ads featuring your bad boy? For T-Mobile, yes.
They did some nice work recently featuring Dr. J, Magic Johnson, DWade and Charles Barkley, but Chuck did his own work on the Scottsdale roadways earlier this year, ushering in the New Year behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol level of .149 percent , nearly twice the legal limit of .08 percent in Arizona.
T-Mobile has pulled the ads. Charles has also lost his NBA studio gig on TNT. Oops.
Wicked, wicked alcohol. It’ll get you in trouble and lose you lots of good things, like jobs and endorsements. And the things that go with them, like really colorful suits and the freedom to gamble away $10 million over a few years. Plus, people will enjoy making fun of you (although it’ll also put you in some pretty prestigious company). Oops.
For now, all the interested parties have done what’s expected of them. Charles has apologized and T-Mobile has scrapped the ads, but like Marv Albert, Steve Howe, Bill Clinton, and probably even Pacman Jones, they’ll be back.
It’s not the illegal part that makes me crazy. It’s the stupid part. It’s watching golden eggs fly away when all you have to do is sit on them. Sad truth is, for the uber talented, there are always more golden eggs.
Of all of the reasons my children make me feel blessed, one of the best is the fact that none of them play hockey. I like to watch the game, but I haven’t played since 5th grade, when Phil Humbert nailed me with a slapshot above my right eye in his frozen backyard (six stitches). So nobody in our family is much of a skater.
Hockey is smelly, injury-prone, and expensive, and if your child is on a travel team, you TRAVEL. For basketball or baseball, the farthest you go is maybe the next county. For hockey, you cross time zones.
For all of those reasons, Honda loves hockey. Hockey families need lots of equipment and log lots of miles so they need big roomy cars…like, say, Honda Passports and Pilots. So it’s a natural for them to sponsor the NHL. But it doesn’t mean they have to do such smart ads, like this.
I really like this spot. I may not be a hockey parent, but I’m a sports parent who can relate to the rituals involved in kids’ sports. The packing and unpacking, the early morning games and practices, the special moments watching them play. And the fact that our kids rely on us to make it all happen.
Honda takes this insight and connects it to their products: “As reliable as the people who drive them.” Smart. What’s even smarter is how they tie in their NHL sponsorship, without showing a single NHL player or highlight:
“Official vehicle of the NHL. And hockey parents everywhere.”
Knowing that hockey players are better at checking than acting, another wise move.
I’m a big fan of Verizon Wireless. My loyalty to them (and my contempt for AT&T) is why I got a Storm vs iphone. So I know very little about T-Mobile, other than the fact that their ads with current and former pro basketball players crack me up.
I’ve been paying attention to their ads for a while, mainly because I think Catherine Zeta-Jones is, how you say, shmokin’ hot. CZJ, you were rooked by Zellweger for the Oscar nod. I’d do a number with you any day. But I can’t do it alone…
Since Catherine’s been gone, D-Wade and Charles Barkley have picked up the torch, and they’ve done a great job. The spots are funny and strategic, crafted around T-Mobile’s selling idea of their Fave Five calling plan. They even ran a Super Bowl ad last year, which ranked in the middle of the USA Today Ad Meter, but as high as any ad in the online user poll.
Getting celebrity athletes to act well is so hard. Most of them would rather be on the court than on a set (or on the golf course). And in a spot with a lot of dialogue, the desired nuances in performance that dictate the need to do take after take…it’s just not what athletes want to be doing (Michael Jordan used to start saying “That was perfect. What was wrong with the one?!” after the second take).
There are so many factors involved; obviously, having an athlete with a scoche of acting ability is nice, but it’s rare. So sometimes you have to write around it, and sometimes you can take advantage of it, like in the ending of this commercial:
All challenges considered, the new T-Mobile commercial is wonderfully pleasing. Nice performances, good writing, surprising appearances from Magic Johnson and Dr. J. I’m surprised they didn’t hold this one for the Super Bowl. Seems to have all the ingredients.
If you want to laugh out loud, watch the Heineken spot in my blog from a couple of days ago (you must), but if you want a nice chuckle, and a great example of how to use athletes well, you could do a lot worse than the work from T-Mobile.
I’m starting to look back on sports advertising and marketing from 2008, and I have to start at what has been the epicenter of great sports ads for eons: Nike and Michael Jordan.
Early in the year they ran a series of “Become Legendary” ads featuring MJ for the Jumpman brand. A couple of them just had his voiceover, one had a bit of him on camera, one highlight-filled spot didn’t have him at all. This one was my favorite.
They were beautifully filmed and nicely written. But for the most part, they weren’t as surprisingly fresh as the ads they did together when he was playing. And that’s primarily because he just doesn’t provide the same raw material.
He was the lead actor in a spectacular drama, night in and night out, for a decade. Win or lose, he was brilliant, and the fodder he created was so rich and full of possibilities. It enabled Weiden & Kennedy and Nike to make ridiculously great commercials like this:
It’s just not the same now.
His words in the Become Legendary series ring true. They speak to young athletes craving greatness, and he still inspires. I’d bet these spots work hard against those win-at-all-costs hard core competitive athletes. And that may be where the biggest difference may be: he doesn’t have the broad impact he once had over a wider swath of people. That was what made him so valuable in his days of stardom on the court. MJ as an athlete was both a charmer and a winner, which made him universally loved and invaluable as a spokesman.
The next time you see that again will probably be…well…never.
Should Nike continue to use MJ in their ads? Is he still effective? You tell me. I'm happy watching him do his thing for as long as he chooses.
Although I do wish he'd stop doing those Hanes ads. Cuba Gooding was bad enough. Kevin Bacon and Charlie Sheen? Yikes. Who's next, Ashton Kutcher?
Buy a cheap watch, it’ll break before what can say “What time is it?” Buy a Honda instead of an Audi, it’ll run just fine, but it won’t purr. That’s what you get for the extra 20 grand. Hire a shoddy plumber, you’ll need a really good plunger.
You absolutely get what you pay for. Truer words were never spoken.
Or maybe not, given a couple of (completely unrelated) recent events.
One: I just returned from a cruise in the Caribbean. They call it a cruise, of course, because you spend most of your time cruising from one buffet line to another. Or to the pizzeria. Or Johnny Rockets. Or Ben and Jerry’s. Or the midnight buffet. All of which were on this one floating city of neverending gastric overload.
Every time I saw another corn-fed sun burnt dude with a cut out tank top showing way too much of his hairy back pile another fried pork cutlet onto his pile of gravy-covered mashed potatoes, I winced and felt a pang of sadness for him and his family. In his case, he was looking to get more than what you pay for. But that’s my opinion; he probably figured, “I paid an arm and a leg for this cruise, and I‘m going to get my money’s worth.” Everything is relative, yes?
Two: Stephon Marbury. He’s getting paid 21.9 million bucks a year to wear the Knicks colors and sit his ass on the bench. When the Knicks signed him in 2004, they thought he was the final piece of the puzzle that created the right mix of veterans and youngsters to make a run at a championship (or two). He helped them into the playoffs that year. But you know the story since then. All bad, with our current unhappy ending.
Truth is, GM’s make their bets based on all kinds of assessments and the rest is a roll of the dice. A-Rod gets 250 million. The Redskins pay Steve Spurrier 25 extremely large. Becks gets his 250 mil to enjoy the LA lifestyle and the sidelines. None of them produced any more than some fun headlines for the pundits.
There will always be busts.
And as hard as it may be to find them, there will always be Sure Things.
Michael, Tiger, Mia, Peyton…world champion athletes and likeable people. Obviously, it costs more to sign them, but in their cases, the adage proves true. I know they were worth every dollar to Gatorade, and I’d bet Nike and Mastercard and Amex and Rolex, etc, would feel similarly. In each case, those brands got far more than what they paid for.
Quality people--loyal, sincere athletes--who are also winners are incredibly few and far between. They are, to borrow from one of Peyton’s commercials:
Jerry Maguire is one of my heroes. I know he’s a fictional character. But George Bailey restores the faith of millions every holiday season, simply because he did the right thing when the time called for it. And for all of those people, he’s about as real as they come.
Jerry stood for the same thing: doing right by people even when others in his same shoes were taking an easier, greedier path. And of course, in Capra-esque fashion, both George and Jerry win in the end. And so do we, for watching their stories. But I digress.
I love Jerry, and the movie Cameron Crowe wrote about the fragile do-gooder, because Jerry gets It. The “It” being the difference between good and bad. He gets it in the beginning of the film, when his voiceover ticks off the future sports heroes of America:
“See, America sets the tone for the world. In Indiana—Clark Hodd. Thirteen. The best point guard in the country. Seattle, Washington. Dallas Molloy. Went to court to be allowed to box professionally. She’s sixteen.”
These, I’m sure, are based on real life scenarios. Which brings me to Milan Simon Tuttle, today’s media darling and Youtube sensation.
Look at her go. She’s the next Curly Neal! Or maybe the next Jordan McCabe.
The massive moolah waiting to be scooped up by athletes is no secret. Talent is important, but marketability is paramount. Anna Kournikova, anyone? Sure. Why not (notice not much tennis in those pics…)
Marketers are willing to throw great gobs of money at potential stars of the future. It’s what spurred Jerry on. And what eventually led him to make a U-turn and become a truly decent man. In his words:
“Now, I’ll be honest with you. I started noticing it a few years ago and didn’t say anything. In the quest for the big dollars, a lot of little things were going wrong.”
He sees the light. So he writes his mission statement.
“…we must crack open the clenched fist and give back a little for the common good…we must simply be the best version of ourselves…that goodness will be unbeatable and the money will follow.”
He distributes it to all of the agents at his firm. Which gets him fired and sends his career spiraling downward. But it eventually brings him love and success. Cool, huh? I love Jerry.
I love sports marketing, too. Not all parts of it, but enough of it to make it a major part of my life. Just because it’s more corporate business than personal pleasure doesn’t mean I can’t embrace it, learn about it, live it, and make a living off it.
More than anything, it reminds me of how lucky we are to be able to partake in our sports culture. Milan Tuttle, Marquise Walker, Frank Cushman, and the great Jerry Maguire; real or fictional, future stars or heartbreaking busts, they all feed our imaginations, demonstrate our potential, and remind us of what’s possible.
Because it’s not just about the money. It’s about the Kwan.
As Thanksgiving approaches, that’s a nice thing to keep in mind. Especially since we get to watch football all day between helpings of Tryptophan.
Hope you all have a great holiday week. I’m out of commission from November 22-29, and some of my extremely talented and Kwan-filled colleagues at Element 79 will be joining the SportsCentric fray. Enjoy.
In my rush to praise the awful yet buzzworthy Toyota "Saved by Zero" commercials, I did a terrible disservice to another commercial that is nauseatingly deserving of similar recognition.
Emmitt Smith, Clyde Frazier, and Keith Hernandez. Three athletes who have nothing to do with each other, and seemingly nothing in common, other than the fact that they’re older than young people. That, and/or they’re all terrible card players and they gambled away their pride.
And everything they say rhymes. Even the announcer! How awesome is that?
For what it’s worth, using ex-pro athletes for a men’s lose-the-grey-hair product absolutely makes sense. Might make more sense to use someone who is known for having grey hair, like Brett Favre. Maybe he’s too good a card player.
Maria Sharapova’s legs are so long, if we stood side by side, they would reach my Adam’s Apple. She is gorgeous. I saw her up close and her gamma ray countenance burned my forehead. Did I mention her legs are really long?
And keep in mind, she’s won Wimbledon and the Australian and US Opens. She’s got athletic cred. So it’s no surprise she's a highly sought after endorser.
In addition to Gatorade, she pitches or has pitched Nike, Motorola, Tag Heuer, Canon (“Make every shot a power shot!”), and of course Speedminton: The extreme racket sport that combines the best of tennis, badminton and racquetball!
She’s as terrible an actress as she's always been, so she’s probably most effective in her print work. Her best performances on moving film are when she’s just playing tennis or holding her yappy little dog. Please don’t make her speak any more!
And now, as reported by Darren Rovell in his Sports Biz blog, she’s leaving Gatorade for Enlyten SportStrips, a new rehydration product similar to the way Listerine breath strips work.
Smart or not? We’ll see. She didn’t make a lot of waves pitching Gatorade. Maybe she’ll do better for an upstart. One word of advice to Enlyten: Don’t make her say anything, or at least let her hold her dog.
Same product, same gag, different casting, a world of difference. I’m trying to put my finger on why this version of Guitar Hero’s Risky Business parody works so much better than the one with A-Rod, Kobe, Tony Hawk and Michael Phelps. It’s so hard to figure out…
No it’s not. And it has nothing to do with skin.
She made not be a pro athlete, but Heidi Klum is most definitely athletic. And smart, too, by choosing to star in this ad. She gets to show off her moves, have some fun, and deflect some of the ice princess criticism she’s received for her role hosting Project Runway. It’s an entertaining ad for an entertainment product. And Monday Night Football is the perfect media placement. Hell, run it on every sporting event for the next month. She plays much better in this ad and for this brand than the superstar quartet in and pink tops and barely visible undies. Interestingly enough, fans seem to be agreeing. Go figure.
