Speedo. Visa. Kellogg's. PowerBar. Omega. Argent Mortgage. Matsunichi Communication Holdings. And, unofficially, NBC. Michael Phelps has endorsement deals coming out the wazzz, and now there's a mini-competition among all of his sponsors to exploit him to the fullest. Phelps is pulling in somewhere in the low eight figures from all his sponsorship arrangements — some estimate he could be worth $50 million to Nike — thanks to Speedo plastering its logo near his junk, Kellogg's putting him on the front of Frosted Flakes, and Visa spitting out spots faster than Americans are sinking into credit card debt. But most of the spots are quite terrible. This one, for flexible private jet ownership firm Citation Shares, falls somewhere on that scale between "clever and on target" and "predictable and gauche." Just look to the sweatshirt Phelps is wearing to find out which category we ended up putting him in.
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I think his 15 mins are near an end. The man is an awesome athlete but that rarely keeps one in the spotlight after the Olympics are over and he can't act nor does his face match his banging body.
Nope the only thing I can see that would prolong his 15 is taking up a underwear sponsorship, then doing a lot of billboard modeling - from the neck down.
Since when does Phelps need to act or promote underwear in order to be relevant? Is George Clooney more relevant an actor if he learns to swim butterfly? The only Phelps' problem may be the fact he's from USA, where people obviously try to put him in the same basket with Hollywood wannabes etc. That doesn't say much about Phelps, but it says a lot about USA. Anywhere else he'd be adored and worshiped. His '15 mins' are forever,because he's an olympic legend. He'll be relevant as long as Olympic games are relevant to the world we're living in.
That doesn't mean you're obliged to buy things he's endorsing or to like his face. But show some respect, all right?