'Nike and Adidas carpet-bombed the games with endorser-athletes and high-profile sponsorship deals, but smaller competitors such as Speedo and Puma achieved greater surges in awareness and buzz by backing a smaller group of athletes who just happened to dominate the games and much of the conversation surrounding them.' [AdAge]
Nike, America needs to talk to you. Maybe it's because you're afraid of a post-Olympics drop in sports fever, but you should know better than trying to change the game of tennis into something it's not. Specifically, another sport entirely: boxing.
Last night, Nike hosted a kick-off for the Open with "Grapple in the Apple" (ugh), a boxing-esque PR stunt that is, one assumes, to draw interest and coverage to the sport. Conveniently, the sports brand has endorsement deals with both Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, who just happen to be tennis' biggest rivalry at the moment. This means they can sponsor a showdown between the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the sport. And they've gone and hired frazzle-haired Don King to host the thing.
Completing the boxing metaphor, then, are the nicknames slapped on the players: Roger "The Magician of Precision" Federer and Rafa "Matador of Spin" Nadal." Ew. CONTINUED »
People loathe, loathe, loathe being sold things. Much like the canvassers parading up and down the block with clipboards, it's easy to avoid most hard sells if you keep your eyes to the ground and your finger on the TiVo button. Banished to the realm of petty annoyance, advertisers have had to adapt to the increasing chatter that consumers use to drown them out, and the result haven't always been pretty. Your shows get "paused" by snipes. Your reading material gets absorbed by advertisers. And now, you're basically reading advertising copy in your leisure time. CONTINUED »
Now that President King Dictator Michael Phelps has won the Olympics — literraly, the whole shebang is his — what's next? Doubtful that a guy could win eight gold medals in Beijing and then go back to Maryland with his dog to swim laps in the Potomac, although that looks as if it's Mikey's game-plan. Luckily, the money from Phelp's endorsements might last him long enough to buy a place in a nicer neighborhood than Baltimore; Speedo is writing him a cheque for $1 million as part of its promise for him winning eight gold medals, and that's on top of their existing endorsement deal, his sponorship gigs for Visa, Hilton, and Kellogg's (among others).
It leaves little doubt Phelps will add "richest Olympian" to his roster of personal records. But he's going to accomplish a more incredible feat: remaining relevant after the closing ceremonies. Indeed, where other celebrity Olympians disappeared into oblivion after their medal ceremonies, we see Phelps reaching the success of pro athletes who compete in leagues identified by three-letter acronyms.
Here's how: CONTINUED »
Nike’s done good. The athletics company received queer jeers last week after unveiling the ad above, which many took as a slight to the gays - and, possibly, Larry Craig. Fearing a lavender backlash, Nike has now decided to yank the ads:
Powerful taglines, or "powerlines" as AdAge's Steve Cone SO CLEVERLY calls them, have gone missing from today's marketing. You don't see a tagline for Apple commercials anymore; you just see the bitten apple logo. Based on that alone, we're going to agree: Taglines have died! Even if Jossip still insists on using one.
But what if an advertiser wants to bring one back? What should they do? Asks-and-answers Cone:
Are there easy-to-remember general guidelines that can increase the chance of my company creating a compelling tagline that will stand the test of time? Yes — four, to be exact.
1.) You are different; say so. Don't use common words.
2.) Have real attitude; bypass wishy-washy phrases.
3.) Be everywhere, or you are nowhere. For a line to make a lasting impression, it must appear at all customer touch points and ideally be the headline of every marketing promotion.
4.) Yes, it's an art. The best taglines come from individual flashes of inspiration.
So based on that advice, let's look at some of the most well-known taglines, and see if they measure up. CONTINUED »
From rich to poor, red state to blue state, the one thing that unites all Americans is our delusion that we could write the next great novel. Even billionaire CEOs are not spared from this fantasy. In his semi-retirement, Phil Knight has been taken writing classes at Stanford. According to students and professors, he’s very generous, buying rounds of drinks at Palo Alto bars and giving each student in his writing seminar a $200 Nike gift certificate.
Man, all the lifetime learners in our classes in college just used their “interest in learning” to make us look lazy to our professors.
Remember last year when Facebook introduced the newsfeed and everyone freaked out that their relationship status would take the form of an RSS feed? Well, expect the same people to get concerned in the coming weeks as Facebook’s power grows.
Today Facebook is introducing SocialAd network. The service will exploit members’ profiles for demographic information. Through cookies installed in users’ Web browsers, Facebook will use data from profiles to serve ads on the Web sites of publishers who bought into the SocialAd network. Lacoste should be excited to reach out directly to members of The Popped Collar Alliance group. CONTINUED »
And thus, we assume, is free to photograph runners wearing Adidas for a story about Nike.
Editorial Director
