Professional athletes get paid a lot. According to USA Today, the average salary of a New York Giant was $923,000 in 2009 compared to $475,100 in 2000. Total payroll for that franchise was $51 million in 2000. By 2009 it had almost tripled. Where does all that money come from? As professional sports becomes more about the money and an increasingly expensive form of broadcast entertainment with salaries ridiculously inflated, corporate sponsorships become necessary to infuse cash into the equation. These multi-million dollar endorsement deals have been increasing yearly by a rate of 17% and have become a very popular way for large corporations to market themselves and gain exposure. The sheer numbers are astronomical.
But what happens when the golf legend and role model to millions, endorser of cars, watches, breakfast cereal, gold cards, athletic shoes, sports drinks etc. etc. becomes a social outcast causing his corporate buddies to run for the nineteenth hole? What is the price when an athlete such as Tiger Woods commits a faux pas or a little marital indecency?
Katerina Thanou was a Greek sprinter and poster child for the 2004 Olympic games in Athens. Representing Adidas in their global “Impossible is Nothing Campaign,” there were billboards of the athlete plastered all over Greece. Unfortunately, for the shoe company, she got caught up in a drug scandal the night before her race and the connotations of the campaign took a nasty turn.
Kobe Bryant’s tangle with a 19 year old woman who accused him of sexual assault reportedly cost him between four and six million dollars when Nutella, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola pulled the plug on his Endorsements.
Hertz couldn’t run away fast enough from its spokesperson, the former NFL running back, O.J. Simpson after being accused of murder.
Magic Johnson’s unfortunate health status caused him to lose all of his $12 million endorsement deals when it became known that he contracted HIV while cheating on his wife.
Michael Vick’s dog fighting charges took a bite out of his $50 million dollar endorsement deals with Nike and others.
Advertising as Entertainment
August 13th, 2010This week we will explore advertising in the movies. Follow me as we take a look at advertising as portrayed by Hollywood on the silver screen. These are my favorites:
1) Crazy People – Our first film stars Dudley Moore as Emory Leeson, an advertising executive whose “honest ads” don’t go over too well with his boss: “Volvo, they’re boxy but they’re good.” After experiencing a nervous breakdown, he is sent to an insane asylum. In the meantime his ads are accidentally sent to the clients, who of course love them and want more of the same. His boss tries unsuccessfully to recreate the campaign and is forced to go to the asylum to ask Leeson to deliver more of the same. This results in a new branch of the agency with Leeson and fellow patients comprising the loony but successful new team.
2) The next movie involves an overworked advertising executive, wrapped up in his work to the neglect of his family. Dustin Hoffman stars alongside Meryl Streep in the much acclaimed Kramer vs. Kramer from 1979. Ted Kramer is just awarded the account of his life when he comes home to find that his wife is leaving him and their son.
3) We move on to Mel Gibson who stars as an advertising executive who believes he is God’s gift to women in What Women Want. A freak accident empowers him with the ability to hear what women are thinking (including female dogs), which he uses to develop campaigns with incredible appeal to this demographic.
4) Finally, honorable mention goes to movies with advertising with characters that work in ad agencies but the movies are not about the field of advertising.
- Michael Keaton is a Dad who loses his job as an advertising executive and is forced to become Mr. Mom.
- How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days stars the adorable Matthew McConaughey as an AE who wagers he can get a girl to fall in love with him in 10 days who tangles with journalist Kate Hudson who is doing a story about how to lose a guy in ten days.
- In Picture Perfect, the single advertising executive played by Jennifer Aniston is passed up for promotion because her boss believes that single women are unstable. She fabricates an elaborate story about her engagement to get the promotion.
- Last but not least, Steve Martin portrays a very high strung advertising executive that gets a lesson in “taking it easy” when he gets stuck on Thanksgiving weekend traveling with a shower ring salesman who is on a totally different wavelength in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Walking Advertisements
August 6th, 2010Walking Advertisements
Advertising comes at us in a variety of forms. We can see and hear ads over a wide range of formats: print, radio, TV, mobile and stationary billboards, internet, embedded messages, mobile, in-store, celebrity branding, aerial, etc. Lately, one of the oldest forms of advertising has been making a comeback while adapting new variations. We’ve all seen the Statue of Liberty standing on the street corner during tax time pointing drivers into Liberty Tax locations. There has been a recent insurgence of “human directionals” enthusiastically twirling their signs and directing us into a new development, cell phone store or going out of business sale.
“Human directionals,” “human billboards,” “sign walkers,” “sign holders” or “sign twirlers” have been around for centuries. They became prevalent in the early 1800s after a tax was excised on
outdoor poster ads in London and businesses had to compete over the limited amount of wall space. Ads were worn on hats, human poster boards or on outrageous costumes. Later in the 1930s when the t-shirt began to be worn as an outer garment, it became a popular tool for advertisements.
Companies that are apt to get their message across not only display their messages by being worn or held up by people, but recently have found other innovative ways to display their walking billboards:
- The controversial GoldenPalace.com has paid athletes to display their web domain atsporting events in the form of temporary tattoos on their backs.
- The back of Jim Nelson’s head was auctioned off to the highest bidder – CI Host, who claim the tattoo resulted in 500 new customers.
- The last example comes to us from Sydney and is a cross between “a bag and a shirt,” which is a TV screen embedded in a vest that shows-yes you guessed it-moving advertisements.
Jingle Sells
August 2nd, 2010Isn’t it amazing that I can remember the words and melody to hundreds of songs from dozens of years ago but can’t seem to remember what I had for lunch? If I said to you “I don’t want to grow up,” chances are you would come back with “Cause I’m a Toys R Us kid.” It is a well recognized fact that words, when accompanied by music, increase our recall and make us feel better. Hence the advertising jingle, many of which stay with us long after the campaign has ended. The jingle had its musical beginnings in 1926 featuring the Wheaties Quartet singing:
Have you tried Wheaties?
They’re whole wheat with all of the bran.
Won’t you try Wheaties?
For wheat is the best food of man.
They’re crispy and crunchy
The whole year through,
The kiddies never tire of them
and neither will you.
So just try Wheaties,
The best breakfast food in the land.
It might sound old fashioned and corny to us now, but back then it essentially caused a complete turnaround for the failing brand of cereal and revolutionized radio advertising.
Take a stroll down memory lane with me and enjoy:
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Strategic Marketing Hires Hilary Greene
July 27th, 2010Strategic Marketing Announces the Hire of Hilary Greene
July 27, 2010 – Strategic Marketing, Inc., a full-service advertising, marketing and public relations agency in West Palm Beach, FL, has added Hilary Greene t
o its team.
Greene holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Lynn University and has worked in local media for the past three years. Greene will fill the role of Account Executive at Strategic Marketing.
Strategic Marketing, Inc., founded in 1992, is a full-service advertising, marketing and public relations agency based in West Palm Beach, Florida. For more information on Strategic Marketing, visit www.thinkstrategic.com.
Overcoming Advertising Depression
July 23rd, 2010
- Image via Wikipedia
During economic downturns, history has proved again and again that while most companies cut back, it is the smart ones that advertise. More sales have been rung up by companies that out-advertised their competitors. Consumers don’t go away during tough times, they merely become more selective in their choices. If the advertising presence for a company that consumers have come to rely on has simply vanished, what message are they sending their customers? While your competitors are reducing their advertising budget, augmenting yours will increase your reach over your customers and theirs.
Here are a few examples of how increased advertising budgets during the Great Depression helped companies weather stormy times:
In the late 1920s there were two dominant players in the packaged cereal market – Kellogg and Post. While Post cut its advertising expenditure, Kellogg doubled theirs, aggressively going after the radio market to advertise its new product, Rice Krispies. The end result: Kellogg’s sales rose more than 30% over the next few years, allowing it to dominate the market until this day.
Aggressive advertising turned the tide for Camel cigarettes whose top position began to slip in the 1930s in favor of Lucky Strike and Chesterfield. Aggressive advertising made the difference for Camel when they smoked the competition and regained the top spot in 1935.
Proctor and Gamble is a great example of how innovation and increased expenditure not only helped the company sail their way through the Great Depression, but changed the entire medium as well. Using radio, P&G’s president, Richard Deupree, (who believed people continued to purchase household products such as soap), decided to create serial programming that did not focus on products, but were clearly sponsored by them. This was the start of daytime Soap Operas.
During the 1930s, Chrysler zoomed past Ford as the country’s number two automaker with the introduction- and heavy advertising- of its new value brand, Plymouth. This new introduction was one of the only successful car brands during the Great Depression.
From America With Love
July 12th, 2010Globalization pushes American brands into virtually every corner of the globe – McDonalds, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Nike, Starbucks, Disney, and Ford to name a few. Here at home, all of us can identify with these brands and as they are part of our culture. Advertising slogans and jingles used to promote these brands inevitably become ingrained inside of our heads and as much a part of our culture as the brands themselves. We all know the exact connotations of Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz, I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Weiner, and the Energizer Bunny. But what happens when a brand is shipped across the seas to a foreign land and the advertising message gets lost in the translation? The following is a very funny list of blunders whose messages literally didn’t make it to their intended markets. Read on and enjoy:
1. Pepsi’s slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi generation” translated in Taiwan to “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.”
2. The Coca Cola company used Chinese characters to spell out the sounds Co Ca Co La. The characters in Chinese translated to “Bite the wax tadpole.”
3. Perdue’s chicken slogan, “it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” appeared on billboards across Mexico in Spanish as “it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”
4. Parker Pen’s slogan “it won’t stain your pocket and embarrass you” came out as “it won’t stain your pocket and get you pregnant” in Spanish.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
5. Chevrolet launched its Nova brand in Latin America but sadly the name in Spanish translates to “it won’t go.”
6. Clairol introduced a curling iron into Germany they named “Mist Stick,” to find that “mist” is slang for manure.
7. Coors used its slogan, “Turn it loose” in Spain, where it translated into “Suffer from diarrhea.”