Mar 17, 2010
Tiger Woods is returning to golf, and many of his biggest backers are coming with him.
Nike, Gillette and EA Sports all expressed support for Mr. Woods' now public plan to play in April's Masters, although none except EA Sports -- which has already gone ahead and launched a Woods-themed video game for the coming year -- has not indicated if or when Mr. Woods will return to a front-and-center role in their marketing messages.
Jan 29, 2010
Sponsors flock to the Olympics because the games provide a worldwide platform for brand promotion. Implied in a sponsorship is a company's exclusivity in its brand category – and in the United States, that's something the US Olympic Committee vigorously defends. Witness the current controversy surrounding the upcoming Winter Games. Television ads just released by Subway and Verizon Wireless feature references to the games – but neither advertiser is an official Olympic sponsor.
Dec 4, 2009
Accenture’s latest advertising campaign has a picture of Tiger Woods standing on the edge of a stream, club in hand, looking at his ball perched precariously on a rock. “It’s what you do next that counts,” reads the global management consultancy’s strapline. Sponsors of the world’s number one golfer have been asking that question every day since last Friday morning when he drove his Cadillac sports utility vehicle into a tree and a fire hydrant outside his Florida home.
Aug 5, 2009
The National Football League has an official drink and an official wireless headset. Now, in a sign of how far sports leagues will go to find revenue in the recession, it has official toiletries. The NFL, the biggest U.S. sports league by revenue, on Wednesday will announce a sponsorship deal with Procter & Gamble Co., maker of everyday household items such as soaps and shampoos. The multi-year pact, which P&G says is the costliest in its history, lets it slap a newly designed "Official Locker Room Product of the NFL" label on products including Old Spice deodorant and Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo.
Jul 8, 2009
It's interesting to me that marketers are cutting back on their investment in sports during this economic downturn. Putting aside some of the political elements that influence certain of those decisions, I can't understand why cutting one's investment in sports is a smarter choice than curtailing the use of other marketing elements, where the results are less tangible, less targeted, and providing lower ROI.
Feb 19, 2009
They gave out Oscars during previous recessions. They even gave out Oscars during each year of the Great Depression. But the way Madison Avenue is
behaving toward the 81st annual Academy Awards, to be broadcast by ABC
on Sunday, one could be excused for believing that the ceremony was
actually for the Razzie Awards, which mock the worst Hollywood movies. Several Oscar sponsors from last year — among them General Motors, L’Oréal and the Bertolli food line sold by Unilever — are forgoing the program.
Davis Thinking
