Randall Hull, The Br@nd Ranch®
There is much to admire about Lance Armstrong. Really. Cancer survivor, founder of Livestrong, professional triathlete at age 16, successful professional cyclist, marathon runner. Yes, Lance was a very good athlete and road-racing cyclist long before he was diagnosed with cancer and after he returned to the sport prior to
Recently capturing this Accenture billboard in the Minneapolis airport, I couldn’t help but be struck by how far the Accenture brand has moved from its previously prized spokesperson and celebrity Tiger Woods, apparently just in time for Tiger’s recent rebound on the golf course — I’ll refrain from calling it a comeback. I’m not
—Randall Hull, The Br@nd Ranch®
Charlie Sheen, aka “F-18”, “Warlock”, “Torpedo of Truth” — oh please — is instructive to anyone pondering the vicissitudes of brands, particularly celebrities as brands.
Unless you have been off planet Earth for the last year, you have surely watched the not-so-slow train wreck called Charlie Sheen. Once
—David Mitchel, Chief Marketing Officer, Norton Mitchel Marketing
The ongoing saga of Charlie Sheen has been quite odd. He demanded a pay raise and made inflammatory comments about his boss, Two and a Half Men Executive Producer Chuck Lorre, which led to Two and a Half Men shutting down production for the rest
It was recently announced that Augusta National (home to golf’s famous Masters tournament) would be featured in the latest installment of the Tiger Woods video game. For those of you unfamiliar with the franchise, it has sold millions of games over the past dozen years. Some of the keys to success, in my opinion, are that
Monday, November 9, 2010 marked the release of yet another title in the often controversial “Call of Duty” video game franchise and, with that, the release of controversial advertising. Of particular note is the below commercial featuring Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel in a no-holds-barred shootout meant to illustrate the experience of on-line gameplay.
Not
While I was perusing ESPN.com shortly after the Masters, I came across an interesting article about a Tiger Woods lookalike. The article was a bit dated, and was probably recycled because of Tiger’s upcoming Master’s appearance, but it sparked interest nonetheless.
My first question was, “How big of a market exists for the celebrity lookalike
Putting aside the questions of whether Tiger Woods needed to or should have made a public apology, the timing of it, and even the content of it, now that Brand Tiger made the decision to do so and did so last Friday, I’m interested more with how Tiger conveyed it and the likely impact it will have on
Earlier this month, I noted Accenture’s words in publicly ending its relationship with Tiger Woods, having announced around December 13, 2009, that it would "immediately transition" to a new ad campaign, and then compared those words to the company’s actions in continuing to run the Tiger Woods airport ads even three weeks after their termination announcement. Right
The impact of the Tiger Woods scandal in branding can be viewed from two different perspectives. The first perspective comes from the point of view of the companies that paid Woods to endorse their products. The second perspective is how the personal brand of Tiger Woods will be impacted as the smoke clears from this series of events.
Two professors in University of California-Davis’ Economics Department attempted to measure the impact from the first perspective. They claimed that shareholders in publicly traded companies that Woods endorsed lost $5-12 billion in the weeks that followed the car accident in Florida that set off the scandal. They undoubtedly have an interesting perspective, but there are limiting factors in their research. However, an undisputable fact of the Tiger Woods scandal is that it put a lot of brand management teams in a very delicate situation. Brand managers at firms where Woods served as an endorser had to consider how their brands would be perceived by their target consumers if they were to continue the relationship. It is not an enviable position.
When a brand chooses to link arms with a celebrity endorser, it must consider which celebrities will be effective endorsers. It is essential to select celebrities that will positively contribute to revenue growth and profitability. I believe that a celebrity endorser is most effective when the target consumer perceives them as attractive or desirable in some fashion and the product is related to the expertise of the celebrity. For example, Michael Jordan was an effective endorser of both Nike and Gatorade because of his status as an elite athlete and the fact that both brands are related to athletic performance. Gisele Bundchen is an effective endorser for Dolce & Gabbana fragrances because scent is an important aspect of appearance and she is the embodiment of phenomenal appearance. She would be far less effective as a celebrity endorser for the Toyota Camry. With regards to Tiger Woods, he is most effective in endorsing Nike Golf products and any other golf related brands. His effect is diminished for brands like Gillette and AT&T.