The Shill of Victory

As Americans, we're more than used to watching athletes promote all manner of products. It just seems to make sense. Sports are a big part of culture everywhere, and here in the States the only thing more important is buying stuff. When it comes to athletic shoes, apparel and equipment, what would make you want to buy the product more than knowing your favorite pro player is paid to use it, too?

But we know that it goes beyond athletic products. Athletes can endorse virtually anything. We don't bat an eye when the appropriately-named Curt Schilling shills for Chevy trucks and Dunkin' Donuts at the same time. After all, we expect a major-league pitcher of Curt's stature to eat breakfast and haul brush. Two of the most dominant athletes in history, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer (along with a decent soccer player nobody's heard of), show us that their exceptional performance is due in no small part to an exceptionally close shave. Sometimes the match-up seems like a bit of a stretch. I for one had never thought I'd be thinking about meaty NFL linesmen every time I eat Campbell's Chunky Soup.

There must be a line beyond which the partnership becomes untenable. This was theoretically proven by our friends at Saturday Night Live when they showed Michael Jordan doing a spot for "Feminine Secret", which I think about every time I see him do yet another spot for Hanes underwear (as a matter of fact, there's one on right now).

And here is the latest example of a head-scratching promotion that dances on the line of what we expect pro athletes to endorse.



In some ways I'm impressed by this spot, for it demonstrates that David Beckham can get paid for a commercial which does not use his image, does not use his voice, and only makes an indirect reference to the sport he plays. Apparently he's so huge that his name alone is valuable enough to build an ad campaign around.

Indeed, David Beckham is possibly the most famous athlete in the world. Certainly, at one point he was by far the highest-paid athlete in the world. So of all the things he could be endorsing, why a magic marker?

Athletes need to worry about how much they are giving up in exchange for whatever kind of check the endorsee is giving them. A bizarre partnership like the fictitious Feminine Secret deal is funny, in part, because we know that it would influence our image of the athlete. That has an impact on the athlete's value as an endorser. In this real-life case, we have a commercial suggesting (to me, anyway, possibly to others as well) that Beckham spends most of his time these days signing autographs and playing golf. All true, perhaps, but does it help Beckham's marketability to reinforce this image?

These issues are also important to the endorsee, because an endorsement deal inexorably intertwines the public images of the two parties. For instance, the Michael Jordan/Nike deal, the archetypal modern endorsement deal, worked off of both parties' strong performance and the connection between the product and the athletic dominance to boost their respective popularities into almost mythological status. Conversely, an athlete or a brand with a deteriorating image can bring down the image of the other, thus potentially sending the athlete and the brand plummeting into a vortex of mutually-reinforcing shame. It doesn't always happen that way, but does Sharpie want to take that risk? Sharpie is a member of that elite set of brands whose name is a synonym for the product it makes. Do they think people are out there saying, "Could hand me one of those, you know, one of those fine-point markers ... like the kind Beckham uses?" What happens to all those name-brand Sharpies when the autographs stop coming?

Moral of the story: I need a better agent.