Any Publicity Is Good Publicity

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I will assume that most of you have seen this semi-new Disney movie, The Rookie, starring Dennis Quaid. For those of you who have not, the Cliff's Notes version involves a former major-league baseball prospect who blew out his arm but eventually made the Major Leagues through a challenge from his high school baseball team. As shown by this move, many athletes have a hard time letting go of the game they love. Take for example Michael Jordan who retired twice before he finally decided he was over the hill (although he was still a good player at his time of retirement, but he was a shadow of its former self). More recently, look at the revolving door that Brett Favre has probably broken entering and exiting the press room after announcing his retirement and subsequent return to the NFL. However, many athletes do realize when enough is enough, and they want to move on with their lives. Some athletes are forced out of the league because nobody wants them (think of recently Nomar Garciaparra who just retired after several subpar seasons), and I admire those athletes who recognize that they need to find something else to do with their lives.

When these athletes don't realize that perhaps they better move on, I at least feel that it is no more than a publicity stunt. In the past two days, I have seen two stories that make wonderful business sense for the organization, but I wish that the players would realize what a move like this will probably do for their reputation. First, there is the return of Antoine Walker to professional basketball. You remember him right? Paul Pierce's trusty sidekick who would lead Boston to a championship? Yeah, none of that happened. Walker was shopped around for a while before being nailed with a DUI and put on trial for writing bad checks to casinos. Well, one team was willing to take a risk on Antoine, one team in Puerto Rico that is. While I like the business move by the team, I have to wonder what this will do to this already disgraced former star. He will be a star in Puerto Rico simply because he used to be a star in the NBA and that will sell tickets which is the ultimate goal of the basketball team. However, if I was Antoine, I would have moved on from this chapter of my life and instead focused on dealing with the $4,000,000 of debt I had accrued.

The next story I found highlighted the signing of Marion Jones in the WNBA. Jones won five Olympic medals in the 2000 Summer Games, but they were all stripped when she admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. On top of this, she lied about this use and ended up with six months in jail. Now, she is 34 years old; this is normally beyond the prime of most athletes, and she is trying to pick up a sport that she hasn't played competitively since college. Just like anything in life, you might be good at something at one time, but without practice for approximately 10 years you'll probably get much worse. Again, this is a great publicity move because people buy tickets to see Jones try to make a comeback. However, I think that perhaps she should close the door on the athletic portion of her career and move onto a field where the stigma would not be attached to her.

In thinking about why businesses would want to bring stars with troubled pasts into their marketing fold, I believe that this quote sums it up much better than I could. “She’s [Jones] clearly a global figure, who people are interested in,” Orender said. “Having somebody like that associated with our league is positive.” This just reinforces the idea that no publicity is bad publicity.

Extra, Extra!

There are several ways that athletes influence the economy. Obviously, many people spend their money to attend sporting events or buy sporting merchandise to show their pride in a certain team. However, an article in the Vancouver Sun made me think about the way in which athletes influence our grocery bill. I bet you're thinking about products like Gatorade, which I have mentioned in previous posts, or Wheaties, The Breakfast of Champions. However, I am avoiding these today. The part of your grocery bill that I am referring to is that one part that you are almost ashamed to buy. No, not the dessert that will totally ruin your weight loss plan. This shameful item is the tabloid. These magazines that litter checkout lines seem to appeal to Americans like the most. We like the idea that there is always somebody who is worse than we are. We see these athletes as almost superhuman; therefore, it is someone comforting, in a twisted sort of way, to realize that these athletes have faults. Their issues might be different than ours; many of us are not as physically healthy as athletes, but it is strangely comforting to many people to realize that athletes are not perfect either. Hence, we have a situation where the tabloid business is bound to be a significant player. It is not enough to say that Tiger Woods had an affair; there needs to be about 1000 "exclusive" interview with the alleged mistress. Nevertheless, people want to hear this story they can't hear anywhere else even if their claim of exclusive content is entirely false. What the issue essentially comes down to is that if you can package false information in a seemingly true box, many people believe it as the absolute truth. This is especially true for the athlete because people want to see the athletes fall to our level of humanity. When people are better than us in one area, such as physical talent, many people tend to want to undercut some other aspect of that person to humanize them. Humans identify with other humans, so realizing that we all have faults, which are often I believe wrongly disseminated by the tabloid media as it is not their place to tell, allows many people identify with the very same people that they turned into idols in the first place.

Heroic Deeds

While I was watching the preliminaries to the closing ceremonies for these amazing Olympic games, all of the stories that were covered featured the athletes who had overcome previous adversity to finally reach the Olympic dream. Athletes such as Hannah Kearney and Steve Holcomb took center stage and were honored by the news broadcast. This caused me to think however about the role of the athlete as a role model and hero to entire nations. I found an article from a few days ago in the USA Today that considers the role that athletes play in the public realm. This article mainly focuses first on athletes such as O.J. Simpson and Tiger Woods who have had various publicity problems. It then progresses to analyze the actual role of the athlete in regards to being a role model. Finally, the part that was most interesting to me was the business implications to having a spokesman run into some kind of scandal. Surprisingly however there seems to be a very tiny effect on the brand itself. However, it does make sense because before the hero had been disgraced in some form after influencing perhaps thousands of consumers to use a product. The athlete only convinces the user to buy the product; once the product is bought, it must stand on its own. If the consumer liked the product, then the athlete endorsement would have lost much of its meaning. The only thing that having a spokesman or spokeswoman who is involved in a scandal will change within marketing is the effect that he or she will no longer be able to be as successful in this capacity. However, there are so many popular athletes to choose from that all marketing would need to do is hire another one. Saying this though, there are some athletes who would not be replaceable. The first image that came to my mind was Michael Jordan in his prime. He was the most recognizable figure in athletics and certainly one of the most famous people in the world. It is very difficult to find someone else who has that appeal. Luckily, or perhaps not, there are not many Michael Jordans in the world, so the dilemma of replacing one does not come along very often.

It is a shame however that we even need to worry about scandals. However, public figures are human as well and mess up just like the rest of us. The only difference is that their mistakes are broadcast on international news whereas many of our individual mistakes might not even be seen by another person. Public figures should realize that they are indeed held to a higher standard because they are essentially heroes to so many. Whether this standard is fair or not is not really even the question; the point is that athletes need to realize this standard and do their best to live up to it. When they don't, the public needs to realize that they are human, and while that doesn't excuse what they did, it does reinforce the tradition of sinful humans.