October 4, 2000
AdvertisingPoor Sportsmanship at Olympic Games
May Cost Endorsements for Athletes
By SUZANNE VRANICA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Every two years, athletes keen on becoming the next Mary Lou Retton return from the Olympic Games hoping to cash in on endorsement deals from Madison Avenue advertisers. But some sports-marketing veterans wonder if the poor sportsmanship displayed by some during the Sydney Olympics will affect their ability to land lucrative endorsement deals.
"The last thing you want to do if you are a company is buy more headaches," said Allen Adamson, managing director of branding and image consultants Landor Associates, a unit of Young & Rubicam. "You look to use this opportunity as a way to project a positive image about your brand. Since sports sponsorship is not usually critical to the business, there is no reason to take a risk."
One of the most striking examples of poor judgment involved the men's 4x100-meter relay race. Maurice Greene of the U.S. and his teammates, Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams and Brian Lewis, indulged themselves in a seemingly endless round of self-congratulations after their win. They posed like professional wrestlers and flexed their muscles during their victory lap. Mr. Greene also stuck out his tongue at the TV cameras.
Just a bunch of happy guys enjoying themselves? Maybe, but bad sportsmanship "can definitely have an effect on an individual's earning potential" says Jim Andersen, editorial director IEG Sponsorship Report, a Chicago-based newsletter that covers corporate sponsorship. Companies looking to sign Olympic athletes have many to chose from -- Americans won 97 medals, 39 of them gold. Everything being equal in terms of performance, most firms prefer to sign athletes considered good corporate citizens, adds Mr. Andersen.
Emanuel Hudson, a sports attorney with Hudson Smith International who represents Mr. Greene, says his client didn't do anything wrong. Mr. Hudson, who also represents Messrs. Drummond and Williams, notes that Mr. Greene has business relationships with Coca-Cola's Powerade and Konami, a Tokyo video-games maker.
Still, Mr. Hudson says that when Mr. Greene saw a tape of the winning team on the Olympics medal platform, "He immediately apologized on behalf of [his teammates] as well as for himself." Mr. Hudson doesn't expect Mr. Greene to lose any endorsements because of his behavior.
Wednesday, Kellogg USA, the Battle Creek, Mich., cereal giant, disclosed that Mr. Greene will appear on commemorative boxes of cereal. The deal was struck prior to the incident on the medal stand.
"The whole incident was regrettable," says Joe Stuart, Kellogg's senior vice president of corporate affairs and chief ethics officer.
"They [athletes] have all apologized and we too apologize, but this was all caught-up-in-the-moment stuff. It's not a reflection of the kind of character these young people have. We think they deserve to be forgiven and hope that they are going to learn from this."
Olympic athletes also appearing on boxes include track star Marion Jones, Jenny Thompson, the swimming sensation who earned her sixth, seventh and eighth relay gold medals in Sydney, and backstroker Lenny Krayzelburg, who won three gold medals.
Boorish behavior displayed at the Sydney games included U.S. intermediate hurdler James Carter, who taunted his slower competitors in the last few meters of a semifinal.
He finished fourth in the finals. Swimmer Amy Van Dyken spit it in the lane of opponent Inge de Bruijn of the Netherlands before their 50-meter freestyle heat began. And the trash-talking U.S. men's basketball team, dubbed Dream Team III, also took some hits for its lack of sportsmanship.
Grandstanding and poor manners aside, Americans still hold Olympic athletes in higher regard than they do members of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association or Major League Baseball, according to a poll of 11,000 Americans conducted throughout the Olympics by Harris Interactive. About 83% of those surveyed said that Olympic athletes positively represent the country while only 47% selected the NFL, 29% picked MLB and 28% chose the NBA.
You can't count the bad boys out. Some companies that want to position themselves as mavericks embrace bold public personalities.
One example: sneaker maker And1's yet-to-be aired TV commercial starring hot-tempered Bobby Knight, the basketball coach of Indiana University who recently was fired. And1 has also used Latrell Sprewell, a guard on the New York Knicks basketball team, in its ads. Mr. Sprewell was suspended and fined by the NBA for choking a former coach. "Obviously they are looking for that kind of edge," says IEG's Mr. Andersen.
***
