Share these talks and lectures with your colleagues
Invite colleaguesPractice paper
The rise and rise of athlete brand endorsements
Journal of Brand Strategy,
1
(1),
79-84
(2012)
Abstract
Athlete endorsements, or the use of professional sportsmen (and women), can be traced back to the start of the 20th century. In their infancy, endorsements primarily featured the top baseball players of the day, offering their name and likeness to promote a variety of products. Over time, endorsement opportunities became available to athletes in other sports, including the Olympics, boxing and football. Brands often aligned with celebrity endorsers, irrespective of whether there existed a brand fit between the product being sold, and the endorser espousing its virtues. While that still happens even in the modern era of sophisticated marketing, there is more often than not a connection between the endorser and the product that can be communicated clearly to the consumer. Studies have shown that while brands borrow equity (the so called halo effect) from endorsers to create an intangible value through that association, endorsement deals can also result in quantifiable results for the product being endorsed.
Keywords: athlete endorsements; brands; marketing; celebrities; sports marketing
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Tim Mcghee has nearly 20 years’ experience in sports marketing on both the brand and agency side. Most recently, he was the Senior Vice President and Managing Director for US Consulting at the global sports marketing agency, IMG, where he oversaw all the agency’s consulting engagements in the USA. Prior to that, Mr McGhee was the Executive Director for Global Sponsorships at AT&T, where he oversaw a sponsorship portfolio consisting of nearly 80 global, national and local properties. He began his tenure at Cingular Wireless as the Director of National Sponsorships. Currently, Mr McGhee works as an independent consultant, working with brands and properties to develop and execute fully-integrated marketing programmes utilising sports, entertainment and music as the underlying platforms for achieving brand objectives, naming rights evaluations and celebrity endorsements. Mr McGhee holds a bachelor of science degree from Cornell University and a masters in business administration from Columbia University.
