Louis Vuitton Plus Soccer Legends = Cool Brand Promotion

June 2, 2010 by Joe Favorito · 1 Comment 

Looking through the Sunday New York Times I spied an amazing ad (art by Annie Lebovitz) featuring soccer legends Diego Maradona, Pele, and Zinedine Zidane. An ad for GQ? An indepth tease for ESPN’s World Cup coverage? Nope.  It is the focal point of a multi-level international brand campaign by Louis Vuitton that ties all elements of style, sport, and digital together with some traditional fun. The campaign, dissected in the LA Times, was shot in Spain with the three soccer legends getting together to “hang out” under the watchful eye of Leibovitz.  All alone it is an amazing series of ads as art, promoting the quality of the brand.  Then one visits the website.

MLS Cup Sets Template For Future Soccer Success…

November 24, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

One of the most significant games in the history of professional soccer took place in the Pacific Northwest in the late summer of 1977, when the New York Cosmos, led by the legendary Pele, won their first North America Soccer league title by defeating the original Seattle Sounders 2-1 in Portland Oregon. This past weekend, perhaps the most important game since then in the evolution of professional soccer in the United States again took place in the Pacific Northwest, where a crowd of over 40,000 saw Real Salt Lake defeat the Los Angeles Galaxy 2-1 on penalty kicks to take the 2009 Major League Soccer title?

Black Knights of the Hudson Look To Build Brand, Seize The Apple…

July 23, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

It has long been one of the mysteries of sports branding. New York, the centerpiece of the sports branding and business world, has been a college football graveyard. Yes, bars full of displaced college alumni flock to watch games with friends on Saturdays, the Heisman is housed there, and there are many other things to do on a Saturday, not to mention the perception that it is a pro town with two NFL teams. The casual sports fan in New York has never been engaged by local college teams in almost 50 years, save for St. John’s terrific runs in hoops in the 1980’s. The last team with any local cache on the football side was Fordham, a program which lost its national stance in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. So can a local team capture the audience, the branding and the media attention? Judging by announcements this week, Army my just be making that push. The Black Knights of the Hudson, just 30 miles north of the City, have long been one of the jewels of Saturday college football, not for their onfield play but for the pageantry and patriotism that comes with games at Michie Stadium. This week, along with the Yankees (who need to fill suites more than seats), Army announced a series of college football games with Notre Dame, Rutgers and Air Force at Yankee Stadium beginning in 2010, which will give Army a great local stage to compliment their games up the Hudson. Now can it parlay into great new branding and revenue for Army? Maybe. It will become a great non-baseball sales tool for Yankee Stadium because of the opponents as much as Army. But with this week’s announcement of a presenting sponsor for Army-Navy, a new coach, a huge void in a football team to root for in the New York area (Rutgers too will still try and fill that void), maybe just maybe the Black Knights can become New York’s college football team.