Great Example Of How Far Women’s Brands Have Come…For the Better…Serena Williams and Tampax

September 22, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

It was not too long ago, 1997 to be exact, when the WTA Tour, the worldwide governing for women’s tennis, faced an issue of crisis with regard to budget, branding and perception. The Tour, after taking the media power of William Morris for years as the Virginia Slims Tour, was suffering from a lack of identity, and for that matter a lack of sponsors and interest. Octagon and IMG were both tasked to help the Tour, which at this point was in between its young guns on the horizon and its recently retired stars, find a title sponsor to replace the dollars and branding muscle of Virginia Slims. The best option, one that would provide marketing dollars, a healthy lifestyle platform, and the ability to give the Tour room to explore more traditional secondary branding categories, was presented by Octagon…Tampax. By far the leader in feminine hygiene, the brand was looking to take the category out of the traditional area and attach itself to vibrant, global accessible female athletes who could grow with the brand. The dollars would dwarf other potential suitors and could create a revenue stream to help the Tour, which was struggling to find its identity, move forward as a viable sports brand.

The State of Rutgers Gets Some Great Guerilla Exposure

September 18, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

Saturday Rutgers will take on Florida International University in Piscataway, New Jersey but despite the result, the two biggest gains in popularity for the school may have been made away from any court or playing field this past week. First, on Tuesday night’s Jay Leno Show on NBC, award winning documentarian Michael Moore sported a Rutgers hat for his time on stage with Jay. Then later in the week, urban designer Mark Ecko announced that he was creating a line of Rutgers-themed apparel in honor of his alma mater. Moore has been wearing the Rutgers caps as a tribute to Scarlet Knights grad Ann Sparanese, who started the letter writing campaign to save his first book “Stupid White Men,” which criticized President Bush, while the limited edition Ecko line pays homage to the designer’s time spent in New Brunswick on the Rutgers campus (he is an alumnus) and will be sold online at Shopecko.com.

Tennis Continues To Have An Empty Cup…While WTT Scores Locally.

July 14, 2009 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

Coming off of an epic Wimbledon for the second year in a row, it would seem that tennis, with all its global promotional arms, the power of the USTA and the other three Grand Slams, and some strong personalities would be poised to make a strong followup showing leading into the US Open Series. After all, this past week had the best team-based tennis event in the world…one that showed that the sport could be played not just as individuals or even as doubles partners, but in an event that fans could understand and experience and that each match would count for toward a season long finale, just like other sports. Yes that team format did deliver with some fun matches, a great digital play, a good experience on site for all and even some amazing press coverage. The only problem for the sport is the team format that got the exposure last week was Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss long-running World Team Tennis entry, as opposed to the often-maligned and much forgotten Davis Cup brand. Here’s a look at both in the week that was. Once again Davis Cup, arguably one of the best on site experiences in sport, got lost again in the scheduling shuffle. The week fell after Wimbledon and at the same time as the women’s US Open, the NASCAR Chicagoland Sprint Cup Series, the run-up to the baseball All-Star game, UFC 100 and even the World Series of Poker. Add in that top American Andy Roddick couldn’t play because of injury and the limitations on travel budgets for most mainstream media, and the Davis Cup as a brand was lost in the shuffle on almost all points. Making things worse is the continued confusing schedule and the lack of any major brand activation in the early rounds and one of the best events in all of sport virtually disappeared. Now juxtapose that with WTT, which grabbed some great coverage in USA Today and the Washington Post (their Washington franchise was home last weekend), tied in charity events with some name players, and found enough squeaky wheels (Murphy Jensen) to effectively use social media to also drive some interest. Given a brands’ ROI, those aligned with WTT easily got more short term and lower cost exposure than those associated with the higher profile Davis Cup event for the week. Can Davis Cup ever go through a brand restoration? Tough to do unless the oft-talked about format change happens. If not, one of the legendary team sports could continue to fall behind a slightly slicker and more efficient cousin run by a legend who know how to make the game fun for new generations.

Open Season Begins Even As The Olympics Roll On…

August 21, 2008 by Joe Favorito · Leave a Comment 

Although the distraction and attention is still largely on the Olympics, the US Open, which begins Monday and remains the world’s largest sporting event, still has found ways to grow brand, pitch high level placements with partners and continue to build more buzz in new areas that the event did not touch on in previous years.  Examples from today of the groundswell taking place for Open recognition include Marketing Daily’s piece detailing partner American Express’ ad campaign, as well as an extensive must-read series of piece in New York Magazine on how the USTA is cultivating new levels of stars, which will grow the sport of tennis in the US.  The USTA got out in front with a series of announcements about the event and its partnerships well in advance of the Olympic window, which actally grew attention for the event well in advance of when it is normally top of mind, captured some Olympic attention with the play of Venus and Serena Williams and a big James Blake upset, and will now be able to grab a steady flow of positive sports and entertainment news as it pushes the international coverage for its two week run.  Although there may not be the huge amount of sponsor pieces the week before becuase of the Olympic focus, the media coverage should be more than made up for during the event, as there are no better sports event marketers than those who run the USTA.