She's Got a Jones for TV; SI-W Joins WTA Event

Brandweek,  June 5, 2000  by Terry Lefton

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Olympic sprinter Marion Jones hopes to win as many as five medals (the track and field record is four) at the Sydney Olympics, but even before she takes one step down under, her commercial exposure is reaching proportions that could only be described as Jordan-esque in sheer volume.

A recently shot Panasonic ad is being added to a rotation of current TV ads that include Gatorade's "American Woman" spot, GMC's Envoy luxury SUV, an NBC Olympic promo and Nike's "Mrs. Jones" spots-- for a total of five (seven, if you count all three Nike spots) national TV ads running concurrently. Admittedly, Jones functions less as a pure endorser than MJ does in his ads, but the quantity is impressive, particularly for a sport like track and field, whose American stars are much more renowned outside the U.S.

"Everyone can identify with the record she's going for, so that gives her credibility," said USA Track & Field CEO Craig Masback. "In a larger sense, she's competing for the right to be the first female who can transcend sports the way Ali, Pele and Michael Jordan did." The pre-Olympic hype was crafted by Jones' agent, Charles Wells of Vector Sports, Keller, Texas, who's still sifting through dot-com offers.

"You know there'll be business after the Olympics; what we wanted to prove was that there were plenty of opportunities before the Games' said Wells, adding that his client is now well into seven figures of total endorsement deals.

Jones' non-TV endorsement deals include AT&T for its Olympic Ambassadors program, Tag-Heuer and Kellogg, which will put Jones and fellow sprinter Maurice Green on boxes of Frosted Flakes.

The Pilot Pen-entitled WTA tour stop that serves as the women's warmup for the U.S. Open has a new national sponsor in Sports Illustrated for Women, which is exchanging national ad pages, regional ad pages in sibling Sports Illustrated and some cash in return for wall signage at the Aug. 18-26 tourney in New Haven, Conn. The event will get 11 hours of TV exposure on ESPN and CBS. Meanwhile, presenting sponsor Michelob Light will leverage locally with a retail promo that offers a dozen winners and three friends the chance to watch each session from a specially constructed "backyard patio" to be built next to the court and, not coincidentally will be camera visible. The promo also supports the tourney's new "Right in Your Own Backyard" tag from the Sliverman Group, New Haven. Support includes radio, POP and the Web.

Adidas will use distance runner Keith Dowling and gymnast Kristal Uzelac in separate print ads in its "Training for Sport" campaign that breaks in July sports pubs like SI.Adi also teams with Hewlett-Packard to sponsor a mobile fan fest traveling to 10 U.S. cities July-October, supporting such Adi properties as the N.Y. Yankees, University of Tennessee, Notre Dame, UCLA, with a stop in New York's Bryant Park during the U.S. Open tennis.

Extra Innings: Majestic Athletic has added a Quarterback Club license to its NFL deal, giving it rights to manufacture off-field apparel bearing the names and likenesses of NFL Properties' cartel of elite players [ldots] Chris Evert has signed with AmEx to appear in outdoor and print versions of the long-running "Member Since" campaign via Ogilvy & Mather, New York [ldots] Are we the only ones who noticed? One of AmEx endorser Tiger Woods' consecutive wins of the same tourney came during the MasterCard-entitled Colonial. Also, the NBC Olympic promo that depicts Marion Jones performing various athletic feats with supermarket items is more than a bit derivative of DDB's Bud Light spot with soccer stars Julie Foudy and Brandi Chastain. Maybe it's a tribute? [ldots] Jon Schneider will return in July to Fotoball as vp-sales and marketing at the San-Diego based firm, after a brief stint at Communicator Sports [ldots] Mike Godfrey to Efanshop.com as vp-marketing, from broadband service provider Covad Communication s [ldots] Sean Hanrahan to vp-sponsorship and promos at ESPN corporate, New York. He was with Tracy Locke in Wilton, Conn [ldots] Gregg Sauter, formerly of Lego Media, to licensing director at NFL Properties, responsible for toys, videos, trading cards/collectibles and back-to-school programs [ldots] Debi Coffield to the NBA as director of marketing partnerships. She was with R[acute{e}]my Amerique working on the R[acute{e}]my Martin spirits brand.

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