Inside My Brain

I recently read an article in the LA Times that discussed the dynamics behind professional NBA players as icons for companies and their products. Two NBA teams have two stars that advertise for companies: The Miami Heat and The LA Clippers. Miami heat has LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. LeBron James has been known to do ads for bubblegum as well as the galaxy cell phone series. Before this year, the LA Clippers were always in the shadows of the Lakers as they share the same home court and city. With help from awesome new players and a larger winning percentage from 60% wins to 70% wins, the Clippers are finally getting the respect and attention they deserve. The Clippers have two stars that are frequently seen on TV outside of sports television, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul. Chris Paul does ads for State Farm Insurance and Blake Griffin does ads for Kia automobiles and GameFly video game renting service. However, one must ask if it is wise to have a professional athlete or a celebrity as the face to their product. We can see the possible mayhem behind this with Michael Phelps and Subway as well as Keloggs. After Phelps was caught smoking marijuana and it became viral, all sponsors dropped him immediately and the companies that sponsored him probably really regretted it as well as lost many possible sales. Professional athletes in advertising gigs have what is called a Q rating. The Q rating measures name recognition and the public’s perception of a particular person. Blake Griffin had an awareness rating of 55% and a positive likeability rating(Q rating) of 18. This is a smart business and PR tactic to see if companies are investing in the right person to be the face for a company, but still something is unsettling about putting a number rating to a human being. Companies are treating these professional atheltes as pure objects or robots with sets of data behind them. I conclude with the fact that since Griffin and Paul are on television a lot more often than the average NBA player, they are increasing the number of viewers that watch the Clippers games.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2013 at 12:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.