A New Method of Athlete Endorsements
Endorsements are difficult to procure for professional athletes.
It's a refrain we've heard time and again since the economy went into a nosedive in late 2008. Apparently one company thinks they have a new gimmick that will make it easier for everyone. Brand Affinity Technologies brings athletes and companies together in a streamlined deal-making process for endorsements. While the article in the New York Times contains some bizarre factual errors (such as referring to Cris Carter as a player for the Minnesota Vikings; Carter retired in 2002 and last played for the Vikings in 2001), the concept sounds interesting in principle.
If it takes off, this sounds like an ideal way for athletes to get corporate endorsements. As with any new concept, the problem is in scalability - it requires a lot of athletes and a lot of businesses. If everyone from the mom-and-pop deli to Microsoft sign up on the corporate side, and athletes from Peyton Manning down to Olympic athletes in obscure sports are available on the player side, it should work. One downside is that an executive with the company says "we can change out the talent very quickly," although he does not explain a situation in which he changed out talent (instead, he explains that he tailored a campaign to a specific event, not that he fired an athlete and replaced him with someone else). I am not sure that an agent should be steering his client to endorsement deals that have the tendency to crumble into nothing at the drop of a hat. Ask yourself whether a short-lived endorsement for your client is better than no endorsement at all? These days, until the endorsement climate picks up, the Brand Affinity concept seems to have potential.
