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Social media a new frontier for athletic endorsements
DOUGLAS N. MASTERS
SETH A. ROSE
Law Bulletin columnists
Published: January 11, 2016
Sponsorships and endorsements have long been essential elements of marketing for sports teams, leagues and brands. Beyond official team and league sponsors, uniform deals and venue naming rights, individual athletes have become increasingly valuable as endorsers and spokespeople.
On top of this, social media has exponentially extended their influence and reach. All kinds of brands, from sports equipment and apparel manufacturers to luxury and consumer brands that want to be associated with the consumers in the most sought-after demographic — millennials — seek out popular athletes to be “brand ambassadors.”
Although sports franchises and brands already appreciate and exploit individual athletes’ social media cache, companies are beginning to recognize a new phenomenon: An athlete’s social media presence or engagement can present a separate and very attractive alternative media channel for brand messaging.
The “athlete as media outlet” is upending the traditional player sponsorship business, converting today’s athlete from a commodity (someone who faces the camera to pitch a product) to a driver of the creative process, a collaborator on product development, a director whose final cut feels more like natural, non-sponsored social media content that advertising and a distributor whose reach and scope with target demographics often rivals that of billion-dollar media companies.
For example, NBA superstar LeBron James currently has north of 22 million followers on Facebook, more than 3.7 million on Twitter and almost 16 million on Instagram.
While those followers are by no means all Cleveland Cavaliers fans, the team unquestionably benefits from King James’ massive social media following, as does Nike, which recently signed James to what is being called an “unprecedented” lifetime contract worth, by some estimates, between $400 million and $500 million.
While the vast majority of James’ posts on his own social media accounts and on his website have nothing to do with Nike directly, fan fervor most certainly indirectly translates to shoe and apparel sales.
Nike benefits from every Facebook post showing James using Nike products and also, more generally, from associations between the company and the athlete, and James’ social media activity enhances the broader marketing campaign of the brand (and of other brands with which James’ has a relationships, like Sprite, Progressive Insurance and Beats by Dre as well as companies in which James is an investor, like the Blaze pizza chain).
While there is no doubt that Nike and other global brands will continue with marketing campaigns that will include traditional media and their own social media accounts, the influence of popular athletes on digital and social media platforms does present enticing marketing alternatives.
An athlete’s endorsement or reference to a brand on social media, available to millions of online followers in the brand’s target demographic, may often represent a better value than other kinds of more costly campaigns. In addition, this places athletes in a new role.
Instead of being just a brand ambassador or spokesperson for a brand or product, the athlete is responsible for the content message and often becomes a creative partner with the brand in both marketing and product design.
This kind of collaboration makes sense with marquee players of major league sports — those like LeBron James who have both worldwide name recognition and a stratospheric social media following. James’ collaboration with Nike is a standout example of this kind of partnership in which the athlete (or celebrity) goes well beyond a mere endorser of a brand’s products.
Nike has released at least 13 versions of the LeBron signature basketball shoes, including a limited edition version to be included in the “LeBron influencer kit.” In April, James released a sneak peek to his 16 million Instagram followers (and on his website) of the “influencer kits” — 100 numbered boxes created in collaboration with Sprite and containing limited editions of products highlighting James’ more well-known brand relationships: Sprite’s LeBron Mix (Sprite, natural cherry and natural orange flavor), a set of Beats by Dre studio wireless headphones in red and white to echo the color theme of the LeBron Mix and a pair of LeBron Mix-inspired (bright green and red) Nike LeBron 12s – and then followed up in July with the big reveal.
That James and other high-profile sports celebrities see themselves as more than just skilled players on the court, pitch, field or diamond is hardly surprising. Neither is their desire and ability to control their own messaging and distribution. And global brands — including some of the biggest names in sports and in the world of more traditional broadcasting — recognize the advantage in being associated with these athletes as media moguls and are ready to put substantial sums of money behind them.
Earlier this month, James announced that Warner Bros. Entertainment and Turner Sports had invested $15.8 million in Uninterrupted, James’ multimedia platform on Turner Sports’ Bleacher Report.
The aim of Uninterrupted is reportedly to provide athletes with an outlet to engage directly with fans outside of the traditional media through posts and updates from athletes as well as original content including miniseries and documentaries.
The King Jameses of the sports world aside, global brands are also seeking out and working with relatively less well-known athletes who have large fan and targeted-fan followings, creating campaigns that not only use the athlete’s social media presence as a distribution channel, but that also tend to have a more personal look and feel than more traditional, product-focused advertising.
A great recent example is popular professional skateboarder Ryan Allen Sheckler, who in October posted a video on his Facebook page shot entirely using the camera feature on his LG phone.
He tagged the post with a shout-out to the brand: “shot a video around my hometown using only the LG USA Mobile #LGV10. Watch me make San Clemente Proud!” The video, paid for and created by LG Electronics, runs just under three minutes and provides Sheckler’s 3.3 million Facebook fans with a “behind the scenes” look at Sheckler and his buddies skating around San Clemente, Calif.
It also incorporates pop-ups of tweets by fans suggesting places for Sheckler to skate and records sightings of the skateboarder around town. The video doesn’t directly feature the brand or the smartphone, except for the appearance of a “shot exclusively with the LG V10” subtitle at the beginning, a few shots of Sheckler using his phone to take video and his use of the brand’s tagline “Life’s Good” at the end followed by a closing frame with a link to the LG V10 product page.
By any measure, the video was a wild success for LG. It reportedly had 1.8 million views within the first 36 hours and now has more than 7.3 million views and 12,000 shares in all — not a bad result for the brand, particularly since the video had the reach of television advertising but is longer by at least 200 percent than any commercial, was significantly less expensive for the electronics company to produce and distribute and reached a much more targeted audience.
Perhaps even better, because it was unplanned, unsolicited and not paid for by LG, were the follow-on comments on Sheckler’s Facebook page between fans who questioned whether the video was shot with the phone — including one (since deleted) from someone who identified himself as a cinematographer suggesting that Sheckler’s post was a fake because it wasn’t possible to shoot such good video with a phone camera — and the director of the video, who not only confirmed that the phone was used for every frame of the video, but detailed the process by which the video was shot and produced.
Sheckler is not a household name like LeBron James. James’ annual earnings from his sponsorship deal with Nike is valued at more than Sheckler’s reported net worth and a single sponsored tweet by James is reportedly worth $140,000. No information is available on what a sponsored tweet by Sheckler would run.
But Sheckler is well known in the action sports and lifestyle arena as a professional athlete, board and apparel designer, a reality television personality (MTV produced the now-canceled series “Life of Ryan”) and a playable character in the Tony Hawk series of video games.
His fan following clearly reaches the demographic his sponsors are seeking. LG Electronics is also not the only sponsor for which the 25-year-old skateboarder makes and distributes content on his Facebook page and other social media platforms.
“The Sheckler Sessions” — the action video series sponsored and produced by Red Bull — is in its fourth season, and the videos are posted on both Red Bull TV and on Sheckler’s Facebook page. Sheckler’s other sponsors include sports and lifestyle brands Oakley Inc., GoPro and Volcom, skateboard brands like Independent Trucks and Grizzly Griptape, Andale, Diamond Supply and CCS and clothing brands like Ethika, among others. Many of these sponsors make regular appearance in Sheckler’s social media posts.
What James and Sheckler do have in common is that they serve as examples — perhaps at opposite ends of the spectrum — of the growing phenomenon of the athlete as the media platform and the creative force behind digital and social media campaigns, rather than simply as endorsers and spokespeople.
Douglas N. Masters is a partner at Loeb & Loeb LLP, where he litigates and counsels clients primarily in intellectual property, advertising and unfair competition. He is deputy chairman of the firm’s advanced media and technology department and co-chair of the firm’s intellectual property protection group. He can be reached at dmasters@loeb.com. Seth A. Rose is a partner at the firm, where he counsels clients on programs and initiatives in advertising, marketing, promotions, media, sponsorships, entertainment, branded and integrated marketing, and social media. He can be reached at srose@loeb.com.