Tom Brady ‘Sacked” for FTX Endorsement is a Lesson for PR Practitioners
Rogers and Hammerstein’s smash Broadway hit, Oklahoma! includes a song titled "I Cain't Say No." It should also be the theme song of athletes who are offered endorsements because when speaking to athletes as publicity spokespeople, none ever said, “no” to me. They never questioned the product or promotion. Their first question to me was,” How much money" would they be paid.
Legend has it that the Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame shortstops told the American Tobacco Company to stop using his baseball card as a promotional tool because he thought it would encourage children to buy cigarettes in order get the card. However, other sauces say he was upset because the card was used without his permission and he wanted an endorsement fee.
What everyone agrees with is that he was the first athlete to sign an endorsement agreement – with a bat manufacturer.
Today, athlete endorsements of products are more ubiquitous than clear days in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
And that’s a problem for consumers, because you could bet the farm that many athletes didn’t think so highly of the products they endorse until they signed an endorsement deal.
Many consumers don’t take athlete endorsements deals seriously. Neither do many journalists. They realize that the athlete is acting as a paid spokesperson. Unfortunately, some consumers do. And that’s why Tom Brady is making news headlines again.
No, he isn’t rescinding his retirement, as he did in the past. This time he’s making headlines because he has been sued by customers for his endorsement of the FTX cryptocurency exchange.
Viewers of National Football League games might remember that Mr. Brady was featured in a multi-million dollars FTX advertising campaign, which included commercials being aired during NFL games.
(People interested in more details about the above can Google the New York Times article in its July 7 edition titled, “Hyping the Crypto Rush, Only to Lose Millions.)
In the past, I’ve written that consumers shouldn’t take endorsements by any celebrity seriously because the endorsers are just reading from a script. (And attached to the script is a check or stock and other options.)
Most products endorsed by athletes should include a tag line saying, "Let the buyer beware" because the athlete most likely doesn’t know if the product being endorsed is any better than a similar product endorsed by another individual.
But the downside of how athlete endorsements can be detrimental to true believers is real.
People who believed that Tom Brady was a financial genius lost money by believing that the darling of the NFL knew what he was talking about. As the Times reported, “…Mr. Brady also posted TikTok videos with Mr. Bankman-Fried from FTX’s headquarters in the Bahamas, where he spoke at a conference in front of hundreds.”
“In December,” the Times article said, “the lawyer Adam Moskowitz and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida accusing him and Ms. Bündchen) of misleading investors. Among the other defendants are the comedian Larry David, the N.B.A. star Steph Curry and the tennis player Naomi Osaka, all of whom endorsed FTX.” Ms. Bündchen was Mr. Brady’s wife at the time.
(Using football terminology, you can say Tom Brady has been sacked for a loss.)
The Times article also said, “…After months of failed attempts, a process server delivered court papers to Shaquille O’Neal, the retired
basketball star, who was sued for promoting FTX, according to legal filings. Mr. O’Neal was served while broadcasting from a National Basketball Association playoff game.”
There’s an old saying, “As long as you have your health you have everything.” Don’t attempt to convince poor people of its truthfulness or especially wealthy athletes who have no qualms about endorsing unhealthy products as long as the checks clear.
Some years (2013) ago a study conducted by the Yale School of Medicine reported, in part, “Professional athletes are often paid large amounts of money to endorse commercial products. But the majority of the food and beverage brands endorsed by professional athletes are for unhealthy products like sports beverages, soft drinks, and fast food, according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. The study appeared in the November issue of Pediatrics.”
Things haven’t changed over the years. CNN reported on a more recent (2018) study published in the journal Pediatrics, which, revealed that 76% of food products shown in ads promoting a sports organization sponsorship are unhealthy and that 52.4% of beverages shown in sports sponsorship ads are sugar-sweetened.
“The study focused on the top 10 sports organizations most frequently watched by children 2 to 17 years old, based on data from Nielsen ratings.
The researchers are concerned that such sponsorships could have a negative impact on children’s food choices and diet, said Marie Bragg, first author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at the NYU School of Medicine in New York.”
The article also included the following: “The researchers wrote in the study that poor diet is a significant driver of childhood obesity, and food marketing is one factor that contributes to poor diet among children.”
“I think the study provides a good example of that,” said Dr. David Ludwig, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“Public health experts and pediatricians, when a child comes in for a visit, may warn against the risks of excessive weight, but for every positive message like that, 10 negative messages undermine the benefits – negative messages in terms of food advertisements, which suffuse media today, broadcast media, the internet and athletic sponsorships, as this study shows,” said Ludwig, who was not involved in the study.
“Food advertisers and athletic organizations have long had an unhealthy relationship, implying that if you’re physically active, you can eat anything you want,” he said. “The evidence is that very few children are realistically ever going to reach such high activity levels that they can outrun a bad diet.”
A quick search of the internet about athletes endorsing unhealthy products revealed a bevy of prominent athletes endorsing unhealthy products, led by Peyton Manning, Serena Williams and LeBron James.
But Manning deserves to be crowned King of Products that can have a less than beneficial affect on people’s physical and mental health.
In addiction to his endorsement of unhealthy foods, he, along with his family signed with Caesars Sportbook. The announcement, in 2021, said part of his deal will be to “promote responsible gambling.” But the commercials I saw during NFL games last season were crafted to make betting look like fun. If the commercials promoted responsible gambling, it’s news to me.
Professional studies from around the world show that gambling can become addictive and lead to suicide. Instead of passing the football, the Manning family is receiving the bucks.
During the Army-Joe McCarthy hearings in 1954, Joseph Welch, the counsel representing the Army, asked a question that lives in history. He asked the Wisconsin senator, “Have you no sense of decency?"
The same question can be asked of very wealthy athletes who endorse unhealthy products under the guise that they are healthy.
It’s not just the athletes but the entire sports family that promotes products that can undermine a person’s health.
Beer advertising on sports events has been a staple of radio and television broadcasts for many decades. More recently hard liquor ads have been added. Cigarette advertising had a long association with sports broadcasting, Only President Nixon signing legislation that outlawed cigarettes from being advertised on sports broadcasts prevents those cancer-causing smokes from still being promoted by teams and athletes.
Now, with the addition of on-line betting from home, it’s fair to say that watching a sporting event can be detrimental to your health and wealth.
Larsson To Remember
If a scandal erupts because of a product endorsement, the more prominent an athlete is the greater the negative reporting will be.
Because most athletes have no idea about the products they endorse, and reporters are skeptical that athletes truly prefer the products they endorse, it’s unlikely that the endorsement will result in news coverage containing the message points that clients want. Most likely the coverage will be So and So is a spokesperson for XYZ and then the remainder of the story will be about the athlete's performance. That’s way the overwhelming majority of athlete endorsements are limited to scripted television commercials.
Beat reporters are unlikely to report on endorsement deals of current athletes. Coverage of endorsements usually are relegated to trade journals, and marketing columns.
Because an individual athlete can endorse multiple products, reporters don’t think endorsement deals rate “hard news” coverage.
Unlike a couple of decades ago, when many athletes needed endorsement money to make a decent living, today’s athletes make significant salaries. Thus, unlike the past, they are not fearful of expressing opinions about subjects that clients would rather they not.
But it’s not impossible to achieve major coverage in major news outlets, if the promotion is crafted in a news-making way, as bellow:
The best way to get an athlete endorsement covered by the mainstream media is the way Gillette did when they were the sole sponsor of the fan voting for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Each spokesperson had a direct connection to the game, either as a player or manager so they could talk about their experiences when they were part of an All - Star Game.
The concept was created with three truisms in mind: 1) Since the spokesperson was a past All-Star, it provided reporters with a legitimate pre-All-Star Game feature. 2) Nostalgia is a big part of baseball reporting and that was taken into consideration when crafting the approach. The spokesperson provided reporters about their experiences of the past. 3) Reporting on everyday players is mostly limited to what is currently happening. Thus, the great majority of the spokespersons were All-Stars who were out of the news spotlight for several years, providing reporters with new individuals to report on. (Full disclosure: The creator of that successful approach was yours truly.)
