Get Real Real wrote:
Viv Savage wrote:How marketable is Wheating?
....not at all....
What planet does everybody live on? Nobody knows who AW is, nobody cares. He is invisible. The mainstream media has no idea who he is.
Maria Sharipova signed w/ Nike for $65mm. She is marketable.
What the hell can AW bring to the table as far as marketability? People seem to confuse athletic performance w/ marketability.
I guess understanding things in context is too logical for you.
He is marketable in the running and track world, which we of course all know is a niche.
If he wins a gold medal in 2012...then he becomes marketable for a blip post Games.
Nike is paying top dollar, for a track athlete at least, because he is so marketable. Now what Nike needs to do is, gasp, market him!!!!!
I get so sick of Nike getting top athletes that are extremely marketable and then doing absolutely nothing with them! The Nike ads I see for running are still some hobby jogger running with an iPod and Nike plus system.
I believe that if Nike wanted to make Andrew Wheating or Rupp or Solinsky or anyone well known and an asset to the company, they could get it to the point where everyone in America knew about our top distance runners. They are sitting on a gold mine of advertising with the number of young, upcoming distance talent in their back pocket!
For example, we heard all about Nike paying top dollar to get a high res vid of Rupp going for the American record, so we know they got some great shots of Solinsky doing it. It would be so simple and cheap for them to throw together a 15-20 second commercial of him running the last 100 meters or so with everyone going nuts followed by a simple CHRIS SOLINSKY: NEW AMERICAN 10,000 RECORD HOLDER: 26:59 followed by the Nike swoosh, yet they are just sitting on that film doing nothing. I get fired up seeing that clip and all of my non-runner friends tell me the same when I show it to them. You know how many people that would reach who would then at least know what happened and who Chris Solinsky is? That seems to me like an advertisers dream!
Needless to say, if Wheating is not marketed and made known to the public by Nike, what is the point of paying top dollar? Everyone could know who Wheating is if Nike wanted it that way. Why don't they do something with their assets?