Sports Celebrity Endorsement

For the first blog in unit 4, identify a sports celebrity and post comments about their endorsements deals, the relationship between their image and the choice in products/events endorsed, and their ability to raise revenue for a product or event.

The sports celebrity that I am chosing for this blog is Peyton Manning. He makes over 13 million annually in endorsements (Eichelberger, 2010). Some of his endorsements are MasterCard Inc, PepsiCo Inc, Gatorade sports drink, Sony, and Oreo cookies (Eichelberger, 2010).

In my opinion, Manning has a very clean cut image. He doesn't have a scandle associated to his name like Tiger Woods and Brett Farve. His clean cut image is a major factor with corporations, they just don't want to associate themselves with someone who has scandal. That is exactly why Tiger Woods lost a majority of his sponsors. I believe that endorsments works because fans want to be associated with their favorite athlete.

I think that the reason why celebrities endorse the products they do is because one, these products pay them a lot of money and two I think that celebrities are also wanting to endorse themselves in the product and it helps their image to be associated with a certain product.

People will buy products that are endorsed by Peyton Manning. My sister is the perfect example. Manning endorses Zig Techs. My sister never knew that existed until Manning had them on in a commercial. For the first week, everything that commercial came on, she un-muted the TV and we had to watch Peyton in the commercial. After that she was  bound and determined that she was going to get herself some zig techs. Now she has three pairs and another pair that she wears just for officiating basketball. That is the power of a Peyton Manning endorsement.

Eichelberger, Curtis (2010). Colts Victory May Bring Manning $3 Million More in Endorsements. Retrived on February 5, 2011 from: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHsGo8GH1EJ4