It looks like Shawn will do very well with endorsements.
http://www.whotv.com/global/story.asp?s=8889562
And so will Nastia.
http://www.reuters.com/article/sport...dChannel=10003
I don't know the details, but these girls and Alicia also have some kind of a deal with the Covergirl company to advertise cosmetics. I'm not sure about the other 3 girls.
No offense to the other girls, but they were pretty much a non-factor at these games. Nastia and Shawn really carried this team the entire time. Other than die-hard gymnastics fans, does anyone even know who Bridget Sloan, Samantha Peszek, or Chellsie Memmell are? I suppose Chellsie may be a bit more recognizeable than the other two, based on being on the schene for quite a while, but she had only to routines in the entire Olympics, and she bombed one of them. As much as I like and respect all of these girls, other than Shawn and Nastia, they just haven't made enough of an impact to be attractive to companies looking for spokes-people that the consumer population will recognize. Alicia, I think, was lucky to have gotten the Cover Girl contract before the games began, as she is now best known for her devestating errors in the Team Finals.Originally Posted by PolymerBob
I think Alicia would make an excellent spokesmodel. I hope the Covergirl people don't try to get out of the contract just because she faltered.
One thing really ticks me off.Some people who only watch gymnastics once every 4 years think Alicia is a loser. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I know that I am a quixotic socialistic small-town European, but am I the only one who is a bit weirded out by these endorsement deals etc.?
It's like a checklist:
- Win a piece of metal by athletic achievements - done.
- Put photograph on some paper boxes with unhealthy cereals in it - done.
- Travel through the country and have weird unsubstantial talks with random people in front of a camera - done.
- Try to memorise hilarious scripts for TV-adds about products nobody's interested in anyway - done.
- Make sure that celebrity isn't overexposured despite the fact that people see them at breakfast (cereal boxes), on the way to work (posters), at work (co-worker is wearing her earrings + internet adds), lunch break (celeb is endorsing McDonalds), while picking up kid from school (T-shirts of the schoolgirls), at home (TV, magazines...) - impossible!
Don't get me wrong, the girls (and other athletes) surely deserve it and I am happy that they probably will earn enough so that they won't have to work for the rest of their lives. They worked hard for that.
Still weirded out though.
^Yes, the whole idea of "celebrity endorsements" is kind of strange. Would I go out and buy a product just because some movie star comes on TV and tells me to?
Actually, I did once. Kristi Yamaguchihad a television ad for diet pizza (?!). She made that pizza look so good biting into it that I went out and bought one. I think the subliminal message was, "if you eat Smart Ones diet pizza you will be as thin and fit as I am, and you will be able to skate like me, too." (It tasted like cardboard, but at least I didn't get any fatter.)
Nancy Kerrigan notoriously got an endorsement deal with Walt Disney after the 1994 Olympics. This required that she do some public appearances and photo shoots with Mickey Mouse. Whereupon she said, quite audibly, "this is the silliest thing I ever did!"
It didn't bother Michelle Kwan, though:
http://www.championsonice.com/images...-disney300.jpg
Last edited by Mathman; 08-24-2008 at 10:23 PM.
I think I understand the Covergirl deal. If they wait until after the Olympics, they would have to pay Shawn and Nastia about $ 1 million each ( let's say ) to sign a contract. By signing Shawn, Nastia and Alicia before any medals were won, they can sign each of them for ( let's say ) $ 200,000 . So they got 2 gold medalists for $ 600,000 rather than $ 2 million. Pretty smart.
I'm just glad Alicia got a little piece of the action. She has a nice little nest egg to start her post-gymnastics life with.
One thing that ticks me off is that they never showed the men's high bar event final where Jonathon Horton won a silver medal. All they showed was an interview about it with Horton. In the interview he said he had added several skills to his routine, since if he did his set perfectly, he still wouldn't medal.
I did, however, finally find the unedited footage of the routine nbcolympics.com. He added, among other stuff, a second one of those sommersault with a twist over the bar release moves.
That's got to be one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, since he had never practiced the routine he performed at Olympics before this week, if you think about it. And they chacked him and the whole event.
So he won't be getting any endorsement deals to speak of, I suppose.
Yes, that routine was amazing. CBC showed it (live, I think).
About endorsements, unfortunately I think gymnastics suffers from the same stereotyping as figure skating. It is seen, by marketers, as a girls' sport -- and a little girls' sport at that. The target consumers of products with a gymnastics tie-in are the Hannah Montana crowd.
Yes they did! It was on late so maybe that is why you missed it. What a crazy routine, wow!One thing that ticks me off is that they never showed the men's high bar event final where Jonathon Horton won a silver medal. All they showed was an interview about it with Horton. In the interview he said he had added several skills to his routine, since if he did his set perfectly, he still wouldn't medal.
Add a Hy-vee (supermarket chain) endorsement and a ton of hype to Shawn's list:
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/bei...v=ap&type=lgns
With her cheerful personality, power, and mental toughness, she certainly deserves the hype. It's a close call, but I like her more than Nastia. Shawn just needs to improve the difficulty of her uneven bars routine. With her personality, I don't think it'll be difficult to improve her artistry.
You must have stopped watching NBC at some point.One thing that ticks me off is that they never showed the men's high bar event final where Jonathon Horton won a silver medal. All they showed was an interview about it with Horton. In the interview he said he had added several skills to his routine, since if he did his set perfectly, he still wouldn't medal.
I did, however, finally find the unedited footage of the routine nbcolympics.com. He added, among other stuff, a second one of those sommersault with a twist over the bar release moves.
That's got to be one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, since he had never practiced the routine he performed at Olympics before this week, if you think about it. And they chacked him and the whole event.
So he won't be getting any endorsement deals to speak of, I suppose.They did show Jonathan and all the other guys in the high bar final although they did not show the medal cermony IIRC. It was aired much later in the broadcast (I believe it ended around midnight or 12:15 AM on the east coast) but they showed everything on the same night they showed the ladies beam final. Jonathan was awesome.
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