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The Most Popular Athletes in the World

2 Jun

A number of athletes are celebrities and well-known around the globe. Why does matter from a marketing perspective? Companies pay huge endorsement fees to have these athletes promote their products — from sports equipment to sports apparel to energy drinks and to a whole lot more.

There are many interesting questions in terms of the top celebrity athletes, such as: Which sports do they represent? Which countries are their home bases?

Recently, ESPN produced its second annual “ESPN World Fame 100 rankings.” ESPN’s director of analytics, Ben Alamar, came up with a formula that combines endorsement income with social media following and Internet search popularity:

  • Of the top 100 athletes in the world fame ratings, 38 play soccer (known as football outside the U.S.), 13 play basketball, 11 play golf, 10 play tennis, and 8 play American football. Twenty other sports are also represented; but NONE of the top 100 is a baseball player.
  • Thirty-five athletes are from the U.S., 9 from Brazil, 7 from Germany, 5 from England, 4 from India, and 4 from Spain. Thirty-six other countries are also represented in the list.
  • Among the top 100 athletes, 92 are male and 8 are female.
  • The top 5 endorsers each earned at least $36 million in the most recent year studied.

  • Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer superstar, has more than 260 million followers on social media.

 
Click the image below to see the ESPN top 100 and a lot more interesting data.


 

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Creative Uses of Guerilla Marketing

26 May

Guerilla marketing involves innovative, unconventional, and low-cost marketing techniques that seek to achieve maximum consumer exposure for a product. Although the concept has typically been applied to low-cost tactics used by small firms, guerilla marketing is now being used more often by larger companies to stand out better without eating up large parts of their budget.

Daniel Adams, reporting for InstantShift, has identified EIGHTEEN creative guerilla campaigns involving “street” advertising. We will highlight a few of them in this post. As Adams notes:

“Guerrilla marketing works because it’s simple to understand, easy to implement, and outrageously inexpensive. These creative marketing campaigns are the perfect example of how firms use some of the most creative minds in the world, by thinking outside the box, to produce effective advertising strategies for their product that forces us to hear their voices.”

“I’ve seen many people complaining that street advertising doesn’t have much room for innovation, but here we are about to contradict these complaints. Just like any other ad space medium, streets are also allow you to reach more specific audiences, but streets are not limited to that because it can be a space for creative imagination, and these creative street marketing campaigns are good evidence of this.”

 

These examples are all from InstantShift.

 

Clever Way to Promote an IWC Schaffhausen luxury watch!

 

Folger turning a sewer into a steaming cup of coffee!

 

McDonald’s French Fries logo on a walkway!

 

Adidas spans the globe (or at least a highway)!

 

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Can Mark Wahlberg Help AT&T?

26 Apr

The competition among TV service, Internet, and cellphone service providers is more intense than ever — especially with the discount cellphone service pricing from T-Mobile and Sprint. Both AT&T and Verizon have seen this competition hit their bottom lines.

As a result, AT&T has just signed up celebrity Mark Wahlberg to headline video commercials that encompass all of the services that AT&T offers. Will this “all in one” campaign succeed?
 
 
Here is is a 90-second ad that AT&T uploaded to YouTube on April 24, 2017.


 
No matter how well the campaign does, Mark Wahlberg will do VERY well!!! 🙂


 

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Movie Milestones

12 Apr

The movie industry is always looking for new ways to maximize revenues and create buzz with the public. With this in mind, WatchMojo has a fun new video on the top game-changing Hollywood films:

“Movies that were so iconic that they created lasting and deep trends that changed the way films are made, through their stories, special effects, and CGI. WatchMojo presents the Top 10 Movies that Started Industry Trends. But what will take the top spot on our list? X-Men starting the Superhero craze, Jaws creating the need for annual summer blockbusters, or The Avengers starting the shared universe craze? Watch to find out!”

 

 

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Is the Stock Market Over-Exuberant for Snap?

3 Mar

Snap Inc. is a U.S.-based technology and social media company that was started in 2011 .Products include the popular Snapchat app and Spectacles eye wear; it also owns the Bitmoji app.

Yesterday (March 2, 2017) was a big day for Snap Inc. and the tech industry overall because of Snap’s highly anticipated IPO (initial public offering) on the New York Stock Exchange. Some analysts are excited at the popularity of this IPO; others wonder whether investors are being overly exuberant. What do YOU think?

As reported by CNBC:

“Snap soared as much as 45% when it opened for trading at $24 a share on Thursday. Market makers at the New York Stock Exchange indicated the stock was set to open from $23.50 to $24.50 a share. At 200 million shares, Snap raised $3.4 billion and was valued at nearly $24 billion as of its pricing. Sources had told CNBC earlier this week that investors were expecting a pricing of $17 to $18 per share, above the $14 to $16 per share range originally given by the company. The IPO is 12 times oversubscribed, sources said Thursday morning, meaning that there were 12 times more orders for than there were shares offered. Some managers told CNBC they got as little as 2 percent of what they were asking for.”

 

Yet, Felix Richter commented thusly for Statista:

“Snap’s IPO valuation of $24 billion is quite a tall order for a company that has never turned a profit and warned investors that it never might. The company is now valued at 59 times its total revenue for 2016. Even for a fast-growing tech company that is a lot. Facebook in comparison has a price-to-sales ratio of around 14. As our chart illustrates, Snap is valued considerably higher than many American household names. That includes companies such as Ralph Lauren and Harley-Davidson that have been around for decades and probably will be for decades to come.”

Infographic: Snap Is More Valuable Than These Household Names | Statista You will find more statistics at Statista

 

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How Big a Hurdle Is Ad Blocking in 2017?

17 Feb

Ad blocking is becoming an enormous problem for online marketers, going from a nuisance a couple of years ago to a major threat today. ARE YOU PREPARED TO HANDLE IT?

Technopedia describes ad blockers as follows:

“An ad blocker is a program that will remove different kinds of advertising from a Web user’s experience online. These programs target certain kinds of ads, such as pop-ups, banner ads ,and other common forms of online ad blockers work in many different ways. Some are standalone programs, while others are features of more comprehensive customizing services, or add-ons for a particular browser or operating system. Some browser-specific programs, like PithHelmet for Safari, or other programs for browsers, like Opera, are designed to work well in a particular environment. Others work with Windows or another operating system to block pop-ups or other kinds of ads.”

“Users have a wide range of options for blocking out different kinds of ads. Some programs delete cookies and other Web markers to effectively limit ads. Web proxy programs like Privoxy can be effective ad blockers. Some users will choose to block Adobe Flash in order to block annoying video ads, which are now common on some websites. There are also freeware programs that may use simple principles to block out advertising.”

So, how much of a threat is ad blocking in 2017? Even though eMarketer has scaled back its estimates slightly; ad blocking is still growing significantly. As eMarketer notes:

“eMarketer has scaled back its estimates of ad blocking users in the U.S., reducing the number to 75.1 million. At that level, more than one-quarter (27.5%) of US internet users will use ad blockers this year. While the estimate has been reduced, growth is still significant, at 16.2% in 2017.”

“Ad blocking is much more common among desktop/laptop users than smartphone users. For smartphones, the incidence of ad blocking is less than 8%. That’s partly because mobile ad blockers are often not as effective — especially within apps — as they are on desktops and laptops. Ad blocking continues to be far more prevalent among younger people. This year, 41.1% of millennials will use ad blockers, r estimates. The use is lower among Gen X internet users at 26.9%, and for baby boomers, ad blocking is at 13.9%.”

 
Click the image to read more.

US Ad Blocking User Penetration, Desktop/Laptop vs. Smartphone, 2014-2018 (% of population)

 

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What Was Hot in 1997?

16 Feb

We tend to spend a lot of time looking at the “hot new things,” such as connected vehicles, virtual assistants, and a lot more. But, as marketers, we seldom look back to the past to see what was hot then in terms of fads and long-running successes. What hot high-tech products from 20 years ago can YOU name?

Recently, CNET published an entertaining slideshow: “Flashback fun! Return with us now to the thrilling days of the late 1990s, when the Interweb was young, the CD was king, and the cloud was a white, fluffy thing that floated above your head while you gabbed on your cordless telephone.”

 

Click the image to see the CNET slideshow. Which of the items shown in the slideshow were fads; which were long-run successes?


 

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