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Tag: sponsorship

  • Kia K900 Gets LeBron James as Brand Ambassador

    Kia‘s luxury brand is taking off with its K900 model. Now the South Korean auto manufacturer has signed a huge sponsorship deal to promote the K900 in the U.S.

    Kia has announced that NBA star LeBron James is now the official “luxury ambassador” for the Kia K900. James has signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with Kia Motors, which is also the “official automotive partner” of the NBA.

    “I was a Kia K900 driver and fan before we decided to become partners, so I’m really excited to be Kia’s first-ever luxury ambassador,” said James. “This partnership is about the power of great style and performance. Kia and the K900 are out to challenge conventional wisdom and show people how to think differently, and I can relate to that. For me, a partnership has to be authentic and real to who I am, and that’s what makes this one so special.”

    According to Kia, James was chosen as brand ambassador partly for the athlete’s pre-existing love for the K900. In August James posted interior pictures of the K900 prominently featuring the Kia logo to his Instagram account. The post was accompanied by James’ expression of love for the vehicle:

    Rolling around in my K900. Love this car!! #Kia #TheLand #Akron #StriveForGreatness

    A photo posted by LeBron James (@kingjames) on

    James is now one of a handful of athletes that are ambassadors for Kia brands. Other athletes with sponsorship deals include NBA star Blake Griffin, tennis star Rafael Nadal, and golf star Michelle Wie.

    “As fans of the game of basketball, we were honored to learn that one of today’s most influential athletes and tastemakers recognized something different was going on at Kia and wanted to check out our new flagship sedan,” said Tim Chaney, VP of marketing at Kia Motors America. “Like Kia, LeBron James does not want to be confined by conventions or traditional definitions, and as our K900 luxury ambassador his star power will cause people to question everything they think they know about our brand.”

  • Colin Kaepernick Fined for Wearing Beats Headphones

    It looks like we have our first victim of the NFL’s Beats by Dre headphones ban.

    The NFL has fined San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick $10,000 for donning a pair of pink Beats headphones at his post-game press conference on Sunday.

    Why the fine? Well, the NFL recently partnered up with Bose for a sponsorship deal. On the heels os that, the league banned players from wearing Beats by Dre (and other branded) headphones on the field before the opening kickoff through the end of the game. Players are also banned from sporting Beats during TV interviews, press conferences, and locker room interviews conducted within a 90-minute window following the conclusion of the game.

    In a statement, the NFL made a point to discuss broad league policies against “branded exposure”, instead of focusing on the Beats sponsorship deal.

    “The NFL has longstanding policies that prohibit branded exposure on-field or during interviews unless authorized by the league. These policies date back to the early 1990s and continue today. They are the NFL’s policies – not one of the league’s sponsors, Bose in this case. Bose is not involved in the enforcement of our policies.”

    Kaepernick has had a deal with Beats for some time now. You may remember that commercial that played every single second of every single day. Also, Beats and Kaepernick have a healthy social media partnership.

    A $10,000 fine is unlikely to discourage Kaepernick, or anyone else for the matter, from wearing brands that are paying them big bucks to do so. It’s not like Kaepernick is going to have to pay the fine himself or anything.

    Image via Paul Gutierrez, Twitter

  • Tiger Woods Signs MusclePharm Sponsorship Deal

    MusclePharm Corporation, a popular nutritional supplement maker, announced this week that it has signed golfer Tiger Woods to a multi-year sponsorship deal. Woods joins other famous athletes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Colin Kaepernick, who also have endorsement deals with MusclePharm. The brand is also the “official supplement provider” for the UFC.

    Under the terms of the deal Woods will appear in MusclePharm advertisements, including TV commercials. Woods will also promote the brand via social media and in-person appearances. Woods’s golf bag will also be updated to reflect the sponsorship. The sponsorship agreement takes effect starting July 1.

    “One of the keys to success as an athlete is making sure you are fueling your body properly, which is at the core of MusclePharm’s mission,” said Woods. “This golf bag venture is a great way to launch this partnership. I look forward to working with MusclePharm to help people achieve their peak physical form.”

    Woods is building a hefty roster of sponsorships again, following the athlete’s well-publicized affairs and divorce from ex-wife Elin Nordegren. Woods is now in another high-profile relationship with skiing champion Lindsey Vonn.

    On the career side of his life, Woods earlier this year had been suffering from a pinched nerve in his back. The athlete had surgery to correct the issue in late March, which led to him dropping out of this year’s Masters Tournament.

    “Tiger Woods is more than a golfer,” said Brad Pyatt, CEO of MusclePharm. “He is an elite athlete possessing legendary work ethic and determination, as well as a focus on remaining in top physical shape. We are excited to work with Tiger to bring more attention to nutritional science and how it can enhance strength and overall athletic performance – and most importantly – fuel athletes safely.”

    Image via Facebook

  • MLB’s Official Wireless Sponsor is Now T-Mobile

    Major League Baseball (MLB) and T-Mobile today announced a multi-year marketing partnership that makes T-Mobile the official wireless sponsor of MLB. As part of the deal, T-Mobile will “enhance” MLB games with its wireless technology.

    The agreement includes T-Mobile providing a new on-field communication system that will use the wireless carrier’s 4G network. Specifically, the tech will be used to provide a wireless voice system between dugouts and bullpens in “select” MLB stadiums. The dugout-to-bullpen system will appear sometime in 2013 and the companies will continue to look for “options for future innovation within the game.

    “T-Mobile has made a significant commitment to Major League Baseball across our game and business, and its innovative drive and expertise in wireless technology will be an outstanding addition to the baseball industry,” said Tim Brosnan, executive vice president of business at MLB. “T-Mobile has been an impact player in the wireless industry, and we look forward to its innovative spirit positively influencing the game and the way fans enjoy it.”

    In addition to the wireless dugout-to-bullpen system, T-Mobile will provide its subscribers with exclusive MLB content and offers through a collaboration with the MLB.com At Bat mobile app.

    “Baseball is America’s No. 1 digitally consumed sport, and today’s baseball fan is technologically savvy and data hungry, which makes this partnership a great opportunity for not only baseball enthusiasts, but also millions of T-Mobile customers,” said Mike Sievert CMO at T-Mobile.

  • Twitter Now An Official Sponsor Of The Apache Foundation

    Twitter has been on a roll recently. They are becoming one of the friendliest companies to developers, innovators and open source evangelists. Their latest move may just bump them up to god-like status.

    Twitter announced today that they are now an official sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a “non-profit and volunteer run open source foundation.” While Twitter’s explanation is satisfactory, it doesn’t do them justice. The Apache Foundation is a community led development group that’s been around since 1999. They’ve had a hand in developing many of the technologies we take for granted today including HTTP Servers, XML graphics and OpenOffice.

    That’s why it’s super cool that Twitter is now giving back to the group. Twitter has long been a proponent of open source software and its ability to revolutionize the way we approach computing. It just goes to show you that there is still some good in this world.

    Of course, Twitter has a personal stake in this as well. They are working with ASF to complete work on Mesos, an application that’s currently going through the Incubation period at ASF. Twitter is already using Mesos on “hundreds of production machines and makes it easier to execute clustered jobs that do everything from running services to handling [their] analytics workload.”

    This is only the beginning as well. As Twitter becomes a larger part of the Internet consciousness, their spreading of the open source goodwill will surely rub off onto others. They certainly have enough clout right now as it is, but working with the ASF will only make them stronger.

    It’s worth mentioning that is the second time this week that Twitter has shown itself to be one of the classiest acts in the tech sector. The company recently announced its Innovator’s Patent Agreement. This lets the developer within their companies own the patent for their creations. While it may be in response to the ridiculous patent slinging by Yahoo, it’s still a great move that inspires confidence in employees.

  • YouTube’s New Ad Model: Channel Sponsorships

    YouTube is rolling out a new ad model option for 96 YouTube Channels. Rather than selling television style ads to certain demographics, they will now sell full sponsorship for certain YouTube channels. The ads include display, overlay and pre-roll; so basically they will cover the entire page with an ad preceding the video. The annual price tag for sponsorship is around $4 to $10 million.

    YouTube will cover cost of production for certain channel producers, and the producers themselves will share equally in advertising revenue, once YouTube recoups the original investment. Production costs range from a few hundred thousand to a few million for most channels.

    YouTube has struck deals on the new advertising scheme with brands like Toyota, GM, AT&T, and Lowes. As part of the deal, buyers will also be investing in other videos, with their ads appearing in non-channel videos as well. The channel sponsor ads comprise just 20% of the total ad campaign revenue for investors, with the other content being run on the rest of YouTube’s videos.

    Unilever will be sponsoring Young Hollywood Network channel for a reported $10 million. Toyota is to sponsor Cafe Mom, Kin Community and Mom’s View for $10 million, and GM will sponsor a package of automotive channels including Red Bull’s action sports channel for $5 million. Chrysler, AT&T, and Lowes also have agreements, but details on those deals have not been released.

    YouTube is asking brands to get on board for sponsorship of groups of channels as part of a package deal. According to AdAge, a one year exclusive contract in the music and pop culture categories would cost as much as $62 million a package. Sports would cost $40 million, and automotive would run you about $16 million.

    This new advertising model comes after a recent redesign of the channels look for YouTube. As more attention is being shifted from television to online video entertainment, YouTube is trying to stay ahead of the game with improvements to their channels offering, giving a more professional feel to original content and offering new ad opportunities to investors.

  • NASCAR Driver Honors Thousands Of Twitter Fans

    NASCAR’s Brad Keselowski will be racing in the Daytona 500 this Sunday and again in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series race on Friday at Daytona. For the race on Sunday, Keselowski has found a new way to take thousands of his fans along with him. The web savvy race car driver has taken sponsorship and social media promotion to a new level. To honor and engage his fans, Keselowski’s Number 19 truck will feature the Twitter handles of more than 2,600 contest winners selected from his website.

    “Everyone on the platform wants more followers, myself and the sponsors included. This sounded like a fun way to accomplish everything we’re looking to do with social media in a fun, unique way,” Keselowski told ESPN recently. The young driver truly enjoys interacting with his fans and really seems to have a handle on using social media tools to communicate with them.

    Although fans are used to seeing Twitter handles on jerseys and pretty much everything else, this truck will be the first time thousands of social media handles have been displayed on a NASCAR vehicle. It took some design doing to accomplish the challenge but the handles will all fit and be displayed on the truck bed with 10 winning fans Twitter names prominently featured on the doors. Regarding social media, Keselowski adds, “I feel like this is an important new frontier. It’s exciting to me to push it to new areas.”

    @keselowski
    Brad Keselowski    Is mine?
    @RickAllenracing: Great looking truck for @keselowski
    (u) thinks (ur) name is on there..it is! I checked for you
    #openedcanofworms 15 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @keselowski
    Brad Keselowski    I’m pumped 2!
    @ashley_herrick
    cant wait to watch the Twitter truck this Friday night! Proud to be on it! Proud to call u my fave driver! 1 day ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Google Sponsors Tea Party-Hosted CPAC

    Google has officially signed on as a sponsor of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC.

    CPAC is an annual conference that brings together the who’s who of American conservatives – activists, radio/TV personalities, and elected officials. Other than plenty of speeches, CPAC is known for its straw poll which is thought by some to represent the overarching mood of the party (though some fail to place such a high significance on it). Last year’s straw poll winner was Ron Paul. The conference was founded in 1973.

    Google is one of nine listed sponsors. The others include the American Center for Law & Justice, the American Principles Project, CitizenLink, Human Events, the National Rifle Association, The heritage FOundation, The Leadership Institute, and the Young America’s Foundation. The event has dozens more co-sponsors and specialty sponsors, and is being co-hosted by the Tea Party.

    One of the main reasons that this is big news involves Google’s perceived political leanings. Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt is a proud supporter of President Obama, and Google’s workforce is number three on the list of biggest sources of campaign funding for the President.

    According to Bloomberg, Google says that they will have a presence at events from both sides of the aisle this campaign season. The CPAC was particularly attractive to Google because a large percentage of the attendees are young, technology users, they said.

    Google also said that CPAC is a perfect chance to promote Google Politics & Elections. Google Politics & Elections is a dashboard they unveiled in January that allows users to track primary results, on-the-ground reporting, as well as find the most current news about all the candidates and issues. Google also plans to incorporate Google+ Hangouts into CPAC.

    This year’s CPAC will take place on February 9-11 in Washington D.C. The confirmed speaker list is filled with nearly everyone important in conservative politics these days – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum and Scott Walker. There are some interesting oddities as well, like actor Stephen Baldwin and TLC reality show star Michelle Duggar (the one with all the kids).

  • Budweiser To Sponsor FA Cup, UK Twitter Users Clown Decision

    There aren’t many brands that are more “American” than Budweiser. It’s synonymous with with everything to do with modern American culture, especially in sports. With that in mind, there aren’t many things more “British” than the FA Cup, a tournament featuring the teams of the English football league, including teams from the English Premier League (Manchester, Arsenal, Chelsea, etc). So what happens when these two entities form a business partnership, where Budweiser is one of the primary sponsors of a decidedly European sporting event?

    Well, if you are a Twitter member in the United Kingdom, you hang a clown suit on the announcement, while making fun of what we Americans call “beer.” Before the Twitter breakdown, some information about the partnership.

    Budweiser and the Football Association have agreed to a three-year deal that sees Budweiser as one of the primary sponsors of FA Cup. In fact, while the agreement stands, the event will now be called The FA Cup with Budweiser. Is that anything like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? Considering Budweiser has sponsored the World Cup for the past 25 years, such a relationship shouldn’t be so surprising, but then again, the World Cup is just that: teams from all over the world. Meanwhile, the FA Cup is an England-only tournament, making Budweiser’s primary sponsorship — over brands like Bass or, hell, even Guinness — ripe for humorous reactions.

    Naturally, Twitter is the place for these gems, and with “Budweiser” trending in United Kingdom, there’s plenty of reaction to share, although, it should be said the first tweet I noticed captured the mood perfectly:

    @Brendan_Surrey
    Bren    ‘FA Cup to be sponsored by Budweiser beer’ “Fans plan to add vodka to the famous American soft drink to make it alcoholic 24 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @clutterbells
    Colin Campbell    Budweiser will only be used to water the pitch at Wembley, FA assures fans http://post.ly/2DuEh 1 hour ago via Posterous · powered by @socialditto

    @RossMackiewicz
    Ross Mackiewicz    Budweiser the new sponsor of the FA Cup. We’re bound to see multi-ball,cheerleaders,fireworks & time-outs. http://t.co/Bk1y2N9 via @guardian 1 hour ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

    @jonnywright
    jonnywright    BBC News – FA Cup to be sponsored by Budweiser beer – http://bbc.in/l9zzz2 – what the….???!? 1 hour ago via BBC Website · powered by @socialditto

    @NadStarBOOOOM
    Nad Star    The FA Cup with Budweiser….is how its now going to be called! Wtf 2 hours ago via UberSocial · powered by @socialditto

    For some reason, I dig Nad Star’s Twitter background. Well, the right side of it, anyway. The Twitter assault on Budweiser continues:

    @benyacobi
    Ben Yacobi    I suppose it’s too much to hope that the FA Cup sponser is the nice Czech Budweiser rather than the digusting watered-down American sort? 2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @rhysjonesy
    Rhys Jones    Budweiser new FA Cup sponsor. Will be interesting to see their logo on cardboard adverts rather than the taste of cardboard in their drink. 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    A voice of reason shows up, but it’s doubtful the contribution will salve these reactions:

    @DrewBSport
    Drew Barrand    For all those Budweiser naysayers, the #FACup needs sponsor revenue to survive. What would you rather live with? A sponsor or no FA Cup? 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Whatever the case, there’s little doubt the Football Association enjoys the influx of Anheuser-Busch money, and there’s even less doubt the FA Cup’s viewership will suffer because of the partnership. With that in mind, maybe next time, the FA can court some German beer brands. It’s not like the history between these two countries was that bad, right? Who knows, maybe Budweiser can make use of Arianny Celeste, much like they did with the Bud Light Lime commercial:


    Surely that’s something the Americans and the British can agree on?