Your team salary as an athlete is but a fraction of your potential income. Smart athletes use their playing careers to create a brand for themselves. What is a brand? In marketing terms, a brand is the distinctive identity or personality behind a product or company. In this case, the product is you. And your brand identity is designed to trigger a specific emotional response from consumers in the marketplace. This brand personality doesn’t have to have anything to do with your actual personality. Far from it. In fact, if you’re like most athletes, it should be miles away from your true self. Because there’s a good chance that your true self is a real douche.
Case in point: Michael Jordan. When you think of Michael Jordan, you think of winning. But you also think of words like determined, friendly, playful, elegant, and sophisticated. Of course, the real Michael Jordan is nothing like that. The real Michael Jordan can be an insufferably competitive asshole who curses a blue streak. That’s not a very marketable personality, which is why Jordan carefully crafted a brand identity that was closer to that of Gandhi. And it worked. Successful brands like Jordan are ones that connect with people and establish a loyal following, like Apple, or Coca-Cola, or asspounders.com.
If you create a good brand for yourself, that brand can translate into millions of dollars. Best of all, it can continue to make you money long after you’ve retired. A good brand name can stand on its own and become something that exists beyond you. Since it is only an abstract concept and nothing more, it can be everlasting. Look at Arnold Palmer. What has that old fogy done lately besides split pills and gum his way through a box of Weetabix? Doesn’t matter. Because every time you order a lemonade / iced tea drink (known as the Arnold Palmer), that sly coot gets a nickel. Amazing, isn’t it? That’s the power of a brand name. I, too, have invented my own drink. The Drewtini features six parts vodka, one part applesauce, and just a splash of warm saliva.
You might think the key to having a successful brand name is being nice and friendly. Wrong. What really matters is that your brand personality is unique. For example, Allen Iverson is a successful product endorser. And no one thinks of AI as being a very nice person. The irony is that he is, by most accounts, exactly that. But because white American suburban housewives take one look at Iverson and flee in terror, he made the wise decision to create a brand personality that was rebellious, dangerous, and directly from the streets. And little white kids ate that shit right up. By leveraging America’s unspoken, lingering racism, Iverson is now a multimillionaire, adored by youths across the nation. See? I told you racism was your friend.
You don’t even have to be good to become a successful endorser. I want to show you something. These were the ten highest paid athletes in America in terms of endorsements in 2006, as researched by sports illustrated.com. Now, this list will be out of date by the time this book is published, but it serves as a valuable lesson for you.
1. Tiger Woods ($100 million)
2. Phil Mickelson ($47 million)
3. LeBron James ($25 million)
4. Dale Earnhardt Jr. ($20 million)
5. Michelle Wie ($19.5 million)
6. Kobe Bryant ($16 million)
7. Shaquille O’Neal ($15 million)
8. Jeff Gordon ($15 million)
9. Peyton Manning ($13 million)
10. Dwyane Wade ($12 million)
Look at number 5! Are you shitting me? Michelle Wie can’t even beat girls, yet she makes more endorsement money than any other female American athlete, and more than any football or baseball player. Why? Two words: Asian jailbait. That’s Wie’s brand identity, and it has paid off quite well. Never mind that she couldn’t break 80 on a fucking pitch and putt. When fifty-year-old salesmen see her out on the course in a skintight Lycra skirt, they’re liable to buy anything, even the idea that the girl is any good. It’s a fact: impulse purchasing rises 379 percent when you have your dick in your hand.
You’ll also notice that the athletes listed cover a wide variety of brand personae. Tiger Woods embodies excellence. Phil Mickelson is adored by every cocky, disingenuous, lily-white, sales team douchebag at your local muni. James and Wade have the “inner-city children with unrealistic hopes and dreams” demographic covered. Earnhardt Jr. appeals to fans of his late father, but has used his looks to expand that base to people who weigh less than four hundred pounds. Jeff Gordon is loved by a surprisingly robust group of people who like both NASCAR and rainbows. Bryant signifies elegance and sophistication, with a dark, seamy underbelly. He’s Alan Ball’s favorite athlete. O’Neal appeals to the average American who is fat and cross-eyed. And Manning’s got the obsessive-compulsives in his pasty grasp.
All of these athletes have used the power of branding to become small, international, one-person corporations. You can do the same. The best part: by transforming from a person into a corporation, you’re free to do many of the things corporations do that regular old humans cannot, like skirt federal regulations, use questionable accounting practices, leverage overly generous tax shelters, taint lakes and ponds with arsenic, and so much more. It’s a whole other level of deviant behavior, and it makes for quite a naughty thrill.
Deeply Penetrating the Numbers
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