Music Marketing [dot] com

Tiger Woods - Part 1

To update those who have been under a rock... Tiger Woods has been cheating on his wife.

So what, right? This is a music marketing blog.

And that's why we're going to talk about marketing...specifically the marketing of dating site AshleyMadison.com.

Watch this...

You see, Ashley Madison is a site which caters who married people who want to have an affair.  And since Tiger has been cheating on his wife, he's the perfect guy to be its spokesperson.

That's why Ashley Madison has offered Tiger $5,000,000 to do the job.

Brilliant!

No way in hell is Tiger Woods going to do this job for $5,000,000.  For one, that's not that much money to him.  Plus, he'd likely lose much larger endorsements due to "ethics" clauses, which all endorsements carry these days to allow companies to get out of big payouts when situations just like this one happen.

The people at Ashley Madison know this, so they issue a press release making the offer and kick back, watching all the free publicity they're getting.

This isn't anything new and it happens all the time.  In 1984, Gillette reportedly offered Billy Gibbons and and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top $1,000,000 each to shave their beards for a television commercial.  Larry Flynt does similar offers for celebrities to appear nude in his magazine.

The point isn't to get the endorsement, the commercial, or the pictorial; the point is to get people talking...and that's exactly what it does.

Have you ever done something outrageous to get media attention?  Post it below...

So Much for the Endorsement Deals...

Turns out Michael Phelps isn't as clean cut as a lot of companies thought.  Will be interesting to see how his sponsors react to this photo.

This is the United States, where the majority of celebrities can get a second chance, simply by crying on Oprah's couch, but with the economy the way it is, will that be good enough for corporate sponsors, who may be looking for a way to cut expenses?

Learn from this.  A situation like this isn't just limited to people with endorsements, it can just as easily affect musicians who have licensed music for corporate advertising.

I'm not making a judgment call about getting completely loaded on booze and smoking marijuana at a college party, by the way.  Whatever works for you...  But don't bitch when the sponsors you've done deals with, who all have a clause in their contracts prohibiting this kind of behavior, get pissed and pull out.

To end on a good note, the good news for Michael Phelps is that he's just opened up a new segment of sponsors. Zig Zag rolling papers, that guy on the corner selling nickel bags, Cypress Hill...

Thoughts?