LeBron’s Exulted Brand Takes Detour

by Gail Sideman | July 8th, 2010 | View Comments

I swore to myself before the start of the NBA free-agency period that I wouldn’t write about LeBron James. Sports media are putting in enough hours of coverage about his team status, for all of us.

I realized, however, that I work in and write about sports publicity and PR, and since James announced he would share his intentions of what team he’ll join for the next few years in an hour-long broadcast on ESPN, his story became a good PR/bad PR story.

The fact is that his brand took flight the day he was proclaimed “King James.” With no NBA championship rings on his finger, that name has taken a hit in recent days. If my Twitter followers are any indication, his brand is a punch line right now. (I have to thank the tweeps for keeping me laughing with one-liners that highlights this and their own fake announcements.)

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Build a Brand Like Apple in Sports

by Gail Sideman | May 27th, 2010 | View Comments

When you think of brand positioning for Apple Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:AAPL) a few words come to mind: creative, quality, dynamic design and secretive.

In light of the last definition, most all information that has any hint of a new product, design or circuitry hits every mode of media within minutes. Apple’s PR department has one of the easiest, most rewarding jobs in the industry because the brand has evangelists that hang on the company’s every word, official or otherwise. Media of every kind look for an edge when it comes to reporting about the company’s latest product. It’s also been rumored that Apple leaks information to the media in an effort to set off the buzz meter about a product. It works every time.

There is a brand parallel to Apple in professional sports. His name is Brett Favre.

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One In a Trillion: How Mark Titus Wins with Social Media

by Ash Read | April 7th, 2010 | View Comments

Mark Titus is a former walk-on basketball player for The Ohio State University. On the court he was fairly unremarkable, playing 47 minutes and scoring 9 points in his collegiate career. However, off the court is where Titus shines.

In November 2008 he started his blog, Club Trillion. The trillion part of the name comes from basketball box scores, when a bench player comes in and plays one minute without registering a single other statistic they will have a one followed by zeroes in 12 categories, which comes out as a trillion.

His blog now has over 2.8 million views and has lead to Titus becoming one of the most popular players on the Ohio State team. Club Trillion is also a great example of how an athlete can build up a following through social media; the blog has nearly 10,000 fans on Facebook and over 15,000 followers on Twitter. Titus is also a hit on YouTube, his video Mr. Rainmaker has nearly 300,000 views.

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How Athletes Can Build Their Personal Brand

by Lewis Howes | February 18th, 2010 | View Comments

It’s no surprise professional athletes are using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and even Ustream everyday. Being an ex pro athlete myself (even on a smaller scale than the NFL) I loved connecting with my fans before and after games.

I had my regular group of fans that would come down by the field and say hi after every game. If I would have had Twitter back then, it would have given me a great opportunity to thank them online, and get them excited about the next game.

Although I didn’t know how important building a personal brand online was during my playing days, I definitely see the value of it now for helping me achieve a number of my professional goals.

Want to know why pro athletes should be building their personal brand online and how they should be doing it? Then make sure you check out this video where I interview Dan Schawbel of Personal Branding Blog to learn more.

What ways do you see pro athletes using social media the right way? How are some using it the wrong way? More importantly, how does it make you feel when you see a high profile athlete doing things “right” or “wrong” online?

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Image by jm3

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It’s a Numbers Game – Sports Vanity Toll Free Numbers

by Tim Evans | February 4th, 2010 | View Comments

Travis Nicholson! We all know there are numerous ways to brand your sports business. From a professionally designed and well optimized website, to having consistent social networking usernames across a variety of social media platforms, you are well on your way to promoting your brand.

With a passion for domain names over the years, I have been able to appreciate what it means to have a unique vanity toll-free number. With domain names, you can have a maximum of 64-characters (numbers and letter combinations) to create a domain name, but with a toll free number, you only have seven digits to work with. Because of this length limitation, at least at the level of a true 800#, there are no numbers left in the 800# database left that have been unused.

So how do you find an 800# to market your business? I’ve been using TollFreeNumbers.com over the years because it allows you to search for that perfect number and it lets you know if it is available.

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Athlete Branding & Owning a Domain Name

by Tim Evans | December 8th, 2009 | View Comments

Why an athlete should care about their domain name and personal brand.

As long as domain names have been around, professional athlete domain names have been valued property by domain speculators (domainers), cyber squatters, and sports fans. If you do a whois search for most professional athletes, no matter what the sport, chances are that the domain is registered. Even college athletes who have a shot at the professional level as well as high school recruits who haven’t committed to a school are having their domain names registered.

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T.O. Blames Media for Reputation. Really?

by Gail Sideman | October 1st, 2009 | View Comments

T.O. Buffalo Bills receiver, Terrell Owens, went into a postgame press conference after his team was defeated by the New Orleans Saints because it was mandated by the National Football League that he do so. (He also went catchless for zero yards and touchdowns for the first time in 185 games.)

{The following is the background and essentially a lesson in PR 101.}

Based on past performances, media expected Owens to provide enough provocative commentary to write their stories for them. They knew from experience what kind of questions that could set him off. So they poked; they prodded and reconfigured questions to get him to say something that would make for a sensational headline.

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Why Can’t Anyone Remember Your Name?

by Bill Guertin | September 29th, 2009 | View Comments

Name tag You’ve done it before.

You’re at a networking event, a bar, a neighbor’s apartment, or wherever there are people you’ve not met before. Someone introduces you to someone else, and instantly their name goes in one ear and out the other. You struggle to try to get it back, but it’s gone forever.

DOH!

Why does that happen? Simple: our brain is processing something else at that moment, and we just didn’t prioritize remembering the name.

If it happens to you all the time, chances are YOUR name is forgotten by others just as quickly. If you could just figure out a way to help others instantly remember you better, your name recognition – and potentially your sales – would increase.

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