Honey Is Much More Than Honey, So The Brand Loves Athletes More.

"Millennials" are more inclined to have "absolute loyalty" to superstars than to a team.

This phenomenon has made those brands targeting the 18-34 year old young sports fans start to turn sponsorship goals from team based or event oriented activities to athlete centered activities.

The sportswear brand Lululemon signed the first mainstream male professional athlete, the fifty-second Super Bowl MVP winner Nick Fowles (NickFoles) in March 12th, and Nike also signed the controversial NFL player Colin Capenik (ColinKaepernick) regardless of the boycott direction.

These commercial behaviors are directly signed directly with athletes, avoiding their team completely.

According to JWS reports, this trend is mainly due to the rise of social media and the convenience of personal opinions.

Nowadays, the superstars who play a large number of fans play the role of "opinion leader" on the social platform. They have become a common sight - they can convey information about the brand to the fans at any time and anywhere in social media, so as to promote brand promotion more directly and extensively.

Rick Holo, author of the Sports Business Handbook, said: "the agreement reached between the brand and the superstar of the league is always huge." RickHorrow

Nowadays, the relationship between brand and celebrity athletes has already surpassed the benefits produced by team cooperation.

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Some superstar players have also adopted a more commercialized approach to their personal brands: professionals manage their social media accounts and specialize in related activities, making brand promotion easier and helps companies see the value of sponsorship faster.

However, when the brand tends to sponsor individual athletes, it also leads to this problem: teams and alliances inevitably compete with individual players for sponsorship resources.

In this regard, Rick said: "this does not mean that teams or alliances with market value stars need to worry about losing a sponsor.

Because the endorsement agreement signed with athletes is specific to specific events or specific categories of activities.

And for the interests of the team and the alliance, there will be other collective bargaining charter.

With the influx of sponsors and the full earning of players, the players themselves are bound to shoulder greater responsibilities.

As the spokesperson of a brand, athletes' reputation is often the most important brand or business.

Businesses will worry about the injuries or moral problems of the athletes they sponsor, even for the best and most popular athletes.

Especially in the information age, it is possible for social media to cause immeasurable loss by saying a wrong word.

In addition, the authenticity of endorsement is also crucial to brand promotion.

Losangeles Lakers Lamar Odom (LamarOdom) obviously did not understand this.

The perfume he sold in 2011 was not accepted by consumers. After all, it was difficult for a basketball player to relate to perfume.

Rick explained: "a successful business relationship or marketing partnership requires effective integration of athletes into the brand -- a relationship that needs to be more realistic than ever before.

If consumers think that athletes only support a brand because they get paid, they will not be interested in the brand because of this endorsement. "