It is an enviable life. You earn your living playing sport, and your fans pay for the retirement. On a recent trip to Dubai by a middling British sports team, fawning well wishers were falling over themselves to offer freebies. The star of the team was offered a free apartment in return for his face on some marketing material, the rest of the team were bought free drinks, free rounds of golf, free hotel accommodation – as long they had their pictures taken with a gurning company rep.
The freebies come so thick and fast, many stars begrudge putting their hand in their own pocket.
Such is ‘sports marketing’, the not so difficult art of aligning a staid brand with a successful, sporty one. First Group, a property developer, is the latest to sign a sportsman to front one its Dubai projects (Sam Torrance, a past-his-prime golfer, and a tower in Dubai Sports City, since you ask). Michael Schumacher and Michael Owen have similar deals.
Good luck to them. But you have to ask what do any of these stars know about the Dubai property market? What reassurance do they bring to buyers? What point of difference do these retired multimillionaires bring to the project?
1 comment:
But you have to ask what do any of these stars know about the Dubai property market?
Absolutely nothing - except that they were given some of it in return for standing and grinning like an idiot for a billboard ad.
What reassurance do they bring to buyers?
None at all. I think that it's all to so with the egos of the property developers who can say, "Look, we've got (insert sportsman's name here) fronting our development - it's gotta be a good thing!" and then they can give themselves some false sense of security that all will be ok
What point of difference do these retired multimillionaires bring to the project?
None at all - it's just one after another ad nauseum. No POD when every development is marketed around the same theme.
And watch the retired millionaires quickly distance themselves when things start going wrong.
******
I wonder when this news will get around Dubai?
Beckham gives his Palm mansion to Victoria's parents because he's never going to use it!
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