Sports Marketing Evaluating the Match-Up

Sports Marketing

Evaluating the Match-Up Effect and Athlete Endorsers

For Sport and Non-Sport Brands

In the peer-reviewed article "To Catch a Tiger or Let Him Go: The Match-Up Effect and Athlete Endorsers for Sport and Non-Sport Brands" the authors cite and through empirically-derived research, clarify analysis of the fit between products and celebrity vs. non-celebrity endorsers. The first study is based on the hypothesis that a sport celebrity will be more effective promoting a sport brand, with the majority of benefit being to the celebrities image and name awareness. The second study matched an anonymous model that is identified as an athlete with a sport and non-sport brand. In this second test, the anonymous model that is positioned as an athlete is more effective promoting sports over non-sport brands (Koernig, Boyd, 25, 26).

Assessing the Effectiveness of Sports Celebrity Endorsements

From the $90 million in contracts LeBron James signed with Nike and Upper Deck before even entering the NBA to the $105 million Tiger Woods received from Buick alone, celebrity endorsements have been shown to gain and hold consumer attention, enhance message recall and increase the credibility of ad and product messages (Koernig, Boyd, 27). With the current economic conditions forcing many companies to re-evaluate these large endorsement deals with athletes, there has been new focus on the "match-up hypothesis" of pairing athletes from a given sport with brands from theirs and related sports vs. brands unrelated to sports at all. The authors contend that balance theory (Koernig, Boyd, 27) between the endorser, the brand and the target audience all must be in alignment for the endorsement strategy to be effective. The balance theory also says that the more non-sport products a sports celebrity endorses the more diffusion of their effectiveness over time. The authors question if a sports celebrity endorsing multiple products actually is strengthening their own brand at the expense of the products endorsement from outside their field of sport.

The authors conclude from their first tests of the hypotheses in this area that when a celebrity sports endorser is paired with a product from their sport, likability and trust of the endorser increase more significantly than top-of-mind awareness of the brand itself (Koernig, Boyd, 34). Second, no differences existed between athletes and on-athletes when endorsing a non-sport brand. The anonymous endorser portrayed as an athlete is in fact more effective promoting a sports brand and aiding its top-of-mind and unaided awareness according to the results of the two studies (Koernig, Boyd, 35). Moat significant from this study is the finding that it is the achievements athletically, not the fame, that are the most effective catalyst of brand promotion for sports brands (Koernig, Boyd, 35). This was ascertained by comparing the results of the two studies, and finding that the anonymous athlete, when defined by implied athletic achievement and not by fame, actually contributed the most to brand awareness and interest over celebrity endorsers. The greater the fame of endorsers, the more non-brand endorsements first benefits the celebrities' image as trustworthy (Koernig, Boyd, 35). For best results, pairing an anonymous athlete with a sports brand delivers the greatest benefit to brand identity.