POSTED: August 21st 2009
InDepth
Lightning Bolt can strike as many times as he likes for Puma
KEIR RADNEDGE / Sports Features Communications
LONDON/BERLIN, Aug 21: Usain Bolt may have won a world championship double and shattered world records with 9.58sec in the 100m and 19.19 in the 200m in Berlin but he was not the only winner of both races.
Cheering along were organisers of the London 2012 Olympics, seeing a crowd-pulling, headline-writer superstar who should have plenty more years to compel world attention; equally happy were directors of sportswear manufacturer Puma.
The old German brotherly rival to Adidas saw its traditional marketing strategy of signing up the big individual names – Pele, Diego Maradona, Boris Becker, Michael Schumacher etc - pay off yet again in global-magnetising fashion.
Teenage potential
Puma signed up the Jamaican Olympic and now world title hero back in 2002 after the 17-year-old had won the 200m junior world title in Jamaica but long before his name and reputation was renowned in the world at large.
Spokesman Ulf Santjes said: “Bolt is a pivotal element of our [marketing] campaigns as a living embodiment of sport, fun and a very personal lifestyle that fits the brand perfectly and is contributing towards Puma not just consolidating but expanding its position as a leading running brand."
Nike and Adidas – which has traditionally signed up federations and teams rather than individuals - have been left trailing as far back in the marketing stakes as was American Tyson Gay in the 100m and Panama’s Alonso Edward in the 200m.
A French sports marketing agency estimated that Bolt's triple-gold in Beijing brought Puma €250m in publicity value and ceo Jochen Zeitz estimates that Bolt’s Berlin exploits are worth at least a further third or more of that amount. Those Yaam fluorescent orange running shoes are already iconic in their own commercial field as well as out on the track.
Sportswear history
Every new celebratory stance taken by Bolt can be turned into commercial advantage by Puma which is estimated to be rewarding him at between a basic €1m and €1.5m per year – a sum enhanced by a world record procession of bonuses and soon, one assumes, by a renegotiation.
Such sums may not compare particularly well by comparison with the stars of football or tennis or baseball or basketball but they are heading towards record levels in track and field.
Berlin’s Olympic stadium was an eerily appropriate venue for Bolt to write – and stride – the latest step in sportswear history. The first such significant strides were taken in the same Olympiastadion back at the 1936 Games by Jesse Owens. He was wearing track shoes provided for him by a provincial shoemaker from the little town of Herzogenaurach whose innovative creations had been rejected by the Germans themselves.
That shoemaker was Adolf Dassler, father of the brothers who built the rival empires of Adidas and . . . Puma.
Picture (above right): Usain Bolt, the logo and the shoes . . . a marketing man's dream / Fotosports.com
Keywords · World Athletics Championships · IAAF · Usain Bolt · Puma · Adidas · Dassler · 100m · world record
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