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http://tophot-video.com/NastiaLukin
It was during the lead-up to the 1994 Winter Olympics when figure skater Tonya Harding allegedly participated in a plot to use a bar and whack the knee of rival skater Nancy Kerrigan at the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships, which served as the Olympics trials.
Kerrigan ultimately won a silver medal, but the scandal had dominated the Lillehammer Olympics because Harding was allowed to compete, adding drama that brought both record embarrassment and TV ratings to the sport.
It seems unlikely that Liukin, who is 5 feet 3 and 100 pounds, or the 4-9, 90-pound Johnson are plotting anything so dire.
Last week when Johnson was forced out of her home gym because of flooding, Liukin text messaged her, expressing concern and wishing Johnson luck. Johnson sent her thanks and signed her text, “Love, Shawn.”
Clearly, this was a man who aimed to be as good at the gymnastics of marketing as Liukin was on the beam and the uneven bars — especially with the Games looming and, depending on her performance, her window of opportunity either opening wider or narrowing abruptly and then possibly closing forever. Unlike conventional sports stars — Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena Williams, Tom Brady, to name a few — Olympians typically have a short, capricious period in which to capitalize on their names. For football, baseball or basketball stars, there is always another game or another season. But time, age and injury can cull the ranks in the four years between the Olympic Games. Only the luckiest and most gifted athletes win gold medals, and even fewer return for subsequent Games. For the rare few with championship potential, it isn’t just an athletic career that hangs in the balance but the chance to make a substantial fortune with a carefully planned campaign of commercial endorsements. So while Liukin is focused on mastering a double Yurchenko, it falls to Morgenstein to make sure that she maximizes her earning potential so that, as he puts it, “the name Naaahhhstia goes on forever.”
The average person might wonder what gymnastics, especially women’s gymnastics, has to do with Nascar, but if you are someone like Butcher, you want to link the two through your sponsorships in the hope that there is crossover appeal. This is what used to be known in the ’90s as synergy and is now known by the buzzword “integration.” A star like Liukin is used to “activate” the deals.
“Not so very long ago, sponsorships were about putting your sign on your building or property,” Butcher said. “It’s so much more than that now. Now we really are very focused on what type of unique content we can get our customers.” If you visited AT&T’s sports and culture Web site called the blue room in mid-June, for instance, you would have seen the Olympic hopefuls it sponsors featured next to a plug for Coldplay’s most recent CD, “Viva La Vida.” AT&T believes that by putting these different types of content together, it can make itself more relevant to both existing and potential customers. An exclusive interview with Liukin shown on the blue room means, according to Butcher, “I can see her, and I can’t get it anywhere else, and I can get it on my hand-held. We spend a lot more time thinking about that kind of thing than we did in the past.” (“It really is a huge honor,” Liukin said of working with AT&T. “They did a thing with Deion Sanders called ‘Home Turf’ about my life at home. It was right before I got my braces off.”) According to USA Gymnastics, there are some three million recreational gymnasts in the United States. Merging that group with millions of Nascar fans might sound like a shotgun marriage, but creating excitement with a paint job is maybe worth the stretch. And it isn’t just Liukin and AT&T that profit from the exposure, but USA Gymnastics, another partner in this particular integration. “Olympics and Nascar,” Morgenstein e-mailed me. “Nascar fans are very patriotic! Olympic fans are AT&T customers. It works. Using Nastia is a great way to merge across platforms.”
