The Celebrity of Athletes

Everyone has seen the Gatorade ads, the Nike commercials, and the billboards advertising their products with a popular athlete in the foreground. Athletes can use these advertisements to shape their image while also inspiring youth at the same time.

            Gatorade can be very picky about the athletes it chooses to appear in the advertisements. When young athletes see those Gatorade commercials, the makers want kids to be like “Wow, I want to be just like that famous athlete” which will cause them to then support Gatorade because their idol is backing it. Is it a bad thing for the athlete? Well not necessarily, many professional teams are endorsed by Gatorade and do in fact use their product to boost electrolytes and replenish their systems in order to perform fully throughout the entire game. Granted, one would not want to see a professional athlete advertising for a brand such as Marlboro Cigarettes. However, the chances of athletes endorsing anything other than sport related products are highly unlikely.

            While product advertising is popular, athletes are getting their names out there by supporting companies such as the Play 60 movement. This allows young kids to get on the field with professional athletes for a day and play sports with them in order to advocate physical activity. This gets the athlete good advertising by making good relationships with the kids, who will go home and look to support that player in different ways based on the connection they made. This is also a big endorsement for the community, trying to help get kids outside and playing in order to keep active and a healthy life style.

            While athletes are considered regular people, they do have a higher image to uphold. If professional athletes continue to advocate programs such as Play 60, and remain committed to companies such as Gatorade, their image can only improve. There will probably be an even bigger movement for athlete support in advertising as time goes on, but for right now I think athletes are devoting their face time to respectable causes, which helps both them and the community.

YouTube Killed The Radio Star

            Today’s music artists are consumed with the struggle as to how to market themselves these days. So many young artists are being forced to make themselves marketable by taking on a face of sexuality. As we saw with the recent Miley Cyrus performance, her over the top show of sexuality and lack of clothing was not taken very well, but some have said that her whole show was completely planned to be over the top. To an extent, it totally worked. Still today people are talking about that performance and the talk the few weeks right after was all about her. The best way for artists to market themselves these days in through their performances. Many country stars are having sold out shows because everyone knows those shows are a giant party. Pink recently just had a performance in D.C where she did an amazing acrobatics performance flying through the air. Pink is another artist who is known for her shows.

            These shows translate into big money for the performers. Think about it; say someone pays one hundred dollars for a ticket to a concert. Then the concert seats three thousand people(which would be a small audience for them), that means that show alone made $300,000. And that doesn’t include sales of t-shirts, DVD’s, and any sorts of concessions. So that includes one show, and these artists are touring the world 8 months out of a year.

            These shows are a huge money makers for performers and I believe the word of mouth marketing they get out of the performances are the best type of advertising they could possibly get. However, many have resorted to endorsements from popular companies. While many would see this as a way of lower their standards, it is making them money and putting their face to a company. If it will advance them by getting their face out there and having more people see them, more power to them. They have to make a living as well so why not make the extra money for themselves while getting advertising time for themselves?

Shouting The News

            News today is extremely biased. I don’t care what anyone says about in the middle news stations, no. In some way or another they are biased in either the way they speak, their demeanor, or what opinions they bring to the table. I watch Bill O’Reilly and listen to Sean Hannity on the radio all the time. Both are without doubt right-winged conservatives and make no attempt to hide that fact.

            Bill O’Reilly is usually very good at sticking to strictly political arguments and has a way of getting his point across is a very straight forward sort of manner. His guests are typically democrats who he likes to sit back and shut down their opinions on just about every issue he brings about. While he brings about controversial issues, he allows both sides to make their argument, even if he is very strong willed in proving the left-winged side wrong. He can without a doubt be rude in many different ways. He is extremely stubborn and has no intentions of approaching any sort of issue in a open-minded fashion. This form of news delivery is very entertaining, especially for a conservative such as myself. While he is very opinionated, his logic and reasoning is based on and backed up with truthful facts that he brings to the table.

            Sean Hannity is yet another right-winged conservative who is quite stubborn. Hannity does have a television show, yet I listen to him more on talk radio. He is an advocate for educating young students interested in political issues. He recently had a group of college kids on the show discussing foreign affairs. Hannity is another stubborn broadcaster, yet is more willing to hear opposing viewpoints. He even advocates that opposing opinions call into the show to try and contradict what he says. However argument style discussion does tend to ensue soon after. Hannity is very fact based, he even comes into the show with studies that have been conducted and asks opinions on them, and follows up with how he feels on the situation.

            Both of these broadcasters are two of my favorites. I have yet to find an issue I don’t agree with either of them on, which most likely plays quite a big role in this decision. I do learn a lot from these two, as they discuss current events and issues. While they may be biased by being totally right-winged, they make no effort to try and conceal their opinions as equal minded at all.