The Homa Files

Excerpted from the New York Times, “A Drink Backed by a Sports Hero (Wielding a Mean Game Controller)”, by Stephanie Clifford, November 19, 2008

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Dr. Pepper announced, for the first time, it is promoting a professional athlete on bottles that it will distribute nationally. But the shaggy-haired athlete on the label is not a traditional sports star: he’s a 21-year-old who has a three-year, $250,000 contract to play video games.

Dr Pepper is featuring the Halo 3 player Tom Taylor, who goes by Tsquared, on the labels, which will appear on about 175 million 20-ounce bottles from January to April.

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Video games are hugely popular with young men, who are playing them instead of watching television and reading magazines. Marketers are trying to advertise their products to this group by sponsoring tournaments or placing advertisements within the games themselves. (The Obama presidential campaign, for example, put ads on virtual billboards in the game Burnout Paradise.)

With the new labels, Dr Pepper is trying to grab the attention of gaming fans, who at Major League Gaming are largely men in their teenage years and early 20s.

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“The successful marketing of major stars is what sports leagues have always been about,” said Matthew Bromberg, the chief executive of Major League Gaming. “What’s really going on here is for tens of millions of young men, the aspiration to be a pro gamer is the new dream of sports stardom,” he said.

Edit by DAF

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Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/business/media/19adco.html?ref=technology

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This entry was posted on January 30, 2009 at 6:38 am and is filed under Mktg - Brands, Mktg - Segmentation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.