Michael Jordan Setting the Tone
The craziest statistic from the past basketball season did not happen on the court, it happened on the balance sheet. The highest-paid basketball player from the 2017 season was a player that has not competitively played ball in almost 20 years. Michael Jordan has been retired since the early 2000’s, but actually made more money in 2017 than any professional athlete in the world. Forbes estimates that Jordan makes $110+ million a year from his brand Air Jordan. That 9-figure annual payment is just Jordan’s cut of the profits from Air Jordan’s creator, Nike, that reports $2.8+ billion in revenue annually from just that brand. The creation of the Air Jordan brand did more than create the legend of Michael Jordan, it revolutionized an entire sports industry. It created the idea of personal branding that athletes use to monetize their popularity. It revolutionized sports marketing as we know it today.
Before Michael Jordan signed a record endorsement deal of $7 million with Nike, athletes were very limited in their selection of products and endorsements. Athletes would try and get as many contracts as they could, as they knew that their time in the limelight was limited to their playing career. For the athlete, it didn’t matter what they were endorsing as long as they could get a paycheck. Sure, it was great money, but they were doing little to prepare themselves financially for the future. Many tragic stories end with an athlete filing for bankruptcy a few years after being worth millions of dollars.
Two things set apart the contract that Nike gave Jordan from other apparel deals at that time. First was that it included stock options to the entire company of Nike, helping Jordan prepare financially for the future. The second is it had a plan for success behind it. That plan was to create the Air Jordan brand.
Before 1984, the date Air Jordan was born, basketball shoes were boring. The National Basketball Association (NBA) had a mandate that all shoes must be uniform in color, either white or black. Adding a simple black or white stripe on side of a shoe was considered rebellious. Teams expected their athletes to dress and act in the same way, uniform with nothing rebellious.
Nike Steps In
When Nike equipped Jordan with red and black shoes for his first NBA season, the league offices panicked. They threatened to fine Jordan $5,000 for each game he was wearing these “rebellious” shoes. However, this move branded Jordan as his own person, relatable to the everyday fan, and added the spice that NBA was missing since its inception. Instead of running from this distinguishing factor, Nike decided to foot the bill for all the fines that Jordan would accumulate that season and created a commercial. The script in the commercial read, “On October 15th, Nike created a revolutionary new basketball shoe. On October 18th, the NBA threw them out of the game. Fortunately, the NBA can’t keep you from wearing them.”
Jordan played every game of his rookie season, won the Rookie of the Year award, and most importantly won the hearts of millions of fans. Kids wanted to “Be Like Mike.” The first Air Jordan shoe hit the stores in March 1985 at the outlandish price of $65 a pair. Many thought the shoe would fail due to the steep price. However, by May of the same year, Nike had sold $70 million worth. At the end of 1985, the Air Jordan franchise had yielded more than $100 million in revenues. As the founder of Nike, Phil Knight put it, the Air Jordan brand was “the perfect combination of quality product, marketing and athlete endorsement.”
No matter the country when traveling across the globe, you will see kids playing basketball in shoes, shorts, and t-shirts imprinted with a very familiar silhouette of Jordan skying through the air, ball in hand ready to dunk. This Jumpman Logo, the trademarked property of Air Jordan, helps kids pretend that they are Jordan in the NBA finals. Like said before, this logo is worn because children from four decades have wanted to “Be Like Mike.” Through many trademarks, copyrights, and even design patents, this personal brand of Michael Jordan continues to grow in popularity.
This move illuminated the path for athletes to start being their own person by creating their own brand. All apparel companies took note of the change in the market place and what Nike did with Jordan before deciding they were going to have to adapt or die. This symbiotic relationship between athletes, who wanted be their own person, and companies that wanted to push them into the marketplace, created a wonderful fusion. It allowed consumers to see their athletic idols in a new light and allowed fans to wear the same gear as their heroes, down to the exact basketball sneakers.
Other Athletes Follow Suit
Athletes in basketball followed Air Jordan’s lead and started to create their own brands. The 7-foot, 325-pound mammoth center for the Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers, Shaquille O’Neal, launched his brand by putting a silhouette of him viciously hanging on the rim after a dunk. Rumor is that this logo is Shaq hanging on the rim after he broke the backboard. It would be hard to argue against it, as he did that multiple times during his career. Many athletes trademarked some kind of logo of themselves playing basketball and slapped it on a shoe.
This trend migrated onto almost all sports, with players looking to have their own logo to distinguish themselves in the marketplace. In creating a personal logo, athletes would use some combination of their initials, numbers and team colors.
In later years, players started to use even more distinguishing characteristics for their brands. Fun examples of exotic logos come from James Harden’s beard, Troy Polamalu’s silky curly hair, and Anthony Davis’ unibrow.
James Harden, or simply “The Beard,” was drafted into basketball as a babyfaced 20-year-old. A few years into the league, his on court play and beard set him apart. Hard to see his face anymore, most people just know him from his beard. He has had many chances to put his brand out there, most recently he partnered with a company to make gummy candies in the shape of his beard.
Troy Polamalu is of Samoan decent and always said his long hair was a tribute to his Polynesian culture. During his playing days he was easy to spot on the field, as he would be the one player that had beautiful curly dark hair flowing out from underneath his helmet. That and the bone crushing hits he laid on opposing players. His hair made him a perfect candidate to be the lead spokesperson for Head & Shoulders.
Last example is Anthony Davis, who was bullied as a kid for his unibrow. Now as a NBA superstar and millionaire, it is a huge part of his brand. He does commercials where the punchline has to do with his unibrow. Instead of hiding from this factor, he has chosen to use it to his advantage. He is quoted saying, “One of my friends told me you should take it off, and I said, ‘You won’t recognize me.’ It’s my thing.” The distinctive look has really led to some great partnerships with product companies. Most NBA commentators simply refer to him as “The ‘Brow.”
Social Media
The invention of social media has only put gas on the fire of personal branding that Nike created when they made Air Jordan. The way that the masses consume media is more different than it has ever been. Star athletes will without a doubt have hundreds of thousands of followers by virtue of being the best in their sports, but having a truly great social media presence means that athletes can sponsor products with ease.
For some athletes like Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James and Leonel Messi, that have tens of millions of Twitter and Instagram followers. A simple picture of product that they post can earn them close to half a million dollars. Athletes have a choice to what products they want to sponsor. It really is amazing to see the power that athletes have in marketing in the year 2018 versus all the years prior to the creation of Air Jordan, where athletes were basically just glorified employees of the company that they sponsored.
Logos are only a part of a brand. Some intellectual property created by athletes happen a little more organically. This could consist of a one-handed catch, bicycle-kick goal or championship-clinching play. Athletes are very quick to call their agents and lawyers to claim these marks. Today, it is almost comical how many trademarks are filed from athletes anytime they have more than a normal amount of media exposure. They cannot be blamed for wanting to protect themselves to create the amount of klout needed to become an icon. You never know when you are going to catch lightning in a bottle as Nike did with Air Jordan in the infant stages of Jordan’s career.
A young quarterback named Kenny Hill had an amazing opening game a few years back in college football. He threw for 500+ yards, a couple touchdowns, and put his name in the conversation for MVP of college football that year. After that game, Hill’s family filed a couple trademarks with his name and relating to his performance. Most people thought it was a smart move to protect himself but by the end of that season, Hill was no longer even the starting quarterback on his own team and would transfer later that year. This filing of trademarks did not work for him but every week in sports you will see a few low level athletes file trademarks based off of a good recent performance.
There have been countless examples of trademarks being filed for athletes that have paid off, but also ones that were wasted. In the age we live, your brand in sports is almost more important than your in game performance. Trademarks are being filed at a record rate in sports. Trademarks relating to personal brands and copyrights from social media accounts make the sports marketing an infinite amount of competitive than it was in the 1980’s.
Nike had no idea what impact the creation of a player brand would do to the sports marketing world. The launch of Air Jordan was the first time an athlete was more popular than the company he was representing. Air Jordan took off in ways no once could imagine.
The world wants to connect to their heroes in professional sports. Through social media, trademarks, and personal brands athletes are able to monetize this popularity in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago. All athletes today that enjoy a branded lifestyle and nine figure salaries owe it to Nike’s creation of Air Jordan.
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Dimengo, Nick. “Grading the Best/Worst Athlete Logos.” Bleacher Report, Bleacher Report, 12 Apr. 2017, bleacherreport.com/articles/2650404-grading-the-bestworst-athlete-logos.
Jackson, Scoop. “Impact of Jordan Brand Reaches Far beyond Basketball.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 12 Feb. 2016, www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/14760324/cultural-impact-jordan-sneakers-goes-far-basketball.
