Did $30K Bribe Help Nike Win Sponsorship?

That's what recent media reports indicate. A Nike China marketing executive is again coming under scrutiny for allegedly providing a $30,000 bribe that according to reports may have helped Nike secure title sponsorship of the Chinese Super League. The investigation stems from charges against a former Chinese Football Association chief, Xie Yalong, who allegedly accepted over 1.7 million yuan in...

P&G Extends NFL Sponsorship To Detergent

Fun PR stat alert. The average NFL team cleans more than 5,500 pounds of laundry each week! So it comes as no surprise that Cincinnati-based Procter and Gamble has elected to extend its wide-ranging sponsorship of the NFL to make Tide the league's "Official Laundry Detergent." The multi-year sponsorship, beginning with the 2012 NFL season, will also see Tide be the first P&G brand to become an ...

[VIDEO] BP Protestors Hijack Stage Over Shakespeare Sponsorship

Think you're having a bad day? This has to be an event organizers worst nightmare. It seems protesters of BP's sponsorship of the World Shakespeare Festival jumped on stage pre-show and gave their own rendition of the Tempest, complete with costumes and all. Curiously, it seems they weren't immediately removed from the stage and even drew some applause. Maybe the audience thought it was all jus...

Sponsorship Drives Results For B2B Marketers

The marketing mix has, for most of us, become decidedly more complex over the last fifteen years. This holds for business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) marketers alike. B2B marketers are more active in channels they might have dismissed as ineffective half a generation ago. Professional service and engineering firms, industrial equipment manufacturers, and commercial insu...

Advocacy Groups Seize On Sponsorships To Amplify Message

The upside of high profile sponsorships are obvious, but the down side has also been on display over the past few days. Just as sponsorships offer brands a great opportunity to align with the passions of a wide audience, so too do they give advocacy groups a hook to engage larger audiences in their fight against the sponsor. We've seen this play out in several painfully public examples all the...

A Brand's Guide to Coachella

For most of the 200,000 visitors to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Coachella represents nothing but a giant music-filled party in the desert. For marketers, though, Coachella is an opportunity to reach a captive, affluent audience in an unexpected setting. Read More From The Deutsch Blog >>

Soccer, F1 Giants Team Up To Expand Reach

Two teams from two of the most watched sports in the world are joining forces to share commercial opportunities and expand the reach of their respective audiences. Chelsea and Sauber say they will use the new partnership announced earlier today to launch joint commercial initiatives, merchandising, events, marketing and linked sponsorship opportunities. "This is an innovative partnership tha...

RV Club Goes Off Road For Latest Sponsorship

Good Sam, a major motorsports sponsor, was back last weekend on the most recent episode of the Apprentice. The Season 12 sponsorship deal nearly didn't happen. After pictures of Eric and Donald Trump Jr. surfaced from a recent safari in Africa, Good Sam and Camping World Chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis said the company would not sponsor future tasks on the Celebrity Apprentice causing hunte...

Olympians Sue Samsung Over Genome App

18 Olympians last week sued Samsung over a staple of its 2012 Olympic activation, the U.S. Olympic Genome Project, for allegedly misusing their names and photos in the Facebook application. As first reported by Bloomberg, the list of athletes suing Samsung include Dara Torres, Mark Spitz, Greg Louganis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and others. The app, which was released earlier this month, aims ...

This Start-Up Wants To Sponsor Celebs Who Are Tired Of Carrying Their Own Luggage

The evolution of luxury travel has spawned plenty of private aviation sponsorships, now meet what may be the next iteration of this trend: personal luggage shipping. LugLess.com, the international luggage shipping company, says it has signed its first "socialite" sponsorship deal and is eager to do more. The endorsement deal with "social icon and internet celebrity," Justin Ross Lee ("JRL"), w...