Congrats to famous player in big city

If any of the NY papers want to make a commemorative poster they just need a few lines of text that make it "technically" a story with a huge photo and not a poster.

I worked at a paper that did this all the time.

 

When I was in charge of Sports Marketing at Continental, the Yankees signed Hideki Matsui.

Matsui already had his own deal with JAL. (They actually had his face plastered on two 747's used for domestic service.)

Japan/Tokyo was a big market for us (and one where we could really increase revenue if we captured a little more market share).

Baseball is huge there and the Yankees are a major brand.

Now, for whatever reason, Randy Levine & the Yankees asked us to fly him in for his press conference. Our folks in Japan were thrilled just for the PR.

I came up with the idea of running an ad to capitalize on it as we were the Official Airline of the Yankees. Since we couldn't use his name, as he had a deal with a competing airline, I suggested we use his nickname, Godzilla.

So, we ran full page ads saying, "Welcome to New York, Godzilla. Hope you enjoyed the flight." (Or something very close to that.)

When we went to the Yankees, they objected as they didn't want to piss him off and told us we couldn't use their logo (and basically said we couldn't do the ad).

But, by this time, the ad had already taken on a life of its own and I wasn't able to stop it, so we ran it with out the Yankee logo.

The Yankees were pissed. But we were pleased with it.

We also reached out to Matsui's US based agent and, despite his deal with JAL (which he didn't cut), he thought it was pretty cool and didn't object to it.

We'd bartered tickets with Roger Clemens for him to appear in promotional videos for us, and I'm pretty sure we ran a congratulations ad when he won his 300th game without incident.

We'd donated tickets to Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation over the years. Delta is now the Official Airline of the Yankees, so I'm not sure if Continental/United will try to do anything to commemorate it. I guess I doubt it since they're no longer affiliated with the Yankees.

 

So Jeter's image and the number "3,000" won't be on the front page of how many newspapers in America the day after he reaches the milestone? Eventually, somebody one day will successfully argue newspapers are, in fact, trying to make money (even if they're not very good at it).

 

Viagra congratulates Derek Jeter on his 3,000th hit.

 

No, they won't.

It's a pretty nuanced distinction, but it's a distinction nonetheless, and an absolutely settled one.

I'm not sure why you think it's OK for, say, Apple to use Derek Jeter as an unpaid endorser to essentially sell Macbooks.

 

You're exaggerating. Plus, I'm not even sure a majority of ignorant NY Post readers would side with corporations which choose to exploit a baseball player's commercial rights without paying for them. Jeter will suffer not a bit from this story.

 

Jeter uses Viagra?

 

But editorial use still has limitations.

ZACCHINI v. SCRIPPS-HOWARD BROADCASTING CO., 433 U.S. 562 (1977)

 

why don't they run a congratulatory ad for Robinson Cano. He tries just as hard.

 

Just have him get his 3000th hit in a Yankees loss. There would be 0% chance that it would ever be aired on the YES Network again.

 

Phil Mushnick already used that line.

Every sponsor who has home plate rotational signage at Yankee Stadium is hoping he gets number 300 while their sign is up.