I saw a post by a friend of mine, Patrick O’Keefe at iFroggy, about some less than stellar promotional tactics being used by a poker tournament that’s taking place in the Bahamas. I’m not going to give any link love to the event itself. You can read about their tactics on Patrick’s post, I just found out from him this evening that they’ve also taken advantage of some posts about Michael Jackson’s death to add their comments and links about the tournament.
The event consists of 25 sports legends and 25 poker pros competing in the tournament. What I’m curious to know is if any of them care about the under-handed and shady tactics being used to promote the event. Do any of the people care about their name being associated with such activities? Do these celebrities and athletes even "get it"?
If you know or look-up to one of these individuals, let them know about this post and this activities for this event. I’d love to hear their comments and opinions on such things?
| Sports Legends |
Poker Pros |
Troy Aikman
Richard Petty
Sugar Ray Leonard
Emmitt Smith
Reggie Jackson
Julius "Dr. J" Irving
Fuzzy Zoeller
Laffit Pincay
Bobby Hull
Brooks Robinson
Kyle Petty
Rocco Mediate
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Joe Namath
Mike Ditka
Ozzie Smith
Herschel Walker
Jim Brown
Jerry West
Gale Sayers
Michael Strahan
Rick Barry |
Antonio Esfandiari
Cyndy Violette
Gavin Smith
Karina Jett
Robert Daily
Chip Jett
Marco Traniello
David Singer
Jamie Gold
Johnny Chan
Annie Duke
Amir Vahedi
Marsha Waggoner
Kenna Cowboy James
Barbara Enright
Kathy Liebert
Layne Flack
T.J. Cloutier
Phil Laak
Marcel Luske
Men (The Master) Nguyen
Capt. Tom Franklin |
There you go. Those are all the folks having their names associated with the event and promoting the event with their likeness and name.
It appears that some of these individuals have even had MySpace pages setup for them promoting this event like this and this.
If you’d like to see examples of the marketing tactics and promotions already being done, just do a search for the athlete’s name and Bahamas or poker. You’ll probably find some results. It’s working, but is this the kind of thing we want social media being abused for in promotions?
If you’d like to see examples of some of the promotional messages that have been you can click after the link to see links and examples.
Continue reading ‘Shady Social Media Promotions – Do Celebrities and Athletes Care’
This weekend I took my son to the Hometown Celebrity Softball Challenge here in Indianapolis. I wrote about the event here and who attended, but wanted to share a bit of a personal story about our experience with the event.
My son was so excited about seeing all the players from the Colts that were there. His favorite players are Bob Sanders and Anthony Gonzalez. I should clarify that he absolutely LOVES the Colts and football period, so he was excited about everyone. Anthony Gonzalez wasn’t in attendance, so he really wanted to get Bob Sander’s autograph. Bob wasn’t interested in interacting with any of the "common" fans in the stands though. Dwight Freeney and Melvin Bullitt walked right up to the fans and signed autographs as much as they could between innings, along with a few other celebrities in attendance.
I realize that Bob Sanders and some other Colts players are like rock stars in Indianapolis. I realize that they probably get mobbed just about anywhere they go and I’m sure it gets annoying. If they’re out by themselves trying to have a "normal" life, then I think fans should be respectful and try and leave them alone as much as possible.
However, when you’re participating at an event like this that’s specifically for fans and to raise money for a charity, I believe "celebrities" should consider this part of their job and responsibility. It’s part of what comes with being famous. Am I way off base here? I’m sure I don’t completely understand what it means to have to deal with this type of fame, but I can tell you I sure hope I’d keep that in mind if I were famous.
Now my son isn’t very interested in Bob Sanders. He’s very let down with his experience this weekend. He told me wants me to sell his jersey on eBay.com for him. I’m trying to encourage him to be patient and maybe we’ll have another chance to meet him and get his autograph. We’ll see how it goes.
I just came across a site called Out Packer from a link I clicked in Facebook. The opportunity to win a bunch of camping and hiking gear was cool, but perhaps more interesting to me was the apparent significant social networking sites for people that are enjoying the great outdoors.
My family and I have decided that camping together is a fun activity for us so I already fit the bill for the outpacker site, but a quick look at this list causes me to think there were 7 other sites I’d probably enjoy participating.
Check-out this list of activities that have a social network for each one.
20 different sports and outdoor activity social networking sites. Are you a member of any of these already? Do you enjoy these activities and looking for a group to be a part of that enjoys the same things?
Just click on the links above to find out more information about each site.
My brother Bill thinks that the purpose of or criteria for a social networking site or application is that it helps people be friends. What better way to make friends than by enjoying the same activities together.
The other nice thing is that in addition to their individual websites, there’s also groups for them on Facebook.
All of these sites are part of the larger LifeFitter and MySocialAdvantage network. I find it perhaps even more confirming about the social networking purpose by the one-line bio under the LifeFitter twitter bio, “We Create Friendships”.
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