Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 11:35 am  |  64 responses

LeBron’s Re-branding Effort

LeBron James tries to restore his brand after The Decision.

LeBron's Twitter Avatar.

by Kyle Stack / @NYsportswriter

The recent NBA free agency period didn’t just teach us the effectiveness of players recruiting other players or the financial benefits of playing for a team in a state without an income tax. It didn’t just show us how much money team owners are still willing to spend or how much some players value winning a title versus maximizing their financial options. It provided a glimpse of how quickly the public’s perception of a player’s brand can change.

Only a few months ago, LeBron James was largely the standard against which every other NBA player was measured. After the way he conducted himself during free agency, he’s viewed by many people as a prime example of everything that’s wrong with professional athletes. Which might not be fair if you consider the circumstances upon which he made his decision to join the Miami Heat.

In signing with the Heat, James made two concessions that sports fans typically deride athletes for ignoring: 1) He joined a team that already had great players in order to give himself the best chance of winning multiple championships, and 2) He took less money to do so.

Yet his choice of airing his future destination during an special hour-long show on ESPN, titled “The Decision,” outraged people because of its brashness and insensitivity to the good folks of Cleveland, who watched their hero tell the country he would be playing elsewhere.

According to an SI.com poll which ran after James made it known that he would take his talents to South Beach, 65 percent of nearly 22,800 respondents selected James as “an egomaniac.” Sixty-one percent of a similar number of voters within the same poll stated that although they once had a positive opinion of James, they had changed their mind about the two-time regular season MVP.

Bad as it seems now for James and his future marketing prospects, some say his critics will very likely come back and embrace him.

“I think [his disapproval] is a blip,” said Ed O’Hara, Senior Partner at SME, a brand consultant firm in New York City. “Look, we forgave Tiger Woods, he’s back in action. When LeBron wins, which he will do, his reputation and brand will be galvanized.”

O’Hara stated fans tend to expect that athletes like LeBron James will be, in O’Hara’s words, “narcissistic and a bit spoiled.” Since it’s what fans are trained to expect, no athlete will be dismissed for too long before he is yet again embraced. Woods is a fine example.

Despite all the detailed accounts since last November of Woods’ numerous affairs while he was married, a recent poll from Harris Interactive named Woods America’s Favorite Sports Star for the fifth straight year. He shared the top spot this year with Kobe Bryant, who you might recall has gone through his fair share of public relations nightmares, from his sexual assault case in 2003 to his back-and-forth trade demands in 2007.

James dropped to the sixth spot this year after finishing last year ranked third. “The Decison” didn’t play a role in that ranking, however, as the 2,227-person survey was conducted from June 14-21, well before the July 8 airing of James’ decision. In that case, James’ inability to push the Cavaliers past the second round of this past postseason likely contributed to his lower ranking.

Winning will likely give James the shot-in-the-arm he’ll need to regain his popularity. In a June story in this space, CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell mentioned to me that winning a championship was paramount to James’ ability to make money off the court. Adding championships rings is what brings glamor to a player’s reputation.

Now that James has teamed up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Heat, his opportunity to win is as great as ever. And despite James turning away powerhouse cities such as New York and Chicago in favor of Miami, his new home city can still help his marketing potential.

“It’s an international city,” O’Hara said of Miami. “It’s the gateway to America for many countries from the Caribbean rim to South America. Europeans go through there. That’s going to bode well for the Heat brand and for the LeBron brand.”

What fans will end up discovering is whether a player of James’ stature can resuscitate his once stellar reputation by simply winning on the court. That’s what James has left, as he’s shown his true colors during free agency. Now he has to win, and if he does, perhaps he can restore his popularity just as fast as he lost it.


——

This is the first in a two-part series about the way NBA players branded themselves during free agency. The second part will appear Wednesday.

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  • byebye

    Labron will win his 3rd mvp unless he. Gets. hurt book it. He is too productive of a player to not get it done. Clev get over it

  • http://djace21@hotmail.com tman
  • truthteller

    byebye: if Lebron wins an MVP then that will be BS ’cause he plays with a super team and part of the reason why KB24 never got more than 1 was because he had a great team. Even though that’s BS too, that would be a double standard if lebron wins another MVP.

  • WangChung

    Aside from MikeC’s hate, he brings up a good point about why Bron’s image is suffering. His brand will be fine, so long as he keeps putting dudes on posters. Really, the dunk contest ish annoyed me more than the ‘Decision’. Regardless of how nice he is, it’s hard to respect a dude that goes back on his word.

  • truthteller

    Kid canada: Lebron going to Miami as what the writers are going to hold against him because they are going to say that he couldn’t get it done in Cleveland so he had to join forces with two other All stars to win a chip!

  • marchalmadness

    if Lebron wasn’t such a hype people wouldn’t react like this. Lebron is the best player of this moment and now he finally has a few really great players with him just like MJ and KB had. His scoring will go down but how about assist and rebounds, only improving possible.

    If you could choose between 5 more season MVP titles at cleveland or 1 or 2 titles(if not more) in miami you would be selfish to choose to stay in Cleveland.

    btw. alot off lebron haters here…
    I bet some of you didn’t think of that yet.

  • Kundai

    He wont regain his former image at all in my opinion. I believe the brand will return but his image will be like kobes after the rape charge. kobe had the phenom child image then the rape charges, then went to the ill show you image? People forget that your image can and will change as an athletes cercumstances change. Maybe he may have the failed in cleveland persona attached to him forever, but if he wins i dont think any of that matters.

    Also I dont think there is a greatest of all time i believe thats more media speculated MJ was the greatest superstar and the greatest superstar advertised. I think they should rank them generationally. IMO what do you think?

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  • cool j

    JTaylor21-I co-sign your post, not a lot has been written about the side affect of the GOAT n the league. Players like AI, Steve Francis, Stephane Marburry, TMac were all products of that generation. IMO I believe this attitude has stunted if shortened the career of some players who never had this ability or skill set to score 40 points a game.
    Like you said MJ was more than just a scorer ,he was a great defender and a very good passer.
    A lot of kids got pulled by the dunks and the flashy plays. What made him a winner was his mid range jump shot 15 feet unstoppable, without it he would be D. Wade which is not bad …but not the GOAT!

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  • Dre

    Father Time reduced MJ’s scoring load. lol… He is still the goat.

  • Luke

    The real factor at work here, which you regrettably left out entirely, is that guys like Tiger Woods, Ray Lewis and Kobe Bryant took damage to their image for things done outside the competitive arena. LeBron’s brand is mainly tarnished by the fact that he ruined his brand *ON THE COURT* more than off it. The “egomaniac” tag may be forgotten, but the “pretender to the throne” tag will stick because the main criticism against him right now is that he can’t win on his own. If he wins, the point is further proven. If he loses… then he’s only the biggest failure in the history of sports stars.

    Another major argument you omitted: LeBron will be expected to win with this juggernaut, so anyone whose opinion changes when he actually does win, is simply not an intelligent observer to begin with. Nobody with any knowledge of NBA ball is wondering whether LeBron should be able to succeed with this team. (hint: He absolutely should).

  • http://www.af2.com/ Hsiu Nolasco

    voluminousstately listing you teem with

  • http://www.qwerty12.com Retha Cashio

    I tried to post a statement earlier, but it hasn’t shown up. I believe your spam filter may be damaged?

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