How Nike and other Brands Make Millions Marketing Star Athletes

rk writes in Time. Bob Wood, one of the Nike officials who was part of the decision to lavish millions of dollars on Tiger Woods, said that investors "...thought we had overpaid for him." Those investors had "good reason to be skeptical," Park explains, because Golf is a "notoriously hermetic industry, dominated by a handful of top club makers with the advantage of years of tradition and a loyal customer base." But thanks to the tremendous success that Tiger Woods has had on the golf courses and in the tournaments, and thanks to the intensive marketing strategies Nike has employed using Tiger, ten years after Nike started getting involved in golf Nike has hit it big.
             Nike has ten lines of golf clubs on the market now, ten series of golf balls, and several different styles of golf shoes and "an array of course-worthy golf apparel." That apparel is worn by not only Tiger, of course, but also it is also worn by twenty-two other players on the PGA tour, including Justin Leonard, Paul Azinger, Roy Sabbatini, and others.
             Nike and golf were "obviously not made for each other," Park writes. Everything about the golf business was "contrary to Nike's corporate DNA." That is because golf products were previously sold in pro shops and by specialty retailers, and Nike was all about distributing massive amounts of clothing and shoes to national stores like J.C. Penny and Foot Locker, among others.
             So, because it is among the craftiest and most innovate corporations in America, Nike got smart and set up Nike Golf as a separate unit. By the year 2000, Nike had its first original design golf ball, the Tour Accuracy golf ball. How good was the product? It was at least as good as its main endorser, Tiger Woods
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How Nike and other Brands Make Millions Marketing Star Athletes. (2009, July 09). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 07:55, September 25, 2026, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/202786.html