Evaluation starter - Nike’s sponsorship issues

As a starter I showed my class these three images from recent Nike advertising campaigns and asked them whether they thought the Nike brand would suffer because of their sponsorship of these sportsmen.

On the negative side for Nike was the (presumably) large amounts of money invested into the cost of sponsorship and advertising campaigns that they will not necessarily be able to recoup. While this wouldn't directly harm the brand, there is the idea of opportunity cost in the sense that in choosing to sponsor these athletes they are missing out on sponsoring others who might generate positive publicity for the brand.

But most students thought that the most important factor was whether people actually associated the brand with the negative actions of the athlete and it was generally agreed that this would not be the case. And it was also pointed out that seeing these three pictures together does look negative for Nike but in reality they sponsor hundreds of athletes, most of who do bring them positive publicity.

And the old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity is perhaps applicable here!

In any case, a good discussion was had and I was able to highlight the importance of evaluation in the sense of giving more weight to one factor over others.