Sports endorsements reach an all-time low…
Forget Denis Hickie’s rather odd association with Wavin Pipes or any of the gazillion sponsorship deals Manchester United have announced in recent months, four NFL players have just signed a deal that surely ranks as the most bizarre in the world of sporting endorsements.
We’re sure they’re getting paid an awful lot of money to do so, but NFL centres Travis Frederick (Dallas Cowboys), John Sullivan (Minnesota Vikings), Eric Wood (Buffalo Bills) and Nick Hardwick (San Diego Chargers) are going to be on the receiving end of a helluva lot of abuse in their respective locker rooms after agreeing to become the faces, or rather the arses, of a new promotional campaign for One Wipe Charlies.
For the uninitiated, One Wipe Charlies is a flushable wet toilet paper product launched by grooming product brand Dollar Shave Club earlier this summer and as part of the deal, the four players mentioned above will use the tagline ‘every great play starts with a good snap’ as part of a promotional campaign on radio.
As well as that, every time that Dollar Shave sees a tweet reading ‘#cleansnap’, it will donate US$1 to the charity of the players’ choice.
The recruitment of the centres was a pretty shrewd move as, being the players responsible for passing the ball to the quarter-back (the snap), their rear ends appear on camera quite frequently, as Dollar Shave Chief Executive Mike Dubin was keen to point out when explaining the logic behind the deal.
“Everybody’s got their eye on the centre’s ass all season long,” said Dubin.
“That’s why we picked them. They have to keep that area clean, not just on the field but off the field.”
It’s a bit of a surprise that the players involved didn’t poo-poo the idea given the amount of slagging they are about to face, but they probably said they’d give it a crack and see where it would take them; the extra few quid in the arse pocket will help them if they ever need to get out of a hole after all.
Hat-tip: adage.com
