by Pete Bodo
Yesterday we had the news that the ATP has finally named a new chief executive, Brad Drewett. Today, we learn that Sony Ericsson is ending its tour sponsor relationship with the WTA at the end of the 2012 season. No great loss, I say, although the women may be up against it when they try to find a new tour sponsor.
The WTA has been jinxed ever since the end of its relationship with Viriginia Slims. Many of you will remember that the only problem with VS was the product — a cigarette produced by tobacco giant Philip Morris, whose makers aggressively pursued and recruited women who smoke. The anti-smoking crusade was just starting up when VS became the tour sponsor, and however you feel about the smoking aspect of this history, one thing is certain: the sponsorship worked.
We tend to forget now that at the time (the 1970s and '80) there was really no WTA. Virginia Slims not only sponsored the tour, it also created the entire extra-ITF women's tennis infrastructure. A fledgling WTA (the outfit was started in 1973 by Billie Jean King and her cohorts) never could have evolved into the institution it is today without the massive financial and organization backing provided by Virginia Slims. In fact, it almost went under when VS finally pulled out (was driven out) of the tennis sponsorship business.
As hard as it may be to imagine today, the sponsor and the client were a great fit for a variety of reasons starting with the quasi-feminist goal of linking up these independent, competent, highly trained female professionals named Billie Jean, Chris, Martina, Tracy et al with a product that had a similar, contemporary and liberated glow.
Virginia Slims was the brand for women who wanted to smoke, despite the lingering social taboo. It was also for women who wanted to assert their independence and rebel against old-fashioned notions and conventions regarding woman — like the notion that "proper" women didn't smoke. And, perhaps most interesting, VS targeted women who wanted to exercise those desires with something created specifically for women. The VS cigarette was slimmer, the marketing icon was not a cowboy (that was the brand's brother, Marlboro) but a flapper, with all that implied. Men did not smoke Virginia Slims. A woman who did was making a statement other than "I'm smoking my way to an early grave."
The entire thing worked, ghastly as it may seem. And I went into that history to make the point that Sony Ericsson accomplished nothing even remotely so successful. Nor have most tour sponsors, in all fairness to SE. Has anyone yet identified Sony Ericsson with tennis playing women, other than noting that Maria Sharapova is a paid shill for the brand's cell phones? I'm not sure any of the WTA women even use one of the company's products — unless they got it for free.
To me, and I assume to most of you, Sony Ericsson has been nothing more than this giant entity wallowing around in pro tennis, slapping its name on anything it could but for reasons nobody cared about, or didn't understand. Their staff was largely invisible, and not a single one of their suits or corpo-gals that I met ever gave the impression that knew, liked, or cared about tennis.
Anecdote: I was among a small group of reporters who met with SE staff two years ago at the Sony Ericsson Open (Miami), and quickly discovered that the purpose of the meeting was to introduce us to the new Xperia phone, which was — and is still being — billed as the world's first smart phone built for full-blown gaming. It was a very weird meeting. There was no product on hand. There were no tennis players involved, no real logical connection between the product and the pro tennis tour or any of its glamorpuss constituents.
I walked away astonished at how artless and half-assed the entire drill had been. What did those SE functionaries think, that we were going to run off and churn out breathless paens to the Xperia out of gratitude for SE's involvement in tennis? Or because we were slain by the idea of a phone for. . . full blown gaming!!!!! What did I look like, some Super Mario Brothers freak?
Anyway. SE did nothing I could see to move the ball forward for the WTA, and I'm assuming the WTA did nothing for SE — at least nothing that made the brand want to continue its investment in tennis. They appeared to learn nothing (not that they wanted to) and tennis appeared to benefit only at the bank teller's window. I guess SE's top salesmen and execs had great seats for Sharapova matches (she's an endorser) in Miami and elsewhere, and were invited to get sloshed in the corporate villages.
But in all fairness, that's business as usual in the marketing game. Perhaps Sony Ericsson could claim a win on the bottom line somewhere in bean-counter land, and that's about as good as it gets. Most companies fail to creates conspicuously successful, logical commercial relationships with the tour. Remember Sanex? How about Toyota? Two that fared better were Avon and Colgate, both back in the day (late '70s and early '80s).
Over the years, the growth of the WTA has greatly diminished the pool of potential tour sponsors, for only a multi-national company, or one whose products is commonly available in most of the world, gets the full benefit of tour sponsorship. The WTA has a full year to beat a new tour sponsor out of the bushes, but it's unlikely to be an easy job given the economic challenges of the global economy.
To borrow a famous line, Good-bye Sony-Ericsson, we hardly knew ye.