Rickey Ponting is one of most well known faces within Australia. The Australian cricket captain, who has rewritten the record books, is a sporting hero and idolized by the entire continent. With this fame comes the endorsement which Rickey has more than his fare share. But does Rickey really take pride know what it is he is endorsing or is it matter of who will write the bigger check?
One of Rickey’s biggest sponsors is Valvoline who are makers of automotive lubricants. In 2007 Rickey Ponting became Valvoline brand ambassador and according to Naven Gupta, managing director of Valvoline Cummins, “Valvoline today stands for superb performance and reliability which Rickey Pointing’s ideologies correlate with”.
There is no debate that Rickey Ponting has great ideologies of high performance, reliability and leadership, as displayed by his cricket ability however, this does not relate to automotive lubricants. In the Valvoline commercials Rickey talks about how Valvoline improves the performance of your motor vehicle.
Rickey does not have the expertises to make these comments and realistically is not an appropriate choice for this endorser. It would make more sense for Valvoline to use a Formula One driver to endorse their product.
The article “The original salesman packs up his pitch” by Deborah Cameron in The Sunday Morning Herald also agrees Ricky Ponting is not a suitable endorser for Valvoline. The article discusses how the previous spokes person John Laws, has done an incredible job promoting the company and how can Ricky fill Johns shoes, especially when he has no expertise in the industry.
While Rickey is not an expert on automotive lubricants there is no doubt, that the advertisement will be successful. Rickey is a celebrity within Australia and also throughout the world and anything he puts his name beside will benefit.
No comments:
Post a Comment