NFL players must regain trust of advertisers in future

ENGLEWOOD, COLO. -- In more than 15 years of setting up her list of NFL clients with marketing and endorsement deals, Denise White had never heard these sorts of words from companies on the other end of the phone.

Not this year.

Not right now.

We have to be careful.

White, the chief executive officer of Entertainment Athletes Group who represents NFL players like Bears pass rusher Jared Allen and Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson in their off-field endeavors, said she had multiple brands pull back from doing deals with NFL players this fall because of cases of domestic and family violence involving other NFL players.

"A lot of companies don't want to have an affiliation with the NFL, when it comes to one-on-one, engagements with players. There are big, big companies that have sort of stopped publicly doing national campaigns with the NFL because of the landscape," White told Paste BN Sports. "They will get over this hump and after this is over with, things will start to die down and things will be better definitely for next season. But this season, marketing deals have definitely been affected by the climate out there. How can it not be?"

The low point for White came when a company, whom she declined to name, pulled a campaign for which one of her clients had already been paid to produce.

"They didn't want to publicly associate with NFL players because of the climate," White said. "It wasn't a bad knock for the player — because he's a great player, and he's never been in any trouble — the company just felt it would be better for the company not to do anything publicly right now."

Major endorsements are still out there, especially for the game's biggest stars, and on contracts that were signed and ads that were filmed in the spring and summer, long before the heightened attention to the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson domestic violence and child abuse cases, respectively.

Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning is still pushing pizza; Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson is hawking headphones; Texans defensive end J.J. Watt is selling wireless devices; and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers keeps pitching insurance.

But those are the NFL's elite, part of a small group of players with reputations as pitchmen and players who will certainly be in demand next spring, when the next wave of endorsement deals are negotiated.

Other NFL players who don't already have a national profile, might be a harder sell.

Matt Delzell, the managing director of talent business at the Marketing Arm, where he helps brands create their marketing strategies, including deciding which celebrities would be a match, said tying an advertising campaign to an individual NFL player might be too big of a risk for many brands in the future. Delzell said he expects to see future campaigns that feature either a large group of players – so that one could be easily removed if an off-field issue arises – or ads that are tied to a team, and not an individual.

"A lot of brands, in the sports drink, sports equipment, sports apparel, shoes — the ones that depend on athletes to drive the brand and influence consumer behavior, they will definitely diversify and not hitch their wagon to one or two people," Delzell said.

Broncos defensive tackle Terrance Knighton understands he is among the lucky under-the-radar players to land himself a national television deal for Bridgestone Tires, after he was able to ride a popularity boost that came with the Broncos' Super Bowl appearance last season. Having a massive personality (and waistline) and memorable nickname – Pot Roast – didn't hurt.

He understands why brands might be wary of relative unknown commodities like himself these days.

"You want the guys that have less risk of off the field issues," Knighton said. "There is a reason why you see guys like Peyton Manning in every commercial. You know you're not going to see him in the media for bad things."

One NFL marketing agent who represents several high-profile players, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak about his clients' deals, told Paste BN Sports he isn't worried about any of his clients losing endorsement opportunities in the 2015 advertising cycle. But he said he is anticipating he'll have to answer significantly more questions about his clients' personal lives before new contracts are signed — part of due diligence on the part of companies wanting to make sure they don't get embarrassed.

The marketing agent told Paste BN Sports some of the questions might be uncomfortable, but the players without off-field baggage could wind up benefitting.

Another effect could be in the structure of these marketing contracts, with companies building themselves protection in case they need to cut ties with a player. Delzell, the branding expert, said that could mean shorter contracts, and contracts that include iron-clad character clauses.

"That's a very smart way to protect yourself as a brand, because you're never going to be able to eliminate the risk of an athlete or a celebrity doing something stupid or immoral or whatever it may be," Delzell said. "But what you can do, is when you go into that, you can make sure that if it does happen, you are fully protected, and you're able to terminate that contract, and terminate it immediately and not have that process drag on, because that's when your brand gets drug through the mud as well, the longer you're associated with that athlete who behaved poorly."

Nike dropped both Peterson and Rice from their roster of athletes earlier this season, and EA Sports scrubbed Rice from the newest version of the Madden NFL video game. Neither company responded to requests for comment for this story.

At the height of the domestic violence crisis in September, several major NFL sponsors, including Budweiser and Visa, issued statements expressing concern over the league's handling of the cases involving Rice, Peterson and Carolina Panthers' defensive end Greg Hardy. Procter & Gamble pulled its sponsorship from the NFL's breast cancer initiative, but NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in the months since, the NFL has not lost any other sponsors.

"We have not been impacted at the league level with partners continuing to advertise and activate their affiliation with the NFL," McCarthy said. "There has been some direct impact on the players involved in recent incidents."

George Atallah, spokesman for the NFL Player's Association and the union's marketing arm, NFL Player's Inc., has heard those sorts of concerns from business partners, and said there isn't one fail-safe way to make sure that the dozens of companies that have partnered with NFLPI or the league to make sure they won't get burned by a misbehaving athlete.

But sponsorship numbers provided to Paste BN Sports by NFL Player's Inc. show individual deals are up by 6 % this fall – which Atallah attributes between a long-standing trust between partners and the NFLPI to place the right players with the right brands, as well as a few large, new partnerships that have opened up slots for multiple player deals, like the Bose headphones campaign that features 10 players in regional ads and the Nationwide Insurance campaign that stars Manning. In total, NFLPI has signed 25 new licensees this year, compared to only 10 in 2013.

"It shows that NFLPI is an even bigger resource for our partners because we know players better than anybody else in the market place, so I think they are leaning on us to try to identify players to work with who can best promote the image and reputation of the brand," Atallah said. "You're never unfortunately going to eliminate 100 percent, the acts of misconduct -- so one of the things that we've really tried to do is gather as much information, or put a premium on the information and the relationship we have with players as a way to instill confidence in the relationship that partners have with players."

For now, White has been working on setting up regional endorsements, social media deals and in-person appearances for her clients and other sort of one-time deals for players to continue earning off-field cash until the major deals return.

And she is confident they will – perhaps in time for the major marketing push that comes with the Super Bowl in February.

"People will be more cautious, more trepidations about the types of deals they do with athletes in general, but by next year, I'm sure what isn't around right now will be back around," White said.