Incoming John Hancock President & COO DAVID
D'ALESSANDRO, "whose vision provided the financial support
to guarantee a prosperous future for the Boston Marathon,"
was profiled by Joe Concannon in the BOSTON GLOBE.
D'Alessandro, on the NYC Marathon's corporate relationship
with Nike: "You give Nike the right to marry itself to your
logo, and it will be the Nike marathon. If you think that
you can contain that, you can't. ... When you get involved
with them, regardless your safeguards, you're simply
deluding yourself into thinking it's anything but the Nike
marathon. The fact is that if you allow Nike to be close to
your logo, they'll hang three-story shoes off hotels."
D'Alessandro, on John Hancock increasing its involvement
with the Nagano Games and the 2000 Sydney Games: "It's
unfortunate, but Atlanta is going to end up looking like the
thorn between two roses -- Barcelona and Sydney. On
Atlanta: "I don't know of any corporate person outside of
America who left Atlanta and said, 'This is a place I would
really like to invest in because I was treated so well and
I'm really impressed.'" On the Olympics: "From our
viewpoint, the Olympics continue to be an extraordinary
marketing platform. ... We've been looking at a US hockey
tour after The Games. The NHL is probably the smartest of
all leagues. Watching baseball go down the tubes and
basketball corrupt itself, hockey is doing a better job
dealing with corporations" (BOSTON GLOBE, 4/21).
GOTHAM REBUTTAL: NYC Marathon Dir ALLAN STEINFELD, on
D'Alessandro's remarks: "Our focus when we began the race in
1976 was to put together an elite race and a mass event in
New York City, the media capital of the world. That's what
we've done and that's what we continue to do and we've not
lost sight of that focus. That's part of the reason Nike
came on as a sponsor" (BOSTON GLOBE, 4/22).
