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Brianne Theisen-Eaton and Ashton Eaton, who still must qualify for the Olympics, will send their winner to Rio.
Photo by: AP IMAGES |
North America’s first couple of track and field is testing a new joint lifestyle brand with a rather risky proposition.
American decathlete Ashton Eaton and his wife, Canadian heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton, are self-funding a social media contest with a prize worth $40,000: an 11-day trip for two to the Rio Games. They also covered the initial expense of building a website and hiring consultants for their new brand, Eaton.
The risk is twofold: One, there’s no guarantee sponsors will come along and prop up the financial model, and two, they might not qualify for their respective Olympic teams.
“We thought about that,” said Ashton Eaton, who won Olympic gold in 2012. “[Winners] will still go.”
The contest evokes memories of the infamous 1992 “Dan & Dave” Reebok ad campaign that assumed star decathletes Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson would qualify for the Barcelona Olympics, only to fall apart when O’Brien failed to qualify for the Games.
If that happens to one or both of the Eatons, they’ll adjust, Theisen-Eaton said. The contest, titled “What’s Your Gold?,” is designed to remind fans that athletes — or anyone striving toward a goal — experience as many struggles as victories along the way.
“We thought, that’s a good lesson,” Theisen-Eaton said. “We might not get to go. I think it’s just another part of the message.”
Both, though, are favored not only to qualify for Rio but also to challenge for medals. Along with winning Olympic gold in London, Eaton has won the last two decathlon world titles, while Theisen-Eaton has finished second in the heptathlon at the last two IAAF World Championships.
The #WhatsYourGold challenge calls on participants to share their pursuits of personal goals in a series of four Instagram or Twitter posts. All submissions must include an image, text or video, or a combination.
Since the two first developed the concept, Olympic sponsors United, Coca-Cola and Visa have advised on marketing and strategy. The Eatons’ agent, Paul Doyle Management CEO Paul Doyle, said the corporations are discussing funding additional perks to the underlying trip package but that the Eatons will still be on the hook.
“They’re definitely going to be paying out of pocket to some extent,” Doyle said.
Offerpop, a social media marketing software maker, is powering the contest. Other advisers include Allen Hall PR, video producer Ryan Levenson, photographer Manier and strategy/web design shop Merit.
The couple’s long-term vision for the Eaton brand is still unclear, but they agreed that this campaign has been good practice for post-competition careers. Namely, they learned that you have to pay for quality. They considered lowering their risk by creating the campaign themselves and offering a cheaper prize, but the result didn’t live up to their own standards.
“You want the website and the brand to represent quality,” Theisen-Eaton said. “And we looked at what we came up with on our own, and we said, ‘This is total garbage.’ And we’re the kind of people that, if we want to do it, we want to do it right.”
