Foot Locker will sponsor this year's balloting for the NBA
All-Star Game. The program, which will begin November in Kinney
Shoe Corp.'s 1,400 U.S. stores and on TNT's NBA broadcasts, will
turn Foot Locker stores into "NBA All-Star merchandising centers"
and "help the league inject some sizzle into its traditionally
quiet first half of the season" (Matthew Grimm, BRANDWEEK,
9/12).
GLOBE-TROTTING: Promotional elements include a sweepstakes
for the first time and sales of an exclusive NBA Entertainment-
produced video with the purchase of licensed merchandise. The
video will be made available in Foot Locker's 200 European
stores, and there are plans to extend the balloting program to
Mexico and Canada. Stephanie Falk, Foot Locker's director of
marketing communications: "We're not ready at this point, but our
intention is to, at some point, take the whole of the balloting
program worldwide" (BRANDWEEK, 9/12).
ALSO FROM THIS WEEK'S BRANDWEEK: International Sports &
Entertainment Strategies won the "shoot-out for The Coca-Cola
Co.'s mammoth National Basketball Association sponsorship
account." The only question about the package -- estimated at
$285M -- is which brand, Coke Classic or Sprite, would lead the
sponsorship....Nike may be ready to shift $100M of its domestic
media buying account out of SFM Media and "possibly back to
longtime creative agency Wieden & Kennedy....in what could be the
first of a series of adjustments of Nike's advertising flowchart
by new ad director Joe McCarthy" (Matthew Grimm, BRANDWEEK,
9/12).
