Galaxy MF David Beckham this week will be "unveiled as the new face" of U.K.-based supermarket Sainsbury's in a US$7.8M deal, and some analysts "predict that he could nudge up revenues of the supermarket chain by millions," according to Matthew Syed of the LONDON TIMES, who writes under under the header, "Beckham: Footballer, Trendsetter, Global Ambassador." Beckham is set to be a brand ambassador for the chain, and Interbrand UK CEO Graham Hales said, "The tie-up with David Beckham is a real coup for Sainsbury's. ... It also shows a desire for Beckham to get increasingly mainstream and project family values." Syed notes pop historians "like to describe Beckham as the ultimate postmodern celebrity: a man whose public utterances are so unmemorable and banal that he appears as a blank slate." He is "all things to all men and all women." Beckham is "Teflon, too," as no scandal "seems to affect his mystique." Beckham has "mesmerised audiences across the globe." His influence has "lasted too long, and reaches too wide, to be the product of luck or hype." Beckham has "captured, perhaps unwittingly, something significant in early 21st-century consciousness." It has been "asserted that Beckham’s influence is on the wane, which the Sainsbury’s deal may confirm one way or another." But those who "scoff at Beckham merely demonstrate their deafness to the mood music of the new millennium" (LONDON TIMES, 11/22).
