If you have been paying attention to the London Olympics, you are getting a glimpse of the new generation of marketing pitchmen and women. Names and faces you may have never known prior to the start of the Olympics will soon be lending their image to the sales efforts of major corporations. Get ready for a lot of "Flying Squirrel" Gabby Douglas, Usain Bolt, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings. You may not be seeing so much of pre-Olympic marketing hopefuls Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, even though they both won gold.

So what is the big fascination with sports stars and the products they endorse? The marketing pitchman gig has been going strong for a very long time. If you feel good about a person, you will have a tendency to purchase the products they are selling. The bottom line is this: as stupid as this sounds, we like to wear, eat, shampoo our hair, drive the same car, brush our teeth, listen to the same music, watch the same movies as our sports heroes. It is all a made up reality, but it works. Whether the sports celebrity mentioned your product in a tweet or allowed you to use their mug in your latest ad, it makes people want to buy your product. When you have someone associated with your product who is recognizable and has a favorable perception from the public, that popularity can be leveraged to make your product just as popular. There is no better feel-good story than what happens at the Olympics. Night after night, stories of overcoming life's obstacles to compete on a world stage are told by Bob Costas and endless color commentators. We connect with these stories of triumph over disease, poverty, injury, disappointment… you name it. We buy it all without ever questioning if it is true or not. We quickly become fans of people we really have never heard of or may not even follow their sport. (Does anyone really watch track and field any time other than the Olympics?) This makes Olympic athletes perfect to endorse products.

Why do some athletes get the marketing contracts and others do not? A gold medal does not hurt. Remember that long before Bruce Jenner married into the Kardashian clan, he was the 1976 gold medal winner in the decathlon. The ultimate sports marketing guru was Michael Jordan, a 1984 gold medal winner for Team USA (and later on the Dream Team in 1992 in Barcelona.) George Foreman? 1968 boxing gold medalist. Mary Lou Retton? 1984 gold medalist. Michael Phelps? Remember the eight gold medals won at the Beijing Olympics? Phelps is coming out of the London Olympics as the all-time winner of medals for any athlete (22 medals) as well as the most gold medals (18 golds.) However, there is more to pitching than just the medals. There is the public's perception - the image the pitchman has within the marketplace - and their current popularity that makes the difference between a success and failure. Phelps came out of the Beijing Olympics with more endorsement offers than you could splash water at. In London, he has become overshadowed by fresh new faces. His perceived feud with Ryan Lochte did not help. The public likes their guy to be fierce with the competition. They don't like it when the competition is on the same team.

When it comes to certain brands, athletes, particularly Olympic athletes, have made them household names. The General Mills breakfast cereal Wheaties is a good example. The first athlete to be featured on the front of the "Breakfast of Champions" box was Olympic gold medal pole vaulter Bob Richards in 1958. Since then, to be pictured on a Wheaties box is almost more coveted than the gold medal itself. General Mills has forged a long-standing brand by picturing only the very best athletes on their Wheaties boxes. Does eating Wheaties prepare you to be an athlete any more than eating Cheerios? In all likelihood, no. But that is not the point. The point is, putting likeable, feel-good-story athletes on the front of those boxes sells their product. By linking the world's best and most popular athletes to their brand, General Mills has created a product that people will seek out and buy, even if they don't necessarily like the way the product tastes. It is not any more complicated than that.

So be prepared for a lot of post-Olympic glory advertisements. For the corporations that understand how powerful the faces of these newly crowned athletes can be, the real gold is in the marketing.

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Olympic star Gabrielle Douglas can smile, all the way to the bank, by Diane Pucin, August 7, 2012, The LA Times

Photo by joker production