Muhammad Ali … from Paladin, to Pariah, to Pitchman
By Brent Green, author, Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers
Cassius Clay was Superman. The poetic pugilist stood for everything a young Boomer male wanted to become: self-confident, physically powerful, intelligent, fearless, wealthy, and famous—a 20th century gladiator.
He was also a black man, which communicated volumes to teenagers wanting to see the promise of Civil Rights fully manifested with the installation of African American heroes in the mythology of the growing counterculture. He represented the best and brightest of a new breed of trans-racial heroes beginning to emerge in sports, business, cinematic arts, and politics.
Muhammad Ali, his adopted Muslim name, was black and belligerent; black and beneficent; black and bold. He quickly became one of the most recognized and admired athletes worldwide, a fact that eventually became enshrined forever with his installation as the Sportsman of the 20th Century by Sports Illustrated magazine in December 1999.
Born January 17, 1942, Cassius Marcellus Clay won the gold medal in the light heavyweight division of the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Italy. He soon captured media attention with his smooth-talking self-confidence and wit. In his own self-assessment: “Cassius Clay is a boxer who can throw the jive better than anybody.”
He helped catapult boxing to the forefront of spectator sporting events when he fought Sonny Liston in Miami for the world heavyweight boxing title. While promoting this match, he coined his famous rhythmic chant, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” At the age of 22, he became the pretty prince of boxing.
During this time of rampant racism, and having been inspired by bellicose black activist Malcolm X, he decided to join the Nation of Islam and adopt the name Muhammad Ali, which in Muslim means “beloved of Allah.” Cassius Clay became a Black Muslim in 1963, and he also became a symbol of all that tradition-bound America was beginning to fear and hate: Black Muslims, Black Power, and Black Panthers. In so doing, he turned his back on mainstream America by rejecting the “slave name” upon which rested his early fame.
Defying the white establishment, this once powerful symbol of Olympic triumph and The American Dream picked up another burning torch that inspired the downtrodden, disfranchised, and dispossessed worldwide. Ali was, as Eldridge Cleaver observed, “the black Fidel Castro of boxing.”
In 1967, he refused the draft on religious grounds, and the World Boxing Federation stripped him of his title and boxing license. The U.S. government charged him for violating the Selective Service Act. He told the media, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet-Cong. No Viet-Cong ever called me nigger.”
In spite of his moral and religious objections, the get-Cassius faction across America condemned him as a traitor, and the courts sentenced him to five years in prison. Quickly released on appeal, his conviction was overturned in 1970.
It is not without irony that Muhammad Ali became a favored celebrity pitchman during the early 21st century, plugging products for America’s mainstream, blue-chip brands.
In the Super Bowl XXXVIII, aired on February 1, 2004, for example, Ali appeared as himself in television commercials not once, but three times, for IBM, Gillette, and as part of a CBS Network promotion to encourage Americans to vote. Around that same time, he also appeared in advertising campaigns for Apple Computer and Coca-Cola. Adidas athletic shoes hired him as spokesman to help solidify its new message in a print, television, and Internet advertising campaign dedicated to the theme, “Impossible is nothing.”
David Schwab, director for marketing and media at the office in McLean, Virginia, of Octagon, a sports agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, observed that Muhammad Ali could not be thought of as just a celebrity. “He’s an iconic brand. He himself is an IBM or Gillette.”
The IBM campaign was particularly noteworthy for its adoption of impressions about Ali most fondly remembered, while unselfconsciously skirting the potential issues raised by Ali’s civil disobedience and alignment with revolutionary factions during the sixties.
In this television commercial, Ali is sitting next to a boy who is characteristically quixotic and curious about the world. The boy represents IBM’s open source computer operating system called Linux, an “underdog, upstart software technology.”
Ali plaintively declares to the boy, “Shake things up,” hearkening back to the time when the great fighter rattled the boxing world while shaking up the Moral Majority’s deeply held beliefs in the duty of all citizens to support unflinchingly their government during times of war. Ali, the African American, gave added poignancy to this message with his advice, delivered affectionately to an innocent Caucasian boy.
Icons are eternal, often no matter their flaws and foibles, and even in spite of the ravages of debilitating conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, which frequently put the champ on the canvas.
But those who Boomers once loved, and sometimes loved to hate, have changed the texture of modern marketing communications. Those who wrote history rise above the mundane and banality. When timeless icons such as Ali are used with intelligence and respect, yesterday’s heroes become today’s goodwill ambassadors.
Through this process, advertisers also connect powerfully to Boomers’ coming-of-age zeitgeist, adding force and personification to a brand. Even nefarious image residuals from the sixties—such as in Ali’s situation—can boost a brand, making it appear more iconoclastic, individualistic, and unconventional—a valuable position in a world of parity products and services. The “road less traveled” remains today a mythic Western value that continues to define the American experience; the celebrity man or woman who has taken that road, equally so.
With a unique combination of skill, style and character, “The Greatest” became a three-time heavyweight champion and the world’s most acclaimed athlete. He became a symbol of conquest, and he became the object of racial derision.
But this superstar athlete and defiant radical transformed into something more. Through the magic of modern branding, he rose again as a powerful symbol of achievement in the face of adversity. That’s also why he became the go-to retired athlete for companies revitalizing brand images of courage, character, and charisma.
Ali’s career was, in the end, ironic and iconic.
Biography:
Author of Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers: Perceptions, Principles, Practices, Predictions (Paramount Market Publishing, March 2006), Brent Green speaks at national conferences and symposia on the mature market segment and the coming unprecedented reorientation of American business to an aging population. He also provides expert commentary for news media such as The Los Angeles Times, US News & World Report, CNN Headline News, Business Week and The Wall Street Journal.
Established in 1986, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. develops integrated marketing communication programs for a diverse list of clients, with emphasis on direct response media, integrated promotions and marketing public relations. The firm has received over 50 regional, national and international awards for creative and strategic excellence, including the Direct Marketing Association’s International Gold ECHO Award. In 2000, The Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association selected Brent as Direct Marketer of the Year.
Brent has served in a leadership capacity with many professional and public service organizations, including as board chair of the Colorado Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau and as programming chair for both the Business Marketing Association and the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association. He is executive director of the Foundation for American Boomers.
