MARIA SHARAPOVA

MARKETING THE PROMISE OF SUCCESS

PREPARING FOR GREATNESS

Maria Sharapova –young attractive player , fighter, competing hard for every point

For marketing it was important to capture these characteristics of her personality

She was known as a “WINNER”

At the age of 13; interviewed for the story of HBO Real sports

They asked Maria, “If you had a choice between winning Wimbledon or making $20 million

in endorsement, what would you choose?”

Later that year, she won the Australian Open Juniors Tournament- her first professional win.

After that Eisenbud , confident of her potential, began to sell her winnings

SHARAPOVA V/S KOURNIKOVA

Max Eisenbud focused on differentiating Sharapova from Anna Kournikova

Anna Kournikova, despite her performance on court she was more renowned for her beauty

and tabloid appearances

Anna Kournikova started doing ads, that was quite different from her sports image

She did ads for FHM, Maxim and her photographs of scantily clad body appeared in various

men’s magzine

ESPN ranked Anna in 25 biggest sports flop of the past 25 years

EARLY DEALS OF SHARAPOVA

Sharapova always thought that if she were involved in all the little decisions, then

she will never have the time to play

As of 2004, Sharapova’s endorsement were limited to deals with NIKE and Prince

rackets

Eisenbud and Gavin Forbes , deliberately secured her clothing and equipment deals

that involves well known elite brands

MARKETING A WIMBLEDON CHAMPION

In 2004, a 17- year old beautiful girl Maria Sharapova became the third youngest

and first Russian woman to win Wimbledon

For marketing, it was the perfect storm, she was young, brand new, she just upset

the number 1 player at Wimbledon in front of worldwide television audience

Within six hours of her victory, Eisenbud had received nearly 700 e-mails

MOTOROLA – LUCRATIVE ENDORSEMENT

Sharapova got the Motorola

endorsement by the Alan

Zucker’s effort on “value the

opportunity and how best to

approach the meeting”

OTHER OPPORTUNIES

After winning Wimbledon flood of opportunities were there in front of Maria

Sharapova’s agent

To handle all these opportunities he found out lots of questions,

What was the preferred overall marketing strategy?

How could he best leverage the resources available to him at IMG?