Thursday, September 29, 2005

Marketers have a crush on Michelle. Pass it on.

Michelle Wie is about to turn pro and the marketing world can't wait. She is, after all, an endorsement deal trifecta. She competes against men! She has fashion-model good looks! She's only 15! She's also filling a void I didn't know existed: "'There's still a huge variance between the need for celebrity women athletes and what's out there.'"

"What's out there?" Let's try to de-code that.

"What's out there" seems to be, at least when you're talking LPGA, a euphemism for "fat girls in bad clothes." Or at best, women who may win tournaments but lack the porn-like persona of Anna Kournikova.

So the person most excited about Michelle Wie is likely the new LPGA commissioner who just happens to be a former IPG COO. If women's golf has a little trouble admitting that pretty girls get all the attention, Wie may help. If Tiger can get pasty PGA guys to work out, anything's possible.

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