Subject: Advertisers Support Johnson as Educator 
Date: Published: 11/11/91 (106 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Advertising:
    Advertisers Support Johnson as Educator
    ----
    By Joanne Lipman

    Basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson has spent years
 selling the likes of Converse sneakers and Spalding
 basketballs.  Now those advertisers and others are poised to
 help him sell something else:  awareness of the HIV virus,
 which causes AIDS.  
    In the wake of the popular Los Angeles Lakers player's
 disclosure last week that he is infected with the human
 immunodeficiency virus, three companies that use him in
 endorsements are planning HIV awareness campaigns around him,
 said his agent, Lon Rosen, of First Team Marketing in Los
 Angeles.
    While he identified only Converse, industry executives
 said Spalding is also planning an effort and considering,
 among other possibilities, contributing part of the sales of
 its Magic Johnson basketball line to HIV research.  The
 companies Mr. Johnson endorses, which also include PepsiCo
 and Nestle, together pay him $10 million to $12 million a
 year.
    The public-service plans are an attempt to ride the wave
 of popular support for Magic Johnson in response to his bold
 disclosure.  Generally, advertisers would flee from a
 celebrity who has admitted to being infected with the virus
 that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.  "They go for
 the squeaky-clean spokesperson.  In the typical case, this
 would hurt his {endorsement} career," says Nova Lanktree,
 director of Burns Sports Celebrity Service in Chicago.
    But the public support for Mr. Johnson was so
 overwhelming, Ms. Lanktree says, that "even if advertisers
 were inclined to drop Magic Johnson, I'm sure they've
 assessed the general public's reaction and would be terrified
 to do so."
    Converse's HIV awareness campaign is "still evolving," a
 company spokeswoman said, and details will be announced this
 week.  Mr. Johnson's retirement from professional basketball,
 which he announced when he disclosed that he has the HIV
 virus, gives Converse an excuse, should it want to cut its
 ties with the player.  But the athletic shoe maker, a unit of
 Interco Inc., North Reading, Mass., said in a statement that
 it has been associated with Mr. Johnson since 1979 and "plans
 to continue working with Magic in the years to come."
    A Spalding & Evenflo Co. spokesman declined to discuss its
 HIV campaign, which also is in the early stages, saying only
 that the company will support whatever steps Mr. Johnson
 wants to take.
    Mr. Johnson said at his press conference he wants to be a
 spokesman for HIV awareness.  Whether he will ever again be a
 spokesman in lighthearted ads for the likes of Kentucky Fried
 Chicken and Diet Pepsi, as he was in the past, is another
 matter.
    Advertisers probably will have serious questions about
 whether they would want a spokesman infected with HIV to be
 associated with their products.  But if brands such as Nestle
 or Pepsi drop Mr. Johnson as a spokesman, they will reinforce
 the worst stereotypes about society's attitude toward the
 disease, warns Jim Andrews, editorial director of Special
 Events Report, a sports marketing newsletter based in
 Chicago.
    The companies would be sending the potentially damaging
 message that "we don't want our food connected to a deadly
 disease," Mr. Andrews says.  How the sponsors react, he says,
 will be "a watershed event," a "litmus test, because this
 unfortunately will happen again with some other celebrity."
    Advertisers so far aren't tipping their hand about their
 plans for Mr. Johnson, perhaps because they're still puzzling
 over the ramifications themselves.  Nestle has just completed
 some ads starring Mr. Johnson on the basketball court, but it
 says the spots haven't been scheduled for broadcast yet and
 that no decision has been made on whether to go ahead.  James
 Jordan, chairman of Nestle's ad agency, Jordan McGrath Case
 Taylor, says only, "We don't intend to walk, run or tiptoe
 away from Magic."
    Pepsi won't make any decisions until it sits down with Mr. 
 Johnson, a spokesman says; Mr. Johnson's endorsement contract
 runs out next year.  At Kentucky Fried Chicken, a unit of
 PepsiCo, a spokesman says commercials with the basketball
 hero haven't run since June and that "we don't have anything
 else planned."
    In the past, advertisers didn't face such tough choices.
 When the tabloids screamed that wine-cooler spokesman Bruce
 Willis had alcohol problems, Seagram knew what to do.  When
 cola spokesjock Mike Tyson got mixed up in street brawls and
 with alleged spouse abuse, it was a no-brainer for Pepsi.
 Sponsors simply followed advertising's golden rules:  Dump the
 embarrassing endorser, put the incident behind you and move
 on.
    But in the age of AIDS, there are no easy answers.  Do
 companies equate the fatal disease with dark secrets such as
 drug abuse or drunk driving and abandon spokespeople who
 contract it?  Or do they stand by the infected spokesman but
 risk alienating customers?  
    "There's no road map, no playbook, no guidelines," says a
 Pepsi spokesman.  "This is unprecedented.  We're going to sit
 down and sort it out."

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the
 personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the
 hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering
 from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]