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New: Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee. Want someone for an ad? Call Muhammad Ali.
New York Times
February, 2004

THAT, or something like it, must be the newest doggerel making the 
rounds of Madison Avenue. In the last month, consumers around the 
world have seen Mr. Ali - known for the butterfly-bee analogy during his
poetic boxing career - advertise three blue-chip brands. Two of the 
campaigns, for Gillette and I.B.M., beganduring Super Bowl XXXVIII on 
Feb. 1; the third,for Adidas, started four days later.

The trio of appearances by Mr. Ali, who has previously been featured
in campaigns for marketers like Apple Computer and Coca-Cola, is 
another example of an increasingly common occurrence in 
advertising: more than onecampaign at a time sharing elements 
like a celebrity endorser, pop song or slogan.

Can it be chalked up to great minds thinking alike? Or, to
paraphrase Fred Allen's remark about television, is imitation the sincerest
form of advertising?

"It's a smaller world than we think it is," said David Schwab, director for
marketing and media at the office in McLean, Va., of Octagon, the sports
agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies.

That is particularly true, Mr. Schwab said, when it comes to the list of
people who marketers know can move products on a global basis - a list made
shorter recently by problems among athlete ad stars that has included
problems off the field, poor performance on the field and overexposure as
endorsers.

Mr. Ali is "not a celebrity anymore," Mr. Schwab said.. "He's an iconic
brand. He himself is an I.B.M. or a Gillette."
It is also more likely for the same ideas to turn up in multiple campaigns
rooted in sports, said Lucian James, the president at Agenda in San
Francisco, a brand strategy consulting company, because "there's a grammar
in sports marketing that matches athletic prowess to brands and looks for
iconic heroes."

The marketers signing Mr. Ali to appear in the campaigns, for undisclosed
terms, say they are not too upset at sharing him.

"We didn't know about the other opportunities for him, but we didn't care
all that much," said Deirdre Bigley, vice president for worldwide
advertising at the International Business Machines Corporation in Armonk,
N.Y. "He's appearing in very different types of advertising," she added,
"and each of us is making very different use of him."

The I.B.M. campaign, by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in New York, part of the
WPP Group, uses Mr. Ali to promote the Linux open source computer operating
system. The Super Bowl commercial, in which Mr. Ali declares, "Shake things
up," likened Linux, which Ms. Bigley described as "this underdog, upstart
technology," to Mr. Ali's identity as "an underdog who challenged the status
quo, and changed the face, of boxing."

Mr. Ali was also one of several familiar faces in a Linux spot in September,
along with the academician Henry Louis Gates, the film director Penny
Marshall and the former basketball coach John Wooden.

"I knew Ali was working for I.B.M., but didn't know about Gillette," said
Uli Becker, the head of global brand communications in Amsterdam for Adidas,
a division of Adidas-Salomon. "But if a person means something to the world,
the fact more than one company at a time is using him is not surprising.

"The awareness and recognizability of Muhammad Ali around the globe is a
given, which is important if you're planning a global campaign," Mr. Becker
said. "And he's a great visualization and personalization of the attitude of
our campaign." The Adidas campaign is a series of television, print and
Internet ads carrying the assertive theme "Impossible is nothing."

Another reason that he has no problems with the other ads, Mr. Becker said,
is the quality of the brands involved. "I.B.M. is a great brand," he said.
"Gillette is a great brand. If they were bad companies using him, misusing
him, that would be something else."

The Adidas campaign, by 180/TBWA in Amsterdam - an alliance of two agencies,
180 and the TBWA Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group - presents Mr. Ali
along with his daughter, Laila, also a boxer, and other athletes like the
soccer star David Beckham, the basketball player Tracy McGrady and the
swimmer Ian Thorpe.

The Gillette campaign, by BBDO Worldwide in New York, also owned by Omnicom,
features several athletes along with Mr. Ali, interspersed with actors
portraying everyday Gillette customers. Film of Mr. Ali proclaiming "I am
the greatest" is included in the Gillette Super Bowl spot, as are glimpses
of the track star Michael Johnson and the basketball player Corey Maggette.

"We use the vignettes of Ali because he's the ultimate definition of male
self-confidence," said Eric Kraus, a spokesman for Gillette in Boston,
epitomizing the theme of the campaign, "The best a man can get."

The appearances of Mr. Ali in the other ads are "unfortunate," Mr. Kraus
said, "but the athletes are not the focal point of our campaign."

Mr. Ali's popularity as a pitchman may surprise some older consumers who
recall the hostility he generated when he changed his name from Cassius Clay
and fought being drafted during the Vietnam War. He is remembered more now
for being "one of the more vocal, outgoing athletes" of his time, Mr. Kraus
said, than for the specifics of what he said.

Mr. James, the brand strategist, said that for all the controversy
surrounding Mr. Ali, the uproar was firmly in the past, in contrast to the
potential embarrassments advertisers fear from active athletes on their
endorsement rosters.

That is a major reason marketers "are turning to 'retro heroes,' " Mr. James
said, "those stars who have completely transcended anything they did."

Whatever the verdict on Mr. Ali's past, said Mr. Becker of Adidas, he is in
good company. "Many of the athletic superstars of the world are polarizing,"
Mr. Becker said. "It's part of the characteristics that make them excel."