Why do we call them “ads” when they don’t seem to add anything to sportsmen’s careers?
The following South African stars prove that sports and product plugging don’t always make a good team.
Bryan Habana – After being featured in a Protex soap commercial, where he teaches schoolkids how to wash their hands, rugby balls just haven’t been able to stick in the Springbok winger’s slippery hands.
And things got worse after he did an Outsurance advertisement.
In the ad, he chases down and tackles burglars on his property.
Well, he must have hurt himself during the shoot because he had an injury-prone season for the Stormers after that.
And since doing the ad, his tackling hasn’t been quite as good either.
Outsurance didn’t do Bryan’s SA teammate Pierre Spies’ game any favours either.
In his ad, the strongman virtually scrums a moving truck driven by thieves off the road.
But that kind of heroics were nowhere to be seen during the Boks’ World Cup campaign.
Staying with the Bokke, the worst thing that Tendai Mtawarira could have done was sign a sponsorship deal with Bic razors.
The Bok prop seems to have lost a lot of his beastliness now that he’s clean-shaven.
The only sponsor that seemed to aid the Springboks was Grundfos water pumps, which clearly succeeded in pumping up Bismarck du Plessis’ performance.
After his embarrassing “Pump by die dump pump, pump, pump” commercial, the Sharks hooker’s form has been piping hot.
Now, the Proteas have no one to blame but themselves for choking again in this year’s Cricket World Cup.
But when you’re having braais with Castle lager when you should be practising, then you’re asking for trouble.
And when your best players are fooling around in front of the camera with Lay’s chips, then you just end up being Lay’s-ee losers.
Sprouting
Probably the strangest result of product “plugging” was when balding Jacques Kallis started sprouting hairplugs after doing a Sanex soap ad.
His batting and bowling form has also flourished since. Talk about an “allround” soap...
All in all, we think our sports heroes should rather focus on what they’re good at and give up on their dream of being TV stars. - Daily Voice