The Max Verstappen endorsement case

Today I'll write something about another celebrity 'athlete'.

The case

The Netherlands' young F1 racer Max Verstappen has been increasingly successful, racing for team Red Bull. He now has become a much demanded media presence, attending talk shows and other events regularly. Apart from his endorsement with Red Bull, he recently starred in a commercial (bad quality) for a Dutch supermarket chain called Jumbo. This commercial shows Verstappen shopping at Jumbo (and of course buying a pack of Red Bull). In an additional Jumbo commercial Verstappen acts as a grocery delivery guy, driving a F1 race car.   

Verstappen driving a Red Bull race car (source: Flick, by Mr Rowlie)

This week, delivery service (and in that segment a competitor of Jumbo) Picnic, released an online commercial, starring a Verstappen lookalike, walking past a Jumbo delivery truck and hopping onto the smaller Picnic truck to start a very relaxed delivery round (as opposed to Max racing around in the Jumbo commercial).  The commercial was subbed "Sometimes you do something for your job, sometimes you do something for fun".  Here you can watch the Picnic commercial and read more about the case (in Dutch only).

Yesterday Picnic took down the video, as you can read in this news article (in Dutch). They stated having meant the commercial as a fun joke, yet the Verstappen management couldn't really laugh about it.

Why didn't team Verstappen want this commercial to remain visible?

Osborne et al. (2016) mentions that a strategic approach to manage celebrity and visibility is recommended, in order to avoid damage to the (celebrity) brand, sponsor relationships and fan loyalty, in which organizations (like Red Bull and Jumbo) invested and expect returns to. The authors further focus on transgressive behavior by male athletes, which wasn't the case for Verstappen. Ten points for Max!

What about Picnic?

Overall you could apply Gidden's structuration theory (Falkheimer, 2007). Picnic did not act according to structure in the sense that it would be socially acceptable to ask for Verstappen's permission and not to use Jumbo's ideas. Rather they acted out of free will (agency) and just made the commercial because they wanted and they could. Yet there were consequences: Verstappen wasn't pleased and announced that he would take legal actions if the commercial wasn't taken down. Picnic as a reaction had to take down the video.
Picnic in this sense lost, because the commercial unfortunately didn't last. Yet they received a lot of media attention due to the release of this video. Therefore I would still call it a PR success for Picnic in the end.

So how can Picnic's PR success be explained?

Davis (2000) stated this has to do with four aspects of the organization:  its economic capital, cultural capital (institutional legitimacy), human recourses and strategic application (PR strategies). In this case Picnic surely invested in the production of this commercial, which in turn can boost their legitimacy. Additionally, they definitely applied a smart PR strategy in order to gain media attention. This strategy which will boost the other three factors for Picnic as well.

About the author:

Frédérique van Gijn enjoys sports,  travelling, and good food. Being a BSc in Communication science, she has been working in corporate communication and marketing. She is currently a Master student Corporate Communication at the University of Amsterdam.