Driven: Branding Derek Jeter, Redefining Race

Promoting the opening of the Museum of the City of New York's exhibit, "The Glory Days: New York Baseball, 1947-1957," curator Ann Meyerson noted that for the first time since Jackie Robinson crossed the major league's color line in 1947, not a single African American player was likely to be included on either of the city's teams' twenty-five man rosters in 2007. Excluding, for the sake of argument, Mets prospect Lastings Milledge, now with the Nationals, where did that leave the captain of the New York Yankees, Derek Jeter? In a 2005 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Jeter handled the subject of his race with characteristic, media-savvy care: "My Dad is black, my Mom is Irish, and I'm Catholic, so I hear everything. I'm in New York and there are all different people, all races and religions. I can relate to everyone. "(1) Since his 1996 rookie season, Derek Jeter has not only played shortstop for the New York Yankees, he has parlayed his ability to "relate to everyone" into what advertisers hope will translate into an ability to "sell to everyone," working overtime as a pitching machine. Most of the products Jeter pitched before 2006 were ones generally associated with baseball and conventionally endorsed by its players--Nike sneakers, Gatorade sports drink, Ford cars and trucks, and a variety of breakfast and snack foods, including Ritz crackers, Post cereals, Skippy peanut butter, and, perhaps inevitably, Oreos. Not so surprisingly for one of the most generously compensated players in the game, Jeter also endorsed a financial institution, Fleet Bank. In his role as a well-known man about town, not altogether unfamiliar to the readers of New York's gossip columns, Jeter also appeared with his equally famous, generous compensator, George M. Steinbrenner, in a Visa commercial. Recently, however, Jeter has branched out beyond the expected, connecting his image to two very different brands. A short hop across town from the Museum of the City of New York, near the Morningside Heights home of Columbia University, Jeter peers out from a sign atop the subway entrance at 116th Street. Next to his readily identifiable image is the word DRIVEN. Driven is the signature fragrance of a line of products for men, introduced by Avon in April 2006 with a nationwide, integrated campaign including print ads, an interactive Web site, and, in the New York area, a variety of outdoor signage on busses and taxis, including the ad at the 116th Street subway entrance and others like it. According to Avon's Web site, Driven "[reflects] the unique personality of one of the most driven men in America," Derek Jeter. (2) New York commuters of another stripe, returning home to North Jersey's more affluent suburbs from a lucrative day at the office in their well-appointed luxury vehicles, are also greeted by Jeter's giant visage, this time pitching Movado 800 series chronographs as they crawl down the helix from the Lincoln Tunnel to Route 3. Print ads bearing virtually the same image and accompanying copy have appeared in Gentleman's Quarterly, the New York Times Magazine, and other glossy publications aimed at a demographic, who, like the Yankees' captain, have a great deal of disposable income as well as a great deal of self-defined style. Jeter, who, along with New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, is the face of the brand, is also featured in a television commercial for Movado. Certainly, these ad campaigns target two separate and distinct groups of consumers, groups which, as early as the 1920s, the advertising industry differentiated as mass and class, respectively. (3) Despite the placement of an ad for Driven in GQ's December 2006 issue, the magazine's readers--the advertising industry's "class"--are probably not tying up circuits placing calls to their Avon ladies to order Driven. Neither is the fragrance, produced by a company that claims its brochures are distributed to over fifteen million customers biweekly, the epitome of "mass" when it comes to cosmetics, likely to be marketed heavily to luxury-conscious metrosexuals. …