RownhamHill said:
So, imagine you posted on a forum in a competitive matter, where users made some kind of rating choice on each poster, based on how much they trusted that poster's trustworthiness/value to the site. Now imagine that somehow that success or otherwise at winning 'ratings' affected your financial health (or otherwise). Such that you might be prepared to invest some discretionary spend to promote yourself as a brand.
From this perspective, do you think that if you paid $32million in order for the 'mountainrman' to - in time - become indelibly, and internationally, associated with 'the most sophisticated doping fraud in history', such that whenever the dozen's of international media outlets covering the story, as a matter of course, included a photo that prominently advertised the 'mountainrman' brand, do you think that - maybe - you might end up thinking that you hadn't got much value for your millions? Indeed, do you think that ultimately you might have lost out, and would have been better off keeping $32 million, and not having 'mountainrman' forever associated with that particular fraud?
Because I'm confused by your ideas of what constitutes success in the context of above the line brand advertising?
Sponsorship in sports is rarely if ever done on the lasting value of brand association, because sporting superstars rarely last long, it is done to get cheap television exposure for the brand at the height of team or sports persons popularity, and sponsorship wains pretty soon after.. Payback assumptions for that exposure are calculated on a couple of years, not on long term.
I think the reason Lance went back on the tour is because Livestrong sponsorship was drying up when he stopped competing. So he did it to give Livestrong a boost.
I doubt that the current Armstrong fiasco has had any effect whatsoever on the position of USPS which is and was all but bankrupt long before this losing 9 figures in dollars in the last years - so its current predicament is certainly nothing to do with a serial cycling fraud.
FACTS ARE
If you look at the historic profitability of USPS it peaked in 2003 from earlier loss, which correlates with their sponsorship. and has more or less tanked since 2007. So if the Armstrong promotion had an effect it was entirely positive.
I question why public employees are wasting money on something so nebulous and expensive as sports advertising. It can only be that someone high up was a cycling fan with very poor business judgement who probably wanted european exposure at a time that mail was starting to explode in global terms.
For all that they did decide to swap dollars for promotion., and in terms of OTV (the stupid non direct marketing metric = opportunity to view) it must have been bigger than their wildest dreams. They did it at a time when they knew the tour was dirty because of the Festina revelations. As a direct marketer I think all image advertising is a crass waste of money.
My guess is the fact that USPS want to join the qui tam has more to do with how much money they are losing and Lawyers - who are at the heart of most of these problems (take Lance beating everyone up with lawyers)- are telling them they have a fighting chance of getting it back from lance. If the DOJ thought the same, they would have joined the suit a long time ago. They clearly think it is not surefire thing which is why the Attorney general has left it to the last 24 hours to make a decision.
It is a shame that other than the normal insults ignored. ,
Chewbacca has failed to answer the question at all why she thinks DOJ have left it so long if it was a slamdunk. One place a legal insight would be seful.
So I think they are not confident of the legal position. Even if they decide to join now.