Lessons for Mainstream Brands from Two Sports Celebrities

I am not going to use superlatives to describe two individuals who I greatly admire, as no amount of it will be enough to express their greatness. It will also definitely not make sense to compare the exploits of Roger Federer and Sachin Tendulkar on the field of play either as they both are masters at sports which are as comparable as chalk and cheese. This article just aims to point out a couple of simple points on their social media presences, which are useful for businesses.

Both Federer and Tendulkar  have an enormous fan following (Sachin, probably to a lesser excellent due to the not-so-global reach of cricket) across the globe. They both handle the celebrity status with the utmost humility and they're both wonderful human beings who set excellent examples for those who look up to them. Being a fan of both Sachin and Federer, I follow them on Facebook and therefore I check for updates from these pages. Tendulkar has a Twitter account too, which I follow. When it comes down to how they fare on Facebook, I think Federer has an edge over the little master. I'm not saying that this will cause Tendulkar any distress, as he and also Federer for that matter, have better ways of getting people to talk about them. Federer has 5.7 million 'Likes' compared to Tendulkar's 1.9 million, but these statistics hardly mean anything and cannot give a more inaccurate reading of the number of admirers they have. 

Graeme Smith Reveals Retirement Plans

Graeme Smith, at a press conference after the first day of the deciding Test match between India and South Africa, has announced that he will be retiring. There was a twist though in store for everyone. As we all know some players have in the past retired from one form of the game or other as they wanted to devote more time and effort to their preferred format be it ODIs, Test matches or more recently T20 cricket. Smith though went one step ahead when he announced, "Well ya, I have decided to quit from all matches which will feature Zaheer Khan in the opposing team. Ya, this will help me focus on bowlers who I am more comfortable against" after having being dismissed by Zaheer for the 11th time in his career.

Saurav Ganguly when told about this development gave his customary look of disbelief by batting his eyelids at the rate of three times per second. "If I had retired from matches played in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies, my average would have been much higher. This is not right. Soon you might have people retiring from short pitched bowling" he said, suggesting that he might have considered various kinds of retirement plans to suit his batting average.