Canadian sprinter and six-time Olympic medallist, Andre De Grasse, arrives on the black carpet of the first-ever edition of The Legacy Awards, in Toronto on Sept. 25.Eduardo Lima/The Canadian Press
Last year, Andre De Grasse electrified the country when he snagged a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, setting a Canadian record in the men’s 200-metre sprint.
Lately, it might seem as though he’s trying to set a record for his number of corporate-endorsement deals.
His fun-loving Subway delivery commercials (“Eat fresh, refresh!”) have been a mainstay on TV. Before that, there were the GoDaddy spots. And Peloton. Perhaps you saw him talking up the importance of sleep on behalf of Endy mattresses. Or the replenishment powers of Gatorade. Or the health benefits of the vegetarian meat-alternative Cheezmade, by Tre Stelle. Or how Lasik surgery improved his ability to see the lines on the track during the 4x100-metre relay. Or the importance of staying cool while wagering on the sports-book Coolbet.
If all that commercial activity can sometimes strike fans as a little much, that may just be because we’re used to our Olympic athletes floating onto our collective radar for a brief period before and during each Games, and then disappearing for another four years. Pro athletes such as basketball, hockey and baseball players are on our TV screens all the time while their leagues are in action, so it’s not unusual when they also pop up – maybe even during a game broadcast – endorsing a product or three.
But last month, De Grasse partnered with a Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., winery, Pillitteri Estates, to launch a limited-edition signature wine that seemed as much a statement of intent as a brand ambassadorship. The wine, a fruit-forward 2020 corvina cabernet franc, is named 19.62, after the sprinter’s impressive time in the 200 metres. It’s an indication of how intensely De Grasse is trying to leverage his 19.62 seconds in the spotlight into a personal brand that he hopes to sustain – and that could sustain him – for the long run.
To be clear, De Grasse is already stratospherically more financially successful than the vast majority of his fellow Olympians.
Most of them barely make ends meet. A pre-COVID 2020 survey of almost 500 elite athletes across 48 countries, conducted by the advocacy group Global Athlete, found 58 per cent did not see themselves as “financially viable.”
But right out of the starting blocks, even before he’d been to a Games, De Grasse famously signed a whopping long-term endorsement deal with Puma in 2015 that paid him a reported US$11.25-million minimum, with possibly tens of millions more if he were to meet a series of performance milestones.
Still, even as he amasses deals, he recognizes the running career of a sprinter is brief: the great Usain Bolt ran in three Olympic Games and retired at age 30, after the 2016 Rio Games. De Grasse, who made his Olympic debut in Rio, will be 29 during the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.
Which is why he and his representatives are working to make his public image as omnipresent and multi-faceted as possible. If executed correctly, his ubiquity keeps him in the public’s mind, while the various brands he aligns himself with – from fast food to apparel, mental health and philanthropy – help him to build out a public persona that, in time, won’t depend on him needing to run fast.
“You don’t want to have five TV spots in the market at the same time,” acknowledges Brian Levine, the founder and president of Toronto-based agency Envision Sports & Entertainment, who represents De Grasse in his Canadian marketing work. “But you want to make sure there’s something always on. So, if there’s not a GoDaddy ad on TV, there’s a Gatorade ad or a Subway ad.”
That omnipresence brings De Grasse a paycheque while also positioning him for the long term. “The analogy I use is, it’s like a passenger plane or a big cruise ship,” Levine says. “It takes a lot of fuel, a lot of preparation, a lot of co-ordination to get going or take flight. Once you’re flying, it becomes a lot easier.”
Athletes, like celebrities, became famous for being famous.
“At a certain point, your brand identity and your brand equity is not directly correlated to how fast you ran last weekend,” Levine said.
It takes years of planning for that to happen, but there are also moments that can make or break an athlete’s endorsement career. “There are two times when athletes have to have a really clear vision for what they want to do beyond sport,” says Russell Reimer, a Calgary-based agent. One of those times is during a retirement announcement. The other, “is after you’ve won a medal, and you have the attention of the entire country for about 90 seconds.”
The founder and president of Manifesto Sport Management, Reimer represents such former and current Olympians as Tessa Virtue, Charles Hamelin, Aaron Brown, Brad Gushue, Craig McMorris and Mark McMorris.
As part of his work with clients, Reimer conducts what he calls an “athlete discovery,” an intense interview that probes their character and motivations. He said he’s “had athletes cry,” during the process. Partly, that’s because they have to examine what drives them to compete. But it’s also because, he said, they often haven’t focused much on what they might want to do when their sporting career concludes.
“They begin to understand that, while you have a sport ambition, you also have to have a parallel path. That’s so important, because it’s the thing that, when you retire, will sustain you. And in the process, you’ll become who you really are, not just cling to an athlete’s identity that leaves you when you retire.”
Natural gifts and luck can help, too. Reimer’s client Jon Montgomery wasn’t widely known when he won the men’s skeleton in Vancouver, 2010. Then he took a few hearty swigs of beer from a pitcher that a fan passed him while he was walking through the Olympic Village, on live TV in front of an estimated two million Canadians. The moment helped springboard him into a broadcast career that has now seen him host The Amazing Race Canada for eight highly rated summertime TV seasons.
Even bad luck can help. When a hamstring tear sidelined him in 2018, De Grasse used the down time to create the Andre De Grasse Family Foundation, dedicated to empower and inspire youth through sport and education. A children’s book he co-wrote, Race With Me!, published by Scholastic, reinforced his connection to inspiring youth. (An inspiring memoir for adults is also in the works.)
The injury, and a previous hamstring tear, helped him become known for resilience. So, as the world began to emerge from COVID in 2021, De Grasse began to speak about the importance of resilience, in fireside chats and elsewhere. The mental-wellness platform, Headversity, signed him as its first resilience ambassador.
De Grasse’s wine launch last month – a slick and starry affair at Toronto’s Casa Loma, to which he and his posse arrived in Mercedes-Maybach sedans, and boldfaces in attendance included the Toronto Raptor OG Anunoby, swimmer Penny Oleksiak, hockey player and advocate Akim Aliu, and rappers k-os and TOBi – was conceived as a charity fundraiser. Five dollars from each $50 bottle would go to his foundation. Those who wish to donate $500 to the foundation receive a signed bottle of the wine, of which only 500 cases were produced.
The foundation work – it is a necessity for athletes to be seen to be “giving back”– is another spoke in a wheel of elements that together comprise the evolving De Grasse brand.
The foundation “is really just accentuating who he is as a person,” Levine explained. “So, the GoDaddy ads and the Subway ads show off his lightheartedness, his humour, his charm.” His work with Puma “promotes his hard work: performance, tenacity, strength, power, speed.”
The foundation “really showcases his heart and his humility, his accessibility, his inclusivity,” Levine said. “That’s something that’s hard to come across in an ad.”