From effigy to ambassador: the story behind Brand Beckham

From local hero to global superstar via national villain, the Brand Beckham narrative had it all. But just how did David Beckham amass such enormous global appeal – and where does his brand go from here following his retirement from football?

Contrast David Beckham with another legendary Manchester United number seven, George Best. Both good looking, both precociously gifted and both celebrities of their age. But after quitting United at the age of 27, achievements not quite fulfilled, Best would forever be painted a tragic hero beset with health and financial troubles. After quitting United at the age of 28, Beckham would not just go on to win more titles, but cement his status as one of the world’s most popular and lucrative celebrities. As the fresh face of the booming Premier League era, Beckham’s talents were undoubtedly more generously rewarded than Best’s. But unlike Best, Beckham had the knack of maximising his talent both on the pitch – and off it. “In my opinion Beckham was the first celebrity, not just sports star, to understand that you have to manage your own brand or other people will manage it for you,” says Andy Milligan, author of Brand it like Beckham and co-founder of The Caffeine Partnership. “There are a number of lessons that we can learn from Beckham but one of the best is to listen to good advice. He and his advisers have been extremely smart and shrewd about the choices they’ve made over the length of his career. He’s managed with the same disciplines and rigours that a modern business should be managing its brand. I don’t think George Best ever had any good advice or if he did he didn’t listen to it. He probably never understood how he could’ve managed to maintain his reputation in the way that Beckham has.” According to Milligan, Beckham’s universal appeal has much to do with a series of values – brand values, in other words – that resonate anywhere in the world: “The sense of style, the dedication to his game and almost everything he does and his old-fashioned sense of respect.” But these things would mean nothing without the football. “You can never forget it is football that has built his brand. He could not be where he is today if he wasn’t as good as player as he was and if he hadn’t won the biggest trophies with the best teams in the world. If he’d been a basketball player, or a hockey player, or a Tour de France cyclist like Bradley Wiggins, he might have burnt brightly for a little bit of time, but nowhere near the level he has got to. Football is just a behemoth. “It is worth remembering that all great brands are good at something; they have to be. No brand can sell itself only on empty promises and slick marketing. In terms of his product quality, look at what he achieved. No player has ever won more outfield caps for England, no English player has ever won four major league titles in four different countries, no player has ever had a bigger effect on the US game in the sustained way he did in his time at LA Galaxy. He is an extraordinary role model to remind people that any brand has to be built on substance.” But for all Beckham’s on-pitch talent, it is not through football alone that he accrued his Hollywood status. As Antony Marcou, a sports marketing expert at Sports Revolution points out, better footballers than Beckham have not been able to cultivate personal brands anywhere near as lucrative: “Was Cantona a better footballer, was Chris Waddle, was Paul Gascoigne? You can have a debate, but Beckham was the full package. He was media friendly, he had a celebrity wife, he had the story – Walthamstow boy done good. He was an exceptional footballer, but I think it would be naive as a football fan to say it was just the football.” Marcou believes there are two particular moments that propelled Beckham from footballer to icon: marrying a Spice Girl “when they were the biggest thing on the planet” and getting sent off against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. “His marriage to Victoria opened Beckham up to a whole new fan base,” Marcou says. “Suddenly it wasn’t just 18-24 year old guys who knew who David Beckham was; it was wives, girlfriends, daughters. Brand Beckham was born.” That infamous red card for a petulant kick on Diego Simeone was a pivotal moment in the timeline of Brand Beckham. With today’s press awash with eulogies to ‘Becks’ the national treasure, it is hard to believe that the same newspapers were once castigating Beckham as the ‘stupid boy’ who ‘let his country down’. When Beckham went to West Ham for Manchester United’s opening away game of the 1998/99 season, he was greeted by an effigy in his image dangling from a hangman’s noose. His reputation was at an all-time low, but far from killing his brand, it would ultimately make it stronger. “We all love the rebirth of a villain,” says Marcou. “The ‘98 sending off was the classic press thing of building someone up and knocking them down – but even better; they built him back up again.” The Beckham redemption narrative began with his role in Manchester United’s extraordinary 1999 treble winning season and culminated in his jaw-dropping last-minute free kick against Greece which singlehandedly dragged England to the 2002 World Cup. As Marcou recalls, “that story was the stuff of Hollywood”. At one time, footballers would retire and buy into a nice local enterprise – often the nearest pub. One suspects there are more ambitious plans afoot for Brand Beckham. “This is part of a long-term narrative that he’s been building,” says Milligan. “There will be the fashion and fragrance world with Victoria, he will continue to be involved in football and may want to buy a Major League Soccer franchise, although a side effect of the success he brought to the American game is that to buy a franchise in Major League Soccer now would be about 50 times more expensive than it would when he started this, and then there are the lucrative ambassadorial roles.” Beckham is already an ambassador for Chinese football. Will we see his like, a footballer whose appeal transcends so many boundaries, again? “I can’t see it,” says Marcou. “If you look at what’s emerged – a cool credible individual that women like, men like – you would more associate that with a niche extreme sports star. Beckham changed the rules.”