This past weekend, the Tour Championship, last leg of the FedEx Cup professional golf competition, was played in Atlanta, Georgia. The other three events included in the overall contest, played over the three preceding weeks, were the The Barclays, Deutsche Bank Championship and BMW Championship tourneys.
This years Tour champion, Brandt Snedeker, won $1.44 million for the individual tournament, plus a $10 million bonus for capturing the FedEx Cup itself. The balance of the $35 million bonus fund was paid out to the rest of the players as follows: The runner-up gets $3 million, 3rd place $2 million, 4th place $1.5 million, 5th place $1 million, and so on down to $32,000 for 126th through 150th place.
I bring this up because for the last four weeks, and many more times all season, the name FedEx was mentioned by announcers, commentators, golf pundits and others, thousands and thousands, if not millions of times. In fact, the company’s name flashed on TV screens seemingly every couple of minutes, whereas it was included on scoreboards, caddies pull-over tops, and all the crawlers that crept across the top or bottom of scenes. And while I never turned my TV volume up to listen, I know from past experience the FedEx name had to be mentioned almost continually by those covering the event.
In the meantime however, this past week FedEx Corp. (FDX) stock dropped the most in three months after cutting its annual profit outlook because a weakening economy has prompted shippers in the U.S. and overseas to switch to cheaper delivery options. Earnings for the year ending in May will be $6.20 to $6.60 a share compared with a previous forecast of $6.90 to $7.40.
So, I guess, all those millions spent on advertising, including the sponsorship of a very expensive month-long series of golfing events, isn’t enough to convince folks to spend bucks on things they don’t really need or want. And when push comes to shove, businessfolks and everyone else, are going to do precisely what’s good for them, and all the ads in the world aren’t going to change those facts an iota.
And that, of course, brings me back to the current presidential campaign. Whereas just about all I see and hear concerns the amount of money being spent on political ads by both parties, something I’ve never really understood at all.
It’s simply incomprehensible to me that anyone paying too much in taxes, can’t find a job, shelling out huge sums just to buy gasoline, seeing the cost of health care rising rapidly, watching nations going to war all over the Middle-East unbridled, wants to keep what they’ve earned from being “redistributed,” or sees overpaid teachers striking, just to name a few major governmental catastrophes is going to be swayed by anything produced in an ad promoting the incumbent.
So, in the preceding cases, I think FedEx and the incumbent would both have been far better off skipping the ad campaigns and keeping the money. Because the way things look at the moment, they’re going to need it to cover income they’re simply not going to receive anymore like they used to.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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