LaVar Ball has made expert trolling an integral part of the marketing strategy for his “Big Baller” line of athletic shoes, WHAS News of Indiana gives examples:
“He has done it with:
- the greatest player of all time (saying in March that “back in my hey-day, I would kill Michael Jordan one-on-one”);
- Steph Curry (saying in February that his son, Lakers rookie and then-UCLA point guard Lonzo Ball, was already better than the Golden State Warriors star);
- LeBron James (saying in March that his 13-year-old son/rising hoops prospect, LeBron James Jr., would never be as good as his father);
- many others from the basketball world. For crying out loud, For The Win even made a top-10 list of LaVar's most outlandish claims.”
But LaVar has really hit the big time with his tweaking of drumpf, IBS Times informs us that Apex Marketing Group estimates that the free advertising generated by the spat amounts to $13.2 Million.
“This back and forth with Donald Trump has extended the brand awareness outside of just sports," Apex Marketing Group Eric Smallwood told Yahoo Sports Wednesday. "People who don’t follow sports are starting to get more awareness of the brand. To have that reaction from someone as high up as Trump, it has definitely helped [Ball] reach a larger audience.
Since the feud, Ball has been the subject of jokes on NBC's famed comedy show "Saturday Night Live.""Late Show" host Stephen Colbert even dedicated a monologue about Ball Monday night, which has helped increase his company’s exposure, according to Bob Dorfman, executive director of San Francisco-based Baker Street Advertising.
"It’s getting Ball’s face out there to an audience that had either never heard of him or had heard of him but didn’t know a lot about him," Dorfman told Yahoo. "If exposure is half the problem, then I think it’s got to help."
Yep.
You just can’t beat the publicity generated when the erstwhile used-to-be leader of the free world wastes his time Twitter batting with you when he should be fucking up something else.
As LaVar told CNN:
“Tell Donald Trump to have a great Thanksgiving because Big Baller is!”