Alexander Ovechkin, one of the greatest hockey player in the game today, and certainly the best paid, decided to get spruced up the day he signed a 13-year, $124 million deal with the Washington Capitals. He swung by Hair Cuttery for a $14 cut.
And so, an endorsement deal was born. The NHL superstar began shooting ads for the discount salon yesterday in Baltimore.
The campaign - "What he is to hockey, we are to hair" and "Most Valuable Hair" will appear on Washington-area billboards and bus shelters - is the work of TBC, a Fells Point agency that represents Hair Cuttery.
In this economy, who wouldn't love a thrifty multimillionaire?
TBC invited the news media to watch the shoot yesterday. Ovechkin, 23, dressed in jeans, untucked black T-shirt and leather sandals he kept kicking off, came across as the practical, unassuming sort we're all sure we'd be if a gazillion bucks suddenly came our way.
Maybe a little too practical, for the sake of a chain that promotes its services as not just cheap but chic.
"I don't care about my hair," he said, noting that he gets it cut about twice a year.
Hair Cuttery cares, judging by the stylist who fussed over it for pictures, using chopsticks at one point to rearrange the brown locks around his face.
She can fuss all she wants. "Oviestyle," as the campaign calls it, is still a mullet. At least it didn't set him back too much.
'Busses' for Obama
Maryland has Barack Obama love in such abundance that the Dems aim to export some of it to nearby swing states. Hundreds of Maryland volunteers are expected to swarm Virginia and Pennsylvania, assuming they're undeterred by long bus rides and a flurry of typos on the state party's invite.
"We're loading up the busses and leading the Drive for Change this weekend," reads the message sent the other day. "Join the Maryland Democratic Party and hundreds of volunteers from Maryland as we head to Virginia and Pennsylvania Saturday, September 20 and every weekend until Election Day. We doing our part to make sure Barack Obama and Joe Biden win two key battleground states and your invited."
Busses? We doing our part? Your invited?
"If this is any reflection of the campaign," says my John McCain-inclined tipster, "I predict that Barack Obama will loose, I mean lose, in November."
With friends like these
