WB Has Skin In the Game

5/13/2009 10:45:40 PM

I assume the tattoo’s relevance to the cable channel carrying the game between the Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks Wednesday night was simply a coincidence, but watching Denver’s multi-tattooed Carmello Anthony tear it up last night made me think there might be some percentage in selling your body not to science, but to corporate America.

Anthony was on camera a lot because he was hitting threes, turn-around jumpers and Dr. J-like swooping layups with abandon. The network covering the game was Time Warner’s TNT.

On Anthony’s left shoulder–clearly visible in several shots–was the Warner Bros. logo (the letters WB in a shield). I’m not sure why, though my guess would be an affinity for cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck rather than a longing for the days of The WB’s prime time lineup.

Warner Bros, of course, is co-owned with TNT, so the shots amounted to epidermal plugs (sounds like a hair transplant) for the studio. And if it were in fact an homage to Bugs and company, that would make it a “hare plug” as well ( I will pause while the online audience collects itself after prolonged guffawing).

What does this have to do with DC, I hear you ask? Well, I was watching the game from the transplanted Washington bureau (in the Virginia suburbs). And I was watching because the Washington Capitols were getting crushed (6-2) by the Penguins in a game seven hockey match-up that could have been for the ages, but was instead only for the Penguins fans.

But I digress.

Instead of those indecipherable tatoos on most players, they could make an extra few thou by selling that space to an advertiser looking for yet another multiplatform for product placement.

And unlike, say, a golf visor with the sponsor’s logo, a tattoo can’t be misplaced or forgotten at an inopportune time.

Just a thought.