DAN vs. DAVE : Reebok’s Risky Investment Centers on Decathletes O’Brien and Johnson, Who Haven’t Qualified for the Olympics Yet (but That’s Shoe Business)

Creating heroes before their time is risky business, but that hasn’t stopped a shoe company from making “Dan and Dave” household names before the first starter’s shot has been fired this summer in Barcelona.

A bit presumptuous?

Hey, when the competition has Michael Jordan under contract, you’d better think fast on your feet.

In a bold advertising move, Reebok, second banana to Nike in the lucrative sports shoe business, has put its sole on the line for two decathletes who are now famous, although most people aren’t sure why.

True, Dan (O’Brien) and Dave (Johnson) are the top-two ranked decathletes in the world, respectively.

But neither has won an Olympic medal.

Neither has even qualified for the 1992 U.S. Olympic team.

Neither were exactly choirboys.

Both are straight arrows now, but you would not have measured either for commercial success in darker times when both battled alcohol and juvenile delinquency.

On Madison Avenue, though, a few well-crafted commercials have already hoisted O’Brien and Johnson onto America’s shoulders and into its consciousness. Reebok has assured us that the issue of who is the world’s greatest athlete--Dan or Dave--will be “settled in Barcelona.”

So much for the other contenders.

In its ads, Reebok doesn’t mention Dan and Dave must first qualify for the U.S team at the Olympic trials starting Friday in New Orleans.

“Obviously, it can’t be settled in Barcelona because we have to make the U.S. team first,” Johnson acknowledged.

Making the team and achieving Olympic success would seem a safe bet for Dan and Dave--if all goes as expected.

Good luck there.

Ask Jim Ryun about a stretch of track in Munich, 1972. Or ask Fred Dixon, the world’s second-ranked decathlete behind Bruce Jenner entering the ’76 Games. Dixon fell in the 110-meter hurdles and finished 23rd.

Reebok didn’t put its laces on the line for 23rd.

The company has invested $20 million of its annual $100-million advertising budget this year on the Dan-and-Dave campaign.

Ever hear a shoe company gulp?

“I keep telling people not to worry about it,” said Mark Bossardet, Reebok’s director of running promotions. “I’m the calm one in the company.”

The tension mounts. O’Brien enters the trials at New Orleans trying to shake a stress fracture in his ankle suffered earlier this year. The injury forced him to pull out of the Bruce Jenner meet at San Jose after one event last month.

“Dan’s had some problems, everyone knows that,” one track insider said of O’Brien’s injury. “There is a danger there.”

Johnson was the U.S. decathlon champion in ‘86, ’89 and ’90 but slipped to sixth in the world before he shook the decathlon arena last April when he posted the third-highest score in U.S. history (8,727 points) at a meet at Azusa Pacific.

You would understand if Reebok officials locked themselves in a room with tea readers until Dan and Dave are safely aboard a jet bound for Barcelona.

What if Dan stubs his toe in the shower before New Orleans? What if Dave pulls a back muscle lacing up his cross-trainers?

A company man could be given to such thoughts.

“Oh, God no,” said David Ropes, Reebok’s vice president for worldwide advertising. “We would drive ourselves nuts. We’ve sort of made our bed. We’re willing to lay in it, if you will. If there’s an injury and they can’t compete, so be it. We have a contingency plan if one or the other should not go.”

Perhaps an emergency campaign featuring Dan vs. Mike (Smith, a medal contender from Canada)? Or maybe Dave, a born-again fundamentalist, vs. Christian (Schenk, of Germany)?

Christian vs. Christian?

Reebok isn’t saying.

“That’s the risk,” Ropes said of the unknown. “But do you think we would have leveraged the reward of that risk by taking five months out of people’s lives to get them involved with Reebok and the debate?”

One guesses not.

So far, Reebok has come out smelling a lot better than one of its shoes on a summer day. Thanks in large measure to Dan and Dave, the company has reported record first-quarter sales. Reebok has gained two market shares on Nike in the last year (each point represents about $60 million in sales). Nike still dominates with a 30% share of the market.

But look who’s creeping up the charts at 26%.

Dan and Dave’s earnings for the commercials have been a closely guarded secret, but there assuredly are lucrative incentive bonuses based on Olympic performances.

About those cross-training shoes Dan and Dave have been hawking on TV . . . ?

“The shoe is totally out of stock,” Ropes said. “We can’t make it fast enough. It is absolutely sold out.”

In the movies, the rival company calls an emergency board meeting to plot a counter campaign that might involve, oh, making sure Dan or Dave never make it to the Olympic trials.

Actually, Nike has publicly applauded Reebok’s effort on Dan and Dave, claiming good shoe commercials are good for shoe business.

“Mimicry is the greatest form of flattery,” said Steve Miller, Nike’s director of running promotions.

Nike, it is not afraid to remind, revolutionized the sports commercial with its sneaker verite.

“It’s an outstanding concept,” Miller conceded of Dan and Dave. “It’s caught on very well and people have been led down a path that is positive for the sport. I just think the outcome can be dicey.”

Meaning Nike would not have staked so much on two relative unknowns?

“We didn’t do it, did we?” Miller said. “I read with some interest some statements about their bases being covered. I don’t know personally what bases are covered. I read where Dan’s shin is flaring up again, and that’s not good. Not in that kind of an event.”

ONE GIANT LEAP

Times change. Shoes change. Advertisers try to keep in step.

Reebok’s might be the riskiest sales pitch since Joe Namath shimmied into a pair of panty hose.

If Reebok had been around in 1969 for the moon landing, you expect it would have launched a line of lunar cross-trainers featuring “Neil” and “Buzz.”

Reebok: Who will be the first man on the moon, Armstrong or Aldrin?

“I will,” Neil says into the camera.

“Not a chance,” Aldrin says.

“Meet you on the ladder,” Neil says.

To be settled on the Sea of Tranquillity.

Imagine Wheaties putting Roger Maris on its box in 1961: Move over Babe, this man will break your single-season home run record this season.

Imagine Darrin Stephens pitching Dan and Dave to Larry Tate?

But in today’s high-stakes, multibillion-dollar athletic shoe market, you take chances.

There’s no business like shoe business.

So far, the winner, beside Reebok, has been track and field, which has long been stigmatized and shunned by corporate sponsors.

The sport has been without a real commercial success since Jenner in 1976. There have been some heavyweight contenders since--Edwin Moses, Carl Lewis, Jackie-Joyner Kersee--but none have approached the success of two scrubbed-faced athletes from the Pacific Northwest.

“After a long period of time, two guys have appeared out of the sunset,” said Bill Toomey, the former Olympic decathlon champion. “I think America has been waiting for Sleeping Beauty to open her eyes. The fact that we have twins is even better.”

Toomey says track and field’s proclivity for controversy--steroid and drug-testing scandals in particular--has long made it a corporate risk.

“Madison Avenue has always been suspect of track and field because of its negative notoriety,” he said. “But these guys (Dan and Dave) are just good kids who are more surprised by the fact they were selected. They really seem to be excited.”

They are, they are.

O’Brien and Johnson have been swamped by autograph seekers, particularly children, at competitions. Kids stand in lines 100 deep to get a glimpse and a signature on a “Dan and Dave” poster.

People aren’t always sure which is Dan and which is Dave, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

The hook has been set.

School teachers, grasping the phenomenon, are using Dan and Dave to teach students about Olympic history; a clever device to slip in some history and geography.

“Reebok came to me and said they were going to make me a household name,” O’Brien said at the Bruce Jenner meet. “I said, ‘Yeah, right, sure you are.’ Then the next thing you know, it’s really taken off. It’s just amazing. I am surprised.”

Toomey was one of the first to cash in on Olympic success after his victory at Mexico City in 1968, paving the way for Jenner’s more calculated rags-to-riches campaign eight years later in Montreal.

Of course, success is relative.

Toomey recalls landing a “Dating Game” appearance and admitted he once appeared as a transvestite--relax, it was a gag--on the show, “Truth or Consequences.”

“Some guys will do anything for 200 bucks,” Toomey said.

Deals were hit and miss. Toomey signed a lucrative long-term contract with a major food company to promote a weight-gaining vitamin supplement. Turned out the product contained cyclamates, chemicals that would cause cancer in laboratory animals.

“Some mouse in Canada got heartburn so they knocked the product off the shelf,” Toomey said.

Toomey said he is not envious of Dan and Dave’s success.

“I’m glad to see someone get the rewards,” he said. “I have no sour grapes.”

Life is timing.

“Reebok bought the two guys that seemed to be bulletproof in terms of problems,” Toomey said. “Both are handsome guys. These guys are not flaky. They’re not flashes in the pan. They are the real McCoy.”

DAN AND DAVE’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

Dan can run the 100 meters in 10.3 seconds; Dave can high jump 6 feet 10 3/4 inches.

That’s what it says in the commercial. But who are Dan and Dave?

Dan O’Brien will be 26 when the Olympics begin in Barcelona. Some say he is the most naturally gifted decathlete ever, an athlete who has not yet tapped his full potential.

O’Brien was a relative unknown until 1990 but has since recorded the top two point totals in U.S. history. He is the man most likely to eclipse Daley Thompson’s world record of 8,847 points.

“I have never, never felt that I couldn’t compete against any of the guys before me or after me . . . until Dan O’Brien,” Toomey said. “He’s the first guy that I figure would have screwed me up big time.”

O’Brien is the son of an African-American father and Finnish mother. He never knew his real parents and was adopted at age 2 by the O’Briens of Klamath Falls, Ore.

As a high school senior in 1984, Dan won the national high school decathlon and finished fourth at a junior TAC meet held in conjunction with the ’84 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

It earned him a scholarship to the University of Idaho, but there O’Brien flunked out of school. He was ultimately tossed out of his dorm by campus police.

He spent Christmas of 1987 alone and drunk. He sold bottled water and wood-burning stoves for a spell before his coach, Mike Keller, encouraged O’Brien to clean up his act and give the decathlon another chance.

O’Brien enrolled at Spokane (Wash.) Community College to improve his grades and later re-enrolled at Idaho. He qualified for the Olympic trials in ’88 but had to withdraw because of an injury. Injuries also kept him out of the NCAA championships in 1989, but O’Brien burst on the scene in ’90 and hasn’t been slowed since.

He overtook Johnson in ’91 to become the world’s top-ranked decathlete, winning the World Championships in ’91 with 8,844 points.

Dan can throw a discus 172 feet; Dave can long jump 24 feet 10 1/2 inches.

Dave Johnson, 29, almost didn’t make it out of Missoula, Mont. He was a troublemaker as a teen-ager who spent most of his free time in search of beer.

Johnson became a hero to local hooligans when he stole the keys to a beer distributorship and kept the gang in suds for months. Johnson jokes that he became adept at heaving the javelin by throwing rocks at cars.

The Johnsons moved to Corvallis, Ore., before Dave’s senior year, at which time he underwent a profound change.

Johnson became a born-again Christian and decided to make something of his life. He bounced from one community college to another and eventually landed at Azusa Pacifc in 1984, where he blossomed.

He won his first decathlon in 1986 at a TAC meet in Oregon; he finished ninth in the Seoul Olympics in 1988; he won the Goodwill Games at Seattle in 1990.

For a time, Dave was the man to beat. Dan and Dave first competed against one another in 1990 at a meet in Norwalk. Dave won. Dan got Dave’s attention in the Goodwill Games, though. O’Brien led going into the final event, but Johnson defeated O’Brien by 10 seconds in the 1,500 meters to hold off the upstart.

By year’s end, Dave was the world’s second-ranked decathlete behind France’s Christian Plaziat. Dan ranked fourth, giving the United States its best one-two punch in the event since Jenner and Dixon.

An American has not won the Olympic decathlon since Jenner in ‘76, but Dan and Dave were setting the stage for Barcelona.

A shoe company caught the scent.

BIRTH OF A NOTION

Who came up with “Dan and Dave?”

In other words, which Reebok marketing executive got the bonus and the all-expenses paid trip to Rangiroa?

“There are probably a lot of people taking credit for it,” Bossardet said.

The idea was hatched by committee about a year and a half ago after Reebok obtained advertising rights for the ’92 Games.

Reebok commissioned Chiat/Day, a national advertising agency, to design a campaign to best maximize Reebok’s exposure leading up to the Games.

The agency asked for a list of athletes already under contract. Reebok happened to have both Dan and Dave.

A few years ago, Nike hit the mother lode when it hired two-sport star Bo Jackson to market its cross-trainer line of shoes. But with Jackson out of the picture, having undergone career-ending hip-replacement surgery, Reebok was poised to pounce.

The ’92 Olympics were approaching. What better spokesman for a cross-training shoe than a decathlete? Reebok already had two top decathletes under contract.

Hmmmm.

At first, the campaign was to focus primarily on Dave, the reigning national champion. But O’Brien was quickly closing the gap.

The company asked Bossardet, who works closely with Reebok athletes, to check out the situation.

Bossardet surveyed the experts. He called Tom Sturak, a longtime track follower and Reebok consultant. Sturak called his friend Toomey for an honest appraisal. Toomey thought both Dan and Dave were worthy of consideration.

Bossardet assimilated the information and reported back to his bosses at company headquarters in Stoughton, Mass.

“Dan is the future, Dave is right now,” Bossardet concluded.

Discussions wavered over whether to use Dan or Dave. While Dave was slumping in 1991, Dan was emerging as a superstar.

At a meeting last December, Bossardet posed a question: “Why not use both? At the time, people thought we were crazy because Dave was having a bad year.”

It was decided the campaign would revolve around pitting Dan and Dave against each other in a series of commercials that would ask: “Who is the world’s greatest athlete?”

The campaign’s catch-phrase: “To be settled in Barcelona.”

In the first few commercials, Reebok never identified Dan and Dave as decathletes. Most people thought the men in the commercials were actors.

Reebok knew the two decathletes still had to make the U.S. team.

It was Bossardet’s job to assure them they would.

“I guess I was the point person,” he said. “They were putting on the pressure, asking ‘Are these guys going to make the team?’ I said, ‘Yes, take these guys.’ ”

Ten commercials were shot last December in Los Angeles in the span of one week. Seven have aired so far. The eighth will debut at the U.S. Olympic trials.

O’Brien describes what has happened since the commercials hit the air as “craziness.”

“It can be a hassle,” he said, “especially if you’re not used to it. There were two camera crews coming out a week to film practice, that sort of thing. The biggest thing is telling the same story over and over.”

Welcome to stardom.

As the Summer Games draw near, O’Brien said he is more concerned about himself than Reebok.

“They’re looking good no matter what happens,” O’Brien said.

“They’re making money on their shoes and using Dan and Dave to do it.”

Johnson said the publicity has not affected his life much. “If I hadn’t made the ’88 team, it would have been a lot different,” he said. “Since ’88 there’s been a lot going on. I’m used to this stuff. It’s no big deal.”

And what of heightened expectations?

“If anything, it’s making me train better,” Johnson said. “I just want to do that much better. I’ve been talking about this year for a long time now. It’s time to put it on the line and go for it, no matter what the expectations are.”

Back home, two shoe companies will be anxiously watching.

David Ropes of Reebok:

“The early election results are in, and so far we’re backing a winner. Let’s see if we win the election.”

Steve Miller of Nike:

“The outcome to this date has been good. But in sports, when you tout someone to be extraordinarily good, you set yourself up for failure.”