BSN sponsors UFC champs Forrest Griffin and Minotauro Nogeuira

A few months back, sports nutrition giant BSN became the official supplement sponsor of the UFC. It was an excellent move, but at the time, their roster of athletes, online presence, and other components didn't quite work with it. As I hoped and expected, though, they've made huge strides and are looking really good.

First, they sponsored the perfect fighters, Forrest Griffin and Antonio Rodrido "Minotauro" Nogeuira. Forrest, the newly crowned UFC lightheavyweight champ TUF season one winnger, is incredibly popular with casual fans. He's begrudgingly earned the approval of hardcore fans like me after beating Shogun and Rampage, and you really couldn't wish for a better spokeperson for mainstream fans. He sported a BSN hat and t-shirt during an interview on last night's TUF finale for a good 2 or 3 minutes.

What's really brilliant, though, is that they also sponsored Nogeuira. Nog is an absolute legend who is universally respected and loved by hardcore fans. He's mostly known for his fights in Japan, so his profile is the US is much lower than Forrest's, but assuming he beats both Frank Mir and Brock Lesnar (pretty likely), he should enjoy much higher awareness.

By sponsoring these two fighters, they gain awareness with mainstream viewers while also earning the respect of hardcore fans. It's the blueprint for success in lifestyle marketing and I'm confident it will pay off handsomely for them.

Pepsi to distribute Muscle Milk

Via Bevnet comes news that Pepsi will be distributing sports nutrition giant Cytosport's Muscle Milk:

"Strengthening and diversifying the PBG product portfolio is one of our top priorities. By teaming up with CytoSport, we are entering a new beverage segment with attractive long-term growth prospects," said PBG North America President Rob King. "Muscle Milk has established itself as one of the leading functional nutrition beverage brands, and adding it to our portfolio will enable us to capitalize on the opportunities in this exciting category."

"The Pepsi Bottling Group's robust go-to-market system is unsurpassed in the beverage industry," said CytoSport President Greg Pickett. "By working with PBG, we'll be able to greatly extend the reach of the Muscle Milk brand and put our products in the hands of more consumers than ever before. This is a beverage category with tremendous growth potential, and this agreement further enhances CytoSport's leading position in the category.

My take
I've been a big fan of Cytosport for a long time, and if you've been paying attention to the beverage and sports nutrition category, this news isn't really a surprise. The big takeaways here are:

• If you stay true to your origins, but make the right adjacency moves (as Muscle Milk did when they engaged women), you can build a huge brand from what used to be a niche product.
  
• Bodybuilders and hardcore fitness enthusiasts are a big opportunity, and a fast growing emerging segment. Don't write them off as dumb muscleheads or you'll be making the same mistake as the people who wrote off skateboarding, punk rock, graffiti, and hip hop (whoops!).
  

BSN sponsors live weigh-ins for UFC 90

BSN, the official sports nutrition sponsor of the UFC, announced that they will stream the weigh-ins for UFC 90 live on their website. From the BSN Blitz newsletter:

BSN is proud to announce for the first time ever, the weigh-in for this historic UFC® 90: SILVA VS. COTE will be broadcast live and free on www.bsnonline.net at 5:00 pm Eastern Standard Time on Friday, October 24, 2008. See the biggest names in the UFC® like Anderson Silva, Patrick Cote, Thiago Alves, Josh Koscheck, Sean Sherk and Tyson Griffin weigh in the day before their big fights … live and free!

My take
It's great to see BSN leveraging their UFC sponsorship in new ways and becoming more tightly integrated into the events like this. They're a great match for the UFC, so I hope to see more events like this. Normally I'd say that weigh-ins aren't really a great showcase for a brand, but for a sports nutrition brand like BSN, it's a great match! What more appropriate occasion to talk about supplements than weigh-ins? So I really like this matchup, and I'm looking forward to seeing what BSN does next with the UFC.