THE MULTIMILLION-dollar Lance Armstrong brand has been ''fatally damaged'' by the mounting allegations of doping, according to one advertising expert.
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Professor of marketing at the Australian National University John Roberts said Tiger Woods and Martha Stewart were able to reconnect with audiences because their brand wasn't linked to their mistakes.
''To my mind Lance Armstrong is not rehabilitable … [with Woods and Stewart] it's kind of possible to brush that stuff under the carpet,'' Professor Roberts said.
''I think that doping is so central and so apparently ubiquitous to the Lance Armstrong case that my best guess is that, even in two years time, to associate yourself with Lance Armstrong is to associate yourself with a massive-scale doping scandal.''
He said Armstrong, who was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles, had damaged the sport of cycling with his emphatic denials that he took banned substances during his career.
''Lance Armstrong's behaviour taints the whole profession … the ubiquity of doping in cycling has meant that Lance Armstrong is associated with something bigger and it's quite dangerous to be associated with him,'' Professor Roberts said.
But he said the Livestrong cancer awareness foundation, started by Armstrong in 1997, could survive.
Clothes and shoes with the Livestrong emblem are sold mostly through Nike stores with all profits going to the foundation.
A Nike spokeswoman, Cara Norden, said the Australian arm of the company would not comment on sales of the Livestrong brand since the scandal.
''The Livestrong brand is bigger than Lance and will outlast Lance,'' Ms Norden said. ''Nike will continue its support of Livestrong.''
Professor Roberts said the brand needed a new figurehead.
''Some other person who has overcome odds to beat cancer and become a community hero, because the easiest way for Livestrong to get away from the Lance Armstrong taint is not to move themselves away from Lance Armstrong but to actually move themselves towards something else.''
Professor Roberts said some of the foundation's printed T-shirt slogans were ironic.
''We are competitors. We will fight. We will not lose … we will win. If they can find another winner and another hero or set of heroes then those words will be associated with another hero, and there won't be the incoherence or disconnect with Lance Armstrong because those words jar.''
