Over the last few months, representatives of the defender of the Americas Cup – BMW Oracle, have been on a PR mission to reinvent the oldest sporting trophy as an extreme sport that appeals to ‘Generation Y’. To this sports marketing person, it’s a mistake. It seems that those at the top of the sport of sailing have so little regard for the cup that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees protecting, that they are willing to consider throwing out years of tradition and history and burn loyal customers of the event to appeal to some ad-man’s favourite sociographic audience segment. Doesn’t anyone remember ‘new coke’? One of brand marketing’s most catastrophic failures. The new-deal America’s Cup positioning and posturing seems to be making all the false assumptions that led the world’s most popular cola losing huge

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