Michelob ULTRA Scores Big Win With PGA Player Of The Year Brooks Koepka

Kristi Dosh Contributor | Forbes

Brand partnerships with athletes can be big gambles. Will the athlete be successful? Do people like this person? Will they conduct themselves appropriately both within the sport and in their (very public) private life?

Brands must take calculated risks, and sometimes those risks pay off in big ways. Take Michelob ULTRA’s partnership with Brooks Koepka. When they signed Brooks in 2017, he’d never won a major. Since then, he’s won consecutive U.S. Open tournaments and the PGA Championship. Most recently, he was named PGA Player of the Year for 2017-2018.

Koepka made Michelob ULTRA look pretty smart. But what really goes into the decision of which athletes should represent your brand? I turned to Azania Andrews, Vice President of Michelob ULTRA, to get a behind-the-scenes look at how these decisions are made.