It's not just the players that need to show respect

The FA's ‘Respect' campaign, which discourages footballers from arguing back to the referee, is doomed to failure so long as the man in charge of the country's biggest club fails to control his players.

The ‘Respect' campaign is a great idea. Unless a player is superhumanly dim, they will soon learn to keep their mouth shut - or face continual suspension. Simple.

But for all the marketing investment by the FA, media attention and endorsement by the game's leading figures the campaign will fail if undermined by its top managers.

Fresh from lambasting Premier League head of referees, Keith Hackett for overturning a red card awarded to Chelsea's John Terry last week, which enabled the player to face United, Alex Ferguson watched his players follow each other into the referee's notebook like lemmings falling off a cliff.

Match referee Mike Riley - the man who suffered such a torrent of abuse from Chelsea's Ashley Cole last march that the FA's Respect campaign was thrust into the headlines - should be applauded for finally putting his foot down and saying enough is enough.

A manager imposes his will and personality on his team through his choices of players and through what he demands of them on and off the field. This is especially true when a manager has been at a club as long as Sir Alex.

Ferguson is far from being the only guilty manager. But he has unparalleled stature and influence - and therefore responsibility.

Many footballers should grow up and show some respect to officials, but sometimes so do the men on the touchline who should really know better.

Cadbury must learn from past mistakes

Cadbury is in discussion with 2012 regarding sponsorship of the London Games to which I say ‘great’ – but should tread with caution.

Some will no doubt argue that it is an outrage for a confectionary brand to sponsor the Olympics and that children will pester their parents for chocolate… and turn into puddings.

But that is a horrible argument and absolves parents of their responsibilities to their children. Good parents say ‘no’ and it means no.

You could also argue that it is contradictory for a chocolate brand to be involved with sports sponsorship. That argument has its merits, but would those who criticise a snack or beer brand for sponsoring sports prefer they simply plough their money into TV ads to absolutely nobody’s benefit?

The sponsorship in itself is my opinion is fine and will help fund the Games. The execution is another matter.

Should it secure the deal Cadbury should learn its lesson from the mauling it took in 2003 when, with considerable justification, it ran a promotional scheme that encouraged children to eat chocolate in exchange for sports equipment.

The ‘Get Active’ marketing promotion, endorsed by then minister for sport Richard Cabon and the Youth Sport Trust, was slammed by The Food Commission as ‘absurd and contradictory’.

According to the Food Commission, if children had consumed all of the promotional chocolate bars they would have taken in a massive 36bn calories. A newspaper worked out that one set of volleyball posts would require kids to consume 5,440 chocolate bars – or 1.25m calories.

Cadbury, for its part, maintained that ‘Get Active’ would not specifically encourage children to eat more chocolate, instead suggesting the scheme allows the wider community to help schools.

And in fairness, the company pointed out that it offered up to £9m worth of free, unbranded sports equipment to schools.

Return of a champion

Amid all the madness of the Manchester City takeover, ‘The Messiah’ resigning from Newcastle FC and England’s footballers finally admitting they are too chicken to play in front of their home fans, some good news…

Today, Lance Armstrong, who recovered from cancer to win the Tour de France seven times, confirmed his return to professional cycling – and staggeringly to the gruelling Tour itself.

In 2005, Armstrong was named (in part due to his work but probably more due to our former editors love of cycling) as Marketing’s 100^th most powerful marketer.

Amstrong had inspired millions of people pay a US dollar for yellow LiveStrong wristband to support his charity, The Lance Armstrong Foundation. The success of the LiveStrong brand spurred other charities to follow suit – most notably MakePovertyHistory. But sadly the fashion passed and people stopped wearing the bands.

Armstong's return has little to do with winning Le Tour - at 37 its unlikely challenge for the Yellow jersey in 2009 - but is great news for the Tour, cycling, his numerous sponsors(including Nike, Oakley and Trek) and most importantly of all the cancer patients and survivors he aims to inspire around the world.

Runners' World

Sunday saw the inaugural Nike+ Human Race event, which pitted runners competing in 25 cities against each other over 10k with the winner determined by average finisher time.

Nike’s decision to host the London event at Wembley gave it an iconic backdrop and the decision to set runners off in the evening was smart as we were blissfully unaware of the concrete jungle (and muggers!?) surrounding the running course. As energy levels dipped, runners were picked up by high energy music blaring out along the 10k route.

But I have some gripes - Wembley mugging drivers for £15 for car parking was as unimpressive as it was unsurprising. Stewards, although in abundance, were largely clueless. And it pissed down – although I think I can forgive Nike that one.

The pre-run concert inside Wembley Stadium, as you would expect, was spectacular and 20,000 warming up together was a sight to behold. But while some got into the spirit of things many just wanted to get on with the run.

Londoners have got used to picking up medals in recent weeks, but this time we had to settle for a respectable 5^th, with an average time of 57 minutes 44 seconds.

I’m calling for a stewards’ enquiry. Taipei won the event with an average time of just over 46 minutes – which put them around 8 minutes faster on average than the nearest rival. Conditions and difficulty of route will of course make a difference… But 8 minutes!? Give me a break. Apparently, there are now ‘some questions around their course marking’… and I hope they are disqualified.

Nike is commercially a very savvy business and rather than send out its race packs – which included race chip, compulsory running t-shirt – participants had to visit its London NikeTown megastore. From looking around at my fellow competitors many took the opportunity to invest in a sparkling new pair of new shoes, shorts etc...

And Nike should be credited with making running fashionable and this was no place for funny fancy-dress costumes – I think I saw a guy in a rhino suit being bundled into the back of a van.

The event itself was an excellent first attempt but will need tweaking for 2009. Music and running is an excellent mix – but whether runners want to listen to a concert for an hour and a half before setting off on a 10k run is something that will need to be given due consideration before next year’s race.