Spokesperson fiasco #3: Martina Hingis turns traitor to tennis shoes

Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Business of sportsThis post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos. By guest blogger Mike Brewster:Former women's number one Martina Hingis hung up her tennis shoes for good last year after testing positive for cocaine in a post-match drug test -- within the hallowed confines of the All England Club Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (that's Wimbledon to you and me, pal), no less.At one point Hingis' career was on a Chris Evert/Martina Navratilova-type trajectory, but got derailed by a slew of injuries that started in the late 1990s. The main culprit was a chronic foot problem she always maintained was caused by defective sneakers from her Italian... [read full story]