Dan and Dave

By Paulie Knep
Love of Sports Correspondent

In 1992, Reebok came up with a brilliant advertising concept to promote their footwear and stir up interest for the Summer Olympics in Barcelona: the “Dan and Dave” campaign.

Dan O’Brien and Dave Johnson were two clean-cut American boys from Oregon and Montana, respectively. They were longtime friends and rivals and were widely considered the two best decathletes in the world.

Dan and Dave were evenly-matched, with Dan holding a three-to-two lead over Dave in direct competition. It appeared to be a foregone conclusion that one of the two would win the gold medal in the decathlon in Barcelona.

Reebok poured $30 million into an eight-month-long campaign, consisting of several commercials in which Dan and Dave competed at various activities. By the summer of ‘92, Dan and Dave were household names in the United States and the most popular American athletes participating in the Games, other than the Dream Team guys, of course.

However, Reebok’s grand plan hit a snag five weeks before the Games at the U.S. Olympic Trials. O’Brien bombed at the pole vault, and to everybody’s surprise, failed to qualify for the Games!

Reebok was left scrambling for a way to deal with the embarrassing turn of events. They ran some ads showing Dan cheering on Dave at the Games, but the campaign had clearly gone awry.

With Dan out of the way, Dave was the prohibitive favorite to take home the gold, but that didn’t work according to plan, either. He suffered a stress fracture in his foot during the first day of competition and had to settle for the bronze metal.

Ironically, the man who won the decathlon, Czech athlete Robert Zmelik, also endorsed Reebok, but he was completely unknown in the U.S. because the company hadn’t promoted him here.

Interestingly enough, O’Brien would eventually go on to win the gold in the decathlon at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

The “Dan and Dave’ campaign was obviously discontinued soon after the ‘92 Olympics. It didn’t play out as Reebok had expected, but the campaign was successful in generating business for the athletic apparel company and it drew plenty of attention to the decathlon, a scarcely covered event.

That’s why we’re giving some Old School Love to “Dan and Dave” today.