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Sport-Magic of sport sells, say merchandisers

By Larry Fine NEW YORK, March 4 (Reuters) - It is the magic of sport that allows athletes to help to sell products not just their celebrity, merchandisers explained at the Leaders Sport Business Summit on Wednesday. Jean-Claude Biver, the charismatic chairman of luxury watchmaker Hublot, which markets $30,000 wrist watches, sponsors such high-end sports icons as Ferrari, the Dallas Cowboys and Usain Bolt. Biver said sport resonates with clientele Hublot is targeting because it teaches how to overcome defeat. "Thanks to every defeat you come closer to success. That is the magic rule of sport," stressed Biver. "Learn from your defeat and transform each defeat into the next success. This is an incredibly great value and a great asset. "Every leader knows that. Every trendsetter knows it. Every successful entrepreneur knows it." Denise Karkos, chief marketing officer of TD Ameritrade which has sponsorship deals with the U.S. Olympic team and the NFL, said her business for online investors had to overcome a low trust-ranking for financial services firms. "We ranked dead last as an industry. Three places below chemicals, for goodness sakes," she said. "Our target audience is self-directed, confident investors who want to take control of their own finances. "As a brand we're trying be an accessible, positive, optimistic, encouraging brand and sport ladders over really nicely to that," she added. "We're trying to rally around the emotion of positivity to cut through some of the negativity our category puts out there." Brian David Johnson, the futurist at computer chip maker Intel and one of its principal engineers, is a master at robotics but said nothing can replace sports and its athletes. "Sport is all about people," he told the summit. "The whole thing about sport is that it shows off how awesome human beings are. "In baseball, you can watch an outfielder make a diving catch to steal away a home run. As a futurist, I'm a robotist, I build robots. "You can't build a robot to do that, not in the near future. When I watch sports...it shows us just how am amazing humans are and what we can do." (Editing by Steve Keating.)