• USA Today, Friday, December 28, 2007 12 PM

Coca-Cola is announcing today a two-year deal beginning Tuesday with cable on-demand fitness network ExerciseTV that will place Coke's Enviga green tea and brand images on some of the channel's 200 workout shows and create original Enviga programming.

Nike, meanwhile, returns as a title sponsor for MTV's New Year's celebration and will kick off a TV and billboard fitness campaign around its "No Excuses" theme. Throughout MTV's Tila Tequila's New Year's Eve Masquerade 2008, Nike will air a 60-second ad with U.S. Paralympics basketball player Matt Scott, who sits in an empty gym bouncing two basketballs while rattling off excuses people use to duck workouts. A giant Nike billboard going up Monday in Manhattan will spew motivational messages throughout the month. The first: "Yesterday you said tomorrow."

JWT trend-watcher Marian Salzman says that Coke and Nike are seizing the opportunity to offer people an action-oriented message as they try to move on from 2007's credit crunch, housing slump, declining dollar and other woes. "The brands that can have fun with being functional are the ones that are going to stand out," she says.

Read the whole story at USA Today »