Is David Beckham Just a Product of Clever Pr?

It looks like David Beckham can do no wrong at the moment.

Not only was he given the prestigious task of lighting the Olympic torch recently but now he is all set to appear on Elle magazine’s July cover.

This is a big deal. He is the first man to ever appear on the cover of Elle in the magazine’s 37 year history. He is also the first man to ever grace the cover of a woman’s glossy magazine on his own.

Elle magazine’s editor is adamant that the presence of a man on the cover is not going to put women off buying the magazine. It has always been the case that a magazine’s sales are only as good as its cover star for that particular month and Elle are convinced enough women will want to see the shirtless photos of Beckham inside to buy it.

It is after all an Olympic year for Britain. The country is set to host the Olympic Games at the end of July so if ever there was a time to splash Olympic ambassador Beckham over the front of a women’s magazine it is now.

I just wonder if the editor of Elle has overestimated Beckham’s appeal to a wide range of women.

Beckham is certainly a good looking man. He is always well-presented, he is a family man and he is talented. He is indisputably one of the best footballers Britain has ever seen. He is also generous with his time and money, setting up footballing academies to help the futures of the next generation of soccer stars.

The problem I have with Beckham is it is hard to know how much of what we see in the press is Beckham and how much of it is PR spin. For me Beckham is a little too vacuous to be considered a catch.

Going back a number of years now when he was a young player starting out with Manchester United and dating Victoria Adams from the Spice Girls, it was a painful thing to watch him being interviewed after the game. He evidently did not have the vocabulary or the public speaking skills to make a very good impression, but then not many footballers do – no offence meant.

It seems that marketeers seized an opportunity with Beckham. They saw he was a blank canvas they could work up into a brand. A lot of hard work, time and money has been invested in transforming David into the figure head he is today – this includes helping him to speak eloquently in public, styling him up into a fashion icon, elevating him socially to the point he rubs shoulders with royalty and film stars with ease and still make him a man of the people through his charity work and family values.

The question is could any young footballer have been plucked from almost obscurity and trained up to the level that Beckham is now at or is there something special about him which other footballers could not emulate?