March 27, 2006 - Before the Summer Games in 2000, Nike ran an Olympic advertising campaign under the motto: "You don't win silver. You lose gold." Last week, snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis took silver but won a lot more attention than gold could have delivered.

The 20-year-old, who got fancy on her next-to-last jump and crashed while leading the women's snowboard cross event, became the topic of conversation on ESPN's "PTI" and "Around the Horn" and the subject of a New York Times editorial.

In the game of marketability, Jacobellis won big, said Issa Sawabini of the youth-focused Fuse Marketing agency.

"If she had just won a medal, people would have focused on her for a day," Sawabini said. "Now she did something that will stand out in people's mind much longer. People who don't snowboard probably saw that and went, 'What was that?' She probably increased her marketability."

Jacobellis was one of several American athletes whose Olympic press deviated from the traditional gold-medal success stories, as feuds, failures and flops made most of the U.S. headlines during the games. Sports marketers weighed in on how that shift in emphasis might affect the marketability of Olympians Shani Davis, Chad Hedrick, Bode Miller and Jacobellis.

Shani Davis, Gold and Silver medals, Men's Speed Skating

A product of inner-city Chicago and the first African-American to win individual gold at the Winter Games, Davis had a positive story to sell. "Unfortunately, all of that story isn't positive," said Chris Caldwell, vice president of Velocity Sports & Entertainment, referring to Davis' feud with fellow speed skater Chad Hedrick. "When you think about companies that want to tap into Americana and the virtue of the Olympics, I don't see how controversy can help those guys. It's not what you would characterize as a fun, healthy rivalry."

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