By Arthur Solomon
TV viewers who watch the Super Bowl between San Francisco and Baltimore will witness an innovative strategy. No, it’s not a new razzle-dazzle football play, but three long commercials, each lasting more than a minute. But before we are exposed to these mini-movies on Feb. 3, let’s look at lessons that PR and sports marketing pros should have learned from past games.
The first and most important lesson learned from the Big Game for PR people involved with future marketing football extravaganzas is that if you can’t think of a unique publicity gimmick for your client, don’t despair. The media will give substantial space to almost anything Super Bowl related. All that is necessary is to have a retired football player attend.
The media continuously complains about having to cover meaningless publicity stunts, but refuses to admit that they are the reason the hype continues. All they have to do to eliminate much of the corporate hype in future Super Bowls is to not cover it. (The same for overhyped ads.) But PR people involved in big game publicity stunts need not worry.
There’s as much a chance of the media not covering everything associated with the two week run-up to the Super Bowl as there is the N.F.L. and networks admitting that beer commercials showing imbibing is fun shouldn’t be permitted because underage youngsters are watching.
After the first two days of coverage, okay, to be charitable maybe three, there is nothing new for the media to report about the x’s and o’s. Most everything after that is a rewrite job. And those non-quotes given by the players at mandated media appearances are right out of “say no evil” media training 101.
Newspaper layout editors are the real stars of the media by making stale news look interesting day after day.
In order to add a fresh angle to an old story, the media is not above taking the most innocuous comment by a football player and positioning it as trash talk.
The media will complain that the coaches really say nothing when interviewed, but will continue to interview them anyway. Also reported as breaking Stop the Presses news, ad infinitum, will be such astounding statements from the players that “we have to protect the football,” and “we have to balance our running and passing game,” and from former coach turned analysts who provide insight with statements like “they must bring pressure, pressure, pressure” (against the quarterbacks).
Marketing executives of companies that spent Big Bucks to advertise on the Big Game will always be upbeat about the success of their commercials, even though they might not have been well received or moved the product.
Repetition is the lifeline of Super Bowl coverage. I lost count of how many times journalists wrote and said, “Belicheck and Brady are itching for revenge against the Giants.”
You don’t have to be a sports writer to write the best Super Bowl-related story. In the New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera wrote a riveting story about the genesis of reporting on the myriad (long ignored by the NFL) health problems associated with playing football.
It’s best not to bet the farm, or even an ear of corn, on comments made by participants in the game as they have been media trained at Cliché University; the same seems to be true of the football analysts. Listening to one is similar to listening to all.
Journalists who jumped the fence to the PR side as the number of newspaper declined have to forget that when reporting on sports, especially if they are assigned to cover the Super Bowl, news doesn’t have to be news.
The immense interest among corporations and the public, which grows greater with each Super Bowl despite football’s violent nature, is an indicator of the cultural decline in America, where symphony orchestras have been going out of business for decades (as football concussions increase).
Tim Tebow has never played in a Super Bowl, but he might have changed the event forever. His controversial anti-abortion ad during the 2010 telecast has opened the Super Bowl to other political commercials.
Who would have thought that the Super Bowl telecast would ever be considered a venue for a commercial criticizing Congress for not allocating enough money for cities and states to crack down on illegal guns (with New York’s Mayor Bloomberg and Boston’s Mayor Menino supplying the talent)? Or have the paranoid GOP attack Clint Eastwood for his Chrysler ad, painting it as politically oriented (but then inviting him to speak at their convention).
Of course in certain egocentric businesses, especially PR and advertising, some lessons are never learned. Or they are purposely ignored.
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Arthur Solomon was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, handling national and international sports and non-sports programs, including the Olympic and Asian Games organizing committees and sponsors. He can be reached at [email protected] |