Press Coverage: Why Super Bowl Ad Rejections Can Be Good, Tweeting Golf, Blogbooks and Media Accountability

One year I'm going to make a ridiculously outlandish ad, submit it to the Super Bowl ad approval committee and hope they don't approve it. That way, I'll get all the publicity from Super Bowl-hungry media without having to pay a few million bucks to get the spot on during the game.

Best of both worlds. It's worked for ManCruch.com, which has gotten way more than $2.5 million dollars worth of advertising from not being allowed to advertise during the Super Bowl. Heck, it's worked for GoDaddy.com, too. The company known for outlandish ads will feature Danica Patrick dressed up like various old movie starlets – including more than a few shots of her scantily clad, and by the looks of one clip, doused with buckets of water – to promote their web domain service. CEO Bob Parsons says, "these new commercials could be our hottest ever!" But nobody is talking about a half-naked Danica when we've already seen that during Super Bowl ads in the past. This year, Go Daddy got residual Super Bowl rejection press by trying to run an ad with a depiction of a former football player who changes his name to Lola and creates a website via Go Daddy to promote his new line of lingerie. The ad is, to say the least, flamboyant. And banned.

To recap: any ad tying in football to implied homosexuality, or two fans in football jerseys comically partaking in public displays of affection, will get you banned – which is probably a great marketing campaign if you can get it.

The goal of each high-priced advertising agency is to get the biggest bang for the buck. Pepsi made headlines for releasing news that they would not advertise this year. Motorola sent around an email to media this week with teasers trying to get us to promote their spot, saying, "The ad will feature a well known celebrity and, while I can’t say who it is now or release the ad before the game…" after that she could have offered me a million dollars and I had already tuned out. No names, no video, no promotion. But they're trying. Actually, everyone is trying something, and clearly some have better ideas than others.

Take Budweiser, for example, which has taken to Facebook to right the wrong they announced last week, putting in lame, unfunny ads instead of their signature Clydesdales. Well, per Media Decoder, Budweiser may have a change of heart, if the fans agree with the pro-horse sentiment in the media.

Anheuser-Busch executives had explained that in consumer testing, other Budweiser spots proposed for the game had scored higher than a spot that was to feature the horses.

But after the articles and comments appeared, the executives seemed to have second thoughts. Late Thursday, Keith Levy, vice president for marketing, said the company had looked at a revised version of the Clydesdales spot that did not make the cut and decided that the revisions had significantly improved the spot. As a result, he added, the company would reconsider keeping it off the air.

Consumers are being invited to offer their opinions through a vote on the Budweiser page on Facebook (facebook.com/budweiser). They are being asked to choose among the Clydesdales spot, a Budweiser spot that Anheuser-Busch intends to run during the game called “Payment” and a third spot for Budweiser, called “Attention,” that was not planned to appear in the Super Bowl.

The ads "Payment" and "Attention" are lame attempts at tying in Budweiser to the long-honored tradition of helping friends in return for beer and a look at the different ways to get the attention of a bartender. Neither is funny or particularly heart-warming. They're both just … ads … for beer.

Which makes me think Bud's plan was to have the horses show up all along.

This year's offering with a horse befriending a cow he'd run by every day until they were both grown up is similar to ads in recent years — and not the best horse-related ad ever — but it's better than what they told us they planned to use. So … let the fans vote in the horses, and they'll have an invested stake in the ad when it runs. Plus, it doesn't hurt Budweiser to have a few hundred thousand fans join their Facebook fan page to vote for the ads, nor does it hurt to have two stories about the ads on the New York Times Web site (and other sites). Sure it's not 90-million views, but it's effective growth marketing that costs the company nothing. Just think about how much buzz they'll get next year when they dress one of the Clydesdales up like Danica Patrick washing a car.

Wait, if it's a male horse, that'd likely get banned.

No Tweeting On the Fairway, Please
When an event is on TV, there is nothing stopping media from giving live commentary on Twitter. But when a media member is at an event, it seems the rules are a little stricter about when they can and can't tweet. Take, for example this weekend, Sports Illustrated senior writer Alan Shipnuck, who was told by PGA Tour officials that live-tweeting shot-by-shot results will not be tolerated.

I have flown too high on borrowed wings: a Tour exec just emailed to demand I stop replicating shot-by-shot play-by-play. Supposedly I'm violating some media regulation that dates to an era when reporters used manual typewriters.

Shipnuck had some fun with it on this stream after that official PGA ruling, with posts like, "Since I can't do play by play I think I'll fill the time spreading rumors. Guess which Tour exec has a fetish for... Kidding. Kind of," and, "Rumor has it Phil just tapped in for birdie. I can neither confirm nor deny."

Shipnuck continued his self-proclaimed 'live tweet jihad' for much of the first round this weekend before calling it quits, promising to make an issue about it at Pebble Beach as well. It turns out, his tweets were ahead of the PGA's official shot tracker, so that may have been part of the genesis for the Tour's issue with his live-tweeting. Or, as most leagues have been known to do, the PGA wants everything to go through them, and Twitter is an unregulated and unstoppable force when spread across acres of land at a golf course. If tweeting is that important, here's always the potential for a change in weekend plans:

An LPGA official just emailed me: "You are a rebel, brother. Live tweet on our tour anytime you want." Yet another reason to love the LPGA!

Of course, if Shipnuck did tweet every single shot from every single player over the course of the weekend, he'd be looking at more than 31,000 tweets. Maybe the PGA should institute an all or nothing policy.

The Big League Stew Blogbook
Kevin Kaduk and the crew over at Yahoo's Big League Stew are really doing the Lord's work when it comes to baseball blogrolls. 'Duk is putting together a team-by-team Blogbook for the MLB, with the name, Twitter handle, specialty – news, commentary, humor, etc – and full description of every blog that covers every team. Joey Votto has four RBI and a reporter wants to get thoughts from some of the Reds writers? Go over to BLS and check out the Reds Blogbook for links to everyone you'll need. 'Duk is even including links to the MSM covering the team as well. Now, some teams have just one or two blogs, when others — like the Yankees or Phillies — have darn near two-dozen or more. I asked how he's deciding what goes in and what doesn't, and if there are any specific criteria to get into the Blogbook:

For the most part, I've basically been including any blog as long as they weren't started up last week and are updated on a fairly regular basis. The whole idea of this was to give a little more exposure to some blogs that might not otherwise get it and provide a backbone of the good blogs that people new to the blogosphere might not know about.

If you have a baseball blog and want to be included, hit him up. He's far less discriminatory than I'd be.

Obama's Best Line
Andy Hutchins linked to the video (here as well in case you missed it) of Barack Obama talking with Verne Lundquist and Clark Kellogg during the Duke-Georgetown game this weekend. Not only did they talk about Kellogg's run-in with Obama's brother-in-law when Ohio State played Princeton back when they were both in school, the "three-man booth" did some decent breakdown of the game in front of them. While Hutchins gave his favorite line from the President about proving he could go to his right, the best line, to me, had to be when Obama talked to Kellogg about his career after politics.

"After retirement, I'm coming after your job. Just letting you know. You either have three more years or seven, I'm not sure which. But you need to plan accordingly."

He said he watches highlights during the season but will try to catch as much of March Madness as he can. Whether you like his politics or not, he does seem like a regular guy, and a knowledgeable basketball fan. That's a pretty neat moment.

 

There's No Accountability In Media Anyway
On Sept. 15, Tony Kornheiser said on his radio show, and repeated on PTI, that he felt Roger Federer was "done" and would never win another major. This was the day after he lost the US Open Final to Juan Martin Del Potro. The comment was, at the time, ridiculous, and Kornheiser had to know that. But, it's the media, so you say things that are provocative on TV and radio and people comment about them and it makes you popular. It's the same reason Jason Whitlock can write a column last week about not covering the NBA because the players are too well endowed for his self-esteem. It's ludicrous, but clearly just for the purposes of getting people to read it.

It's the same reason that Kornheiser won't stop, even though he was crushed by Wilbon about his Federer comments on Friday and will obviously fall on the sword – thus grabbing more attention this week for admitting he was wrong. Last week, after Wilbon reminded him that he said Federer was done, Kornheiser replied, "I did. I did. I did. I did. I was wrong," not 30 seconds after giving another "he's done" – this time to Rafael Nadal.

As part of the Role Play segment where he was pretending to be Federer, Wilbon asked about winning more majors. Kornheiser, speaking as the tennis great, replied:

"How many? Who is going beat me? Nadal's not going to beat me anymore. He's got a 'boo boo' on his knee. He's done. Those Capri pants ruined the circulation of his legs."

You never know when an athlete can make a comeback, especially in the sport of tennis. Let's hope that we're done with the "he's done" stuff pretty soon.

Rest In Peace, Tom Brookshier
The name Tom Brookshier may mean more to the city of Philadelphia than anywhere else, but those in the industry around the country mourn the loss of the NFL standout turned media giant, after he succumbed to cancer this weekend. Brookshier was a member of the 1960 Philadelphia Eagles team – Tommy McDonald said he'd be the first guy you'd want on your team – and followed his NFL career as the lead analyst for CBS, teaming with Pat Summerall before John Madden did. He also was responsible, as part owner of 610 WIP in Philadelphia, for hiring Angelo Cataldi and the morning team, thus changing the landscape of Philadelphia radio, and sports, forever. From Bob Brookover's wonderful eulogy in the Inqy:

"He was a very complex and wonderful person," said Dick Vermeil, the former Eagles coach who later became a broadcast partner with Brookshier at CBS. "He had great compassion for people, and he could be very intense. He was a tough football player, but he was also gentle as a teddy bear. He had just an unbelievable blend of positive qualities. He's a Philadelphia icon just like Chuck Bednarik."

"I remember when I first started working with him, I walked in at 4 a.m. to prepare for the show, and he was already there," Cataldi said. "I'm thinking to myself, 'What is he doing here? This is a guy whose number was retired by the Eagles who worked at CBS for 25 years, mostly as a number-one analyst, and he's prepping at 4 a.m. I don't think anybody realized how hard he worked."

Our thoughts to the Brookshier family.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.