The PR of Commercials and Football

Today, the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will take the field and play in the NFL's 49th annual Super Bowl. The Super Bowl takes on the traits of a holiday for football lovers across the country. We throw parties for friends and family, stocked with wings. fries, and brews. Not to mention, the stigma surrounding Super Bowl commercials and who can create the best one.

Public Relations happens all around the Super Bowl. There are five obvious outlets:

• NFL
• New England Patriots
• Seattle Seahawks
• all brands with placed commericals

Though the commercials of the Super Bowl are the works of advertising, the discussion each individual commercial creates is a PR situation. For instance, GoDaddy intended on releasing a commercial during the Super Bowl, but found that the public opinion was not on their side, and decided to remove the commercial. The ad seemed to be mocking Bud Light for their use of an adorable blonde Labrador in their Super Bowl commercials every year. The ad shows a puppy getting lost after falling off of its owners' truck and finding his way back home, just to have the owners proclaim that they can't wait to sell the pup online thanks to GoDaddy.

Many found the advertisement insensitive, while GoDaddy thought its audience would laugh. The PR decision was to make a statement revoking the commercial and announcing that the public will still see GoDaddy on screen during the big event. GoDaddy left their audience with a little mystery.

Check out the Super Bowl tonight, and expect to see a lot of PR talk about the Half Time Show and advertisments come tomorrow morning!

Why Silence Is Also A Crime

One of the biggest headlines this week circled around Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice and a video that recently surfaced documenting him physically abusing his wife Janay Rice. On Monday, TMZ released elevator footage from Revel Atlantic City in February earlier this year that shows Rice assaulting his then-fiancee, rendering her unresponsive, then attempting to drag her out of the elevator. Prior to the video surfacing, the National Football League only sentenced Rice to a two game suspension but has since suspended him indefinitely from the league. 

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The public also hasn't taken too kindly to this recent discovery. This week alone Rice has been eliminated from his high school's hall of fame, removed from videos shown during Rutgers University football games, taken out of the upcoming NFL Madden video game by EA Sports, and sparked a powerful Twitter discussion under the tag #WhyIStayed. Baltimore Ravens owner has also written a letter to publicly apologize and the team is offering an exchange for Ray Rice jerseys. 

While it may sound like justice was served, a source revealed to the Associated Press that NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, had knowledge of the video back in April, despite denying that he had any access to the footage. While no significant progress has been made just yet, the Commissioner is now under fire and facing plenty of public scrutiny. However, it never had to get to this point. 

Public scrutiny is a result of public relations failure. What Goodell needed, in addition to some much needed empathy, was transparency. Had he been open, honest, and apologetic from the beginning, he, and the NFL by extension, would have never faced such heavy public criticism. Only time will tell if Goodell will also be punished for the crimes he has committed in these events as well. 

The NFL & Social Media: For the Fans, By the Fans

I absolutely love football. Everything about it. The jerseys, the stadium, the weather and the game itself – everything. You can catch me every Sunday with a game on and a plate of hot wings in front of me.

I also really love how the NFL taps into its audience through the use of social media. I follow the NFL and multiple football players on Twitter. I am a fan of the NFL Facebook page. But I was most delighted to hear about another way the league is reaching out to its audience and integrating them into the game itself.

If you’re a big NFL fan like me, you have probably noticed on Thursday night games there is a lot of fan footage. Being the PR investigator I am, I turned to the internet to find out if this was a new marketing campaign. Turns out I was right! The videos of fans used during the games are actually crowdsourced.

The NFL is now encouraging fans to record their favorite team’s “fight song” for a chance to be featured during the opening video montage during a Thursday Night Football game. Through the NFL’s Fanchise site, viewers can upload their fan video from their house, a bar, the stadium or even at the tailgate! All you have to do is pick your team, record your video, upload it and voila – you’re on your way to 15 minutes of fame.

From a public relations perspective, this is a really smart move. Not only is this marketing the NFL in new and different ways on the web, it is also increasing the league’s social media presence.

So, if you have a favorite team and are ready to sing loud and proud, upload your video today! I know I will be for my favorite team (The Eagles if you haven’t already guessed it, I’m a Philly girl!).

Severe Punishments for Bountygate: Crisis Management at its Finest

The “bounty” scandal, or bountygate as it is becoming known, of the National Football League’s New Orleans Saints has been considered by many different sports media outlets, such as ESPN, CBS, and Sports Illustrated, to be one of the worst scandals not only in NFL history, but in all of sports. The “bounty” program refers to a system set up and run by players where cash rewards were paid out to players who successfully injured or “knocked out” other players from a game. However, many consider the worst part of the program to be that Saints management and coaches knew about and encouraged the program. As a result, the league last week handed down draconian punishments that included a one year suspension for Saints head coach Sean Payton, an eight game suspension for General Manager Mickey Loomis, and an indefinite suspension for Gregg Williams, who was the coach that initially instituted the bounty program to the Saints when he was their defensive coordinator.

The significance of this scandal is that it does great damage to the NFL’s recent attempts to revamp its image and stance in regards to safety. Football, by nature, is a physical game with a high injury rate. Traditionally, the NFL has encouraged this physicality and has paid little attention to the overall and long term health of its players. However, recent research about head trauma and a class action lawsuit from retired players about the NFL’s negligence towards player safety have brought the issue to the game’s forefront. In response, the NFL has slowly introduced new tackling and equipment rules to try and protect players. In addition, new procedures have been put into place to ensure that players suffering from concussions are fully healed before they return to playing. The NFL was trying to reinvent itself to show that it cared about safety and this new prioritization was supposed to trickle down to the lower levels so that over time the game would become safer for everyone to play.
Then the bounty scandal happened.

The scandal showed that nothing had changed. The fact that it existed for so long and that coaches and players knew about it and encouraged it set an awful example for the lower levels of the game. The “bounty” system undermined the NFL’s attempts to establish itself as a safety first league.

The NFL, however, recognized the damage the scandal caused to its image and its “role model” status and this is why it punished those involved so hard. The Saints are one of the more popular franchises in the league, Payton is one of the best known and most respected coaches in the NFL, and to top it off, this year’s Super Bowl will be held in New Orleans. The last thing the NFL wanted to do was to hurt the Saints franchise, but it had to prove to all the high school and college players and their parents that the NFL is serious about safety. These harsh and severe punishments can be seen as a PR move by the NFL to respond to the image hit it took as a result of the scandal. They send the message that the NFL holds safety above all else, including the money it makes off the Saints franchise.

Bountygate shows us that when it comes to crisis management, the right decisions are rarely the easy ones. The NFL could have pretended like nothing happened and they would have continued to make heaps of money off the Saints. However, the league knew that its image as a role model for younger players was its top priority and therefore delivered a decision that will help the overall health of the league, even though it may not look that way right now.

This guest blog was written by PRowl Public Relations staff member Matt Jones.