Dan Janal | Publicity and PR Leads Blog

It’s five hours before the kickoff for the Super Bowl and I’m set to make my iron-clad predictions. With apologies to the Who and their Pinball Wizard, I’ll put on my Marketing Wizard hat to predict the three winners are in this year’s Super Bowl.

1. The Who. This year’s halftime act will expose hundreds of millions of people to one of the great groups of the Sixties and Seventies. I saw them in concert in Saratoga, NY and they were fantastic. They’re albums have sold zillions. But today’s youth probably knows them more for the ring tone at the beginning of the TV show CSI (yes, that’s the Who). Now they will become almost as well known as Lady Gaga!

2. Tim Tebow and Focus on the Family. Let’s face it. Many people watch the SuperBowl for the commercials as for the game (especially if the game is a bore!) The true value of any commercial is if it is remembered. I remember cute, talking animals from last year’s ads. I can’t tell you what product they pitched. But I can tell you that Tim Tebow got more media muscle for his ad even before it aired. The commercial has been covered and debated in most daily newspapers and opinion TV shows. It got free replays and it go people talking even BEFORE the show. Even Janet Jackson couldn’t do that. Tebow’s what advertising is all about.

3. Tebow would have been the hands-down winner, except for one Hail-Mary play. What’s better than getting the highest talked about ad? That’s the ad that got the most talk with the least amount spent. For that award, look to Mancrunch.com a company that CBS decided it didn’t want to sell an ad to. By nixing the ad, the company got a ton of PR. But the best part is that rumors are reported that the company didn’t even have the money to pay for the commercial! So they  got a zillion dollars of publicity without spending a penny to produce the ad or buy the ad time!

That’s the play of the day!

What’s the message for you? Controversy creates publicity. What’s controversial in your field? Capitalize on it!

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Check out the new duds the U.S. Olympic athletes will wear at the Winter Games in Vancouver.

You’ll see a flag of the United States on one side and a HUGE logo for Ralph Lauren’s Polo.  It might be the camera angle, but the logo looks bigger than the flag. What do you think?

In fact, if you look at the camera angle, the logo is featured, not the flag.

The picture ran in USA TODAY. The article didn’t say if Ralph did this out of the goodness of his heart, or if he paid a fee to sponsor the uniforms. If the former, I wonder how much he paid.

If the money is going toward Olympic athletes’ training, I guess I can’t complain for the big plug. However it does raise the question of how many more logos we’ll see on future uniforms. Will they rival the outfits of NASCAR drivers? Time will tell.

In the meantime, I’m going to buy the cool hat with the moose.

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The British Advertising Awards are always good for a good laugh. They are a tradition in the Twin Cities. They are shown at the WalkerArtCenter during Christmas holiday season. If you love British humor, then you are in for a fine time..

Usually.

This year was markedly different.

Commercials with animals are always funny (who can resist flying penguins or lip-synching dogs who ride shotgun in cars, or snails with led lights in their antennae to guide the way). However, most of the ads were somber — and long.

For some reason, ads in the US are about 30 seconds long. In Britain, they seem last as long as a documentary. But in reality, they must be 2-3 minutes apiece.

For most of the ads, you couldn’t tell what they were selling until the very end. That might be a good way to build excitement, it was rally hard to see the connection between the ad and the product. Sort of like watching Annie on Broadway and then seeing banner saying “Delta Airlines.” It didn’t connect in many cases.

There was a cute ad of a guy going through a water park ride that went all around London — inside buildings, around buildings. It was interesting from a dramatic point of view, but who would have known the ad was for a credit card company?

Then there were the majority of ads that seemed to focus on the darker site of Britain.

For example:

A long commercial that sounded like a medical lecture by a doctor to colleagues on how to treat people who have knife wounds. Point of the commercial was to warn that people who carry knives generally injure themselves so they aren’t good for protection. Point made. It took about 5 minutes with lots of graphic pictures of guts and innards and gangrene. They could have done the same job in less time. I guess air time in London costs much less than in New York.

Another sign of the times was an ad that show a white man’s bald head. A hand then started to write on it. The writing was in black marker in scripts from different languages. Couldn’t read a word since I’m not multi-lingual, but a message flashed on the screen as his white face became darkened by the markers. The message said something along the lines that Britain’s white working class is being obscured. I guess they don’t like diversity in Britain. Or this advertising sponsor didn’t. I don’t doubt we’ll see something similar appear in the States, though.

Also shocking were a pair of ads for a clinic to help Britain’s children who are being abused. Very powerful

Same with two award-winning ads that tried to get people to stop drinking, or at least drink responsibly (I’m guessing). Each ad featured a boy or a girl throwing up, tearing their clothes and feeling awful, then walking out the door of their house. The announcer said, “You wouldn’t start out your night this way. Why end it this way?” Pretty powerful. Just not funny.

There were ads that only an art director would love. You can tell British advertising folk, as their American cousins, love to win awards, even if it doesn’t sell the brand very well. One ad showed a bunch of whiz scientists putting Rubik’s cubes in order in seconds, then working as a team to put a giant puzzle together, and then another and then another (I told you these commercials were long). It was fascinating to watch, but I kept wondering who was sponsoring it, or what it was for. I don’t remember, which shows the point of this story. Watch out for art directors who love to create but don’t know how to inform and persuade.

The best ad of the year (their choice, not mine) was for a bread that has been around for generations. The ad shows a young boy in London marching along with soldiers in parade about to go to war, then shows scenes of the London Blitzkrieg, then scenes of destruction with a voice over of Winston Churchill, then modern times. The bread, apparently, has been around during thick and thin. I’m sure this ad pulled at emotional heartstrings in Britain that we Yanks couldn’t quite relate to, but the storyboarding would work in the US with a little tweaking to pull at the heartstrings here.

Nice job.

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