industry development / association news

By Tony Best

With the NFL in full swing, it’s the season for crazy playoff predictions, merciless smack-talking and sharpening "Madden 13" skills to a fine point. And, it’s a time when Monday nights get a little less dreary. That’s right – it’s the return of "Monday Night Football," now running 43 seasons strong and still racking up significant rating shares.

In honor of gridiron glory at the start of the week (and in memoriam of NFL Films visionary Steve Sabol, RIP), we’ve put together an assemblage of some standout "MNF" spots from the last four decades.


1970
Under the aegis of designer Harry Marks, ABC’s creative team produced this hallucinatory promo for "MNF’s" launch, replete with trippy graphics and horror movie-style narration.

1974

The Juice gets loose in this ’74 regular season opener, a time when O.J. Simpson was still someone you'd want spearheading your campaign. 

1985

The Bears and William "The Refrigerator" Perry smash their way to the Super Bowl Shuffle. "You'll love it!"

1989
Hank Williams, Jr.'s theme for the 1989 campaign would become one of the most enduring songs in sports promo history. ESPN finally yanked the rousing number this year, nearly 25 years after its debut, after Williams's over-the-top political conservatism started overshadowing his musical gifts. We all need a little help from our friends.




1990

The following season, Williams's song established itself as a trademark, behind a bold integration featuring ABC hits such as "Perfect Strangers" and "America's Funniest Home Videos," not to mention an appearance by Bo Jackson, who made some of his most exciting plays on Monday nights. Bo knows promo!




1995
For its silver anniversary, Monday Night Football rolled out a hilarious spot auditioning an array of possible new theme song performers, including a doo-wop group and an elderly accordionist. In the end, the by-now-old standard won out: Williams. Are you ready for some football?

2010
Nobody could deliver a line like "Yeah, but most were busts" like the late, great Leslie Nielsen.

By Graeme Newell


Green marketing isn't just a social good anymore, it has become a juggernaut of personal identity that has more and more companies desperately searching for ways to demonstrate deep green caring. The curious phenomenon of wrapping a company in the environmental movement has been tagged "greenwashing." It has become downright surreal how some of the most environmentally inappropriate companies in the world have managed to contort their marketing to make it green.

This ad for Tostitos chips makes the rather strange case that corn and oil are both from nature, so these artery-clogging, fried wonders are saving the planet. This Region's Bank commercial introduces green banking, complete with zero-carbon checking and a reusable grocery tote bag. This commercial for "clean coal" features nature-loving Americans professing their faith in the new eco-friendliness of one of the world's greatest pollution sources. German environmental groups cried foul in this biting parody ad.

A Car On A Mission

The green marketing movement has taken an even more curious turn in the car industry. Take a look at all the hybrid cars on the road and you will notice a disproportionate number of them are Toyota Prii. Yes, that spelling is correct. Prius owners voted and decided that the plural of Prius is Prii. Toyota has sold more Prii than all other hybrid cars combined. Why is the Prius handily beating established brands like Honda, Ford and Nissan? 

A study of Prius owners suggest it is about the phenomenon of conspicuous conservation. If you compare a Honda Civic hybrid with the traditional gas-powered Honda Civic, you will notice that they appear virtually identical. The Ford Escape hybrid looks like a traditional Ford Escape. The only designation of this car's green potential is a small logo on the back. The body designs are almost identical. But the Toyota Prius is different. The Prius does not look like any other model on the road.

Surveys done of Prius owners reveal that they appreciate the energy efficiency of the car, but the number one reason they buy this car is because it "says something about my priorities and lifestyle." The Honda Civic hybrid does not showcase the owner's passion for green like the unique styling of a Prius, and Prius owners are willing to pay more for this too. A study shows that hybrid owners in Colorado are willing to pay $1000 to $4000 more for this car just because of its unique styling.

And Toyota markets the hell out of this consumer belief. This Prius ad pegs the meter on environmental imagery. This Prius ad features weird music, dancing suns, frolicking fields of grass, and young children dressed as flowers. These ads are a little weird and that's exactly what hybrid owners crave – to be different.

What Car Manufacturers Are Missing

Now contrast that ad with this Chevy Volt ad. What you'll notice is that the imagery is identical to every other boring car ad in the world - standard vehicle beauty shots on long highways. This BMW ad  has the same hackneyed approach. This Lexus hybrid ad shows hundreds of drab grey cars driving in circles while the announcer drones on about the company's experience in the hybrid market. This ad markets cars, while Toyota is marketing a revolution that just happens to have a car as its symbol.

What Toyota has understood from the beginning is the mindset of their customers. They realized that these green renegades weren't just looking for economical transportation. They were looking to join a revolution and Toyota was smart enough to give it to them. From the unique vehicle styling to the weird advertising, the Prius is not just a car but a bold statement of a life mission.

Go to the Ford web site and you'll notice that the hybrids are listed as nothing more than just another option of their standard car lines. What Ford doesn't understand is that every time they define hybrids as just another propulsion option, they commoditize their brand image as well.

But there is good news on the car marketing front. There are a couple of companies that have created ad campaigns that break free of the traditional car beauty-shot imagery. This Nissan ad dreams of a world with zero emissions. This delightful Audi ad goes after an entirely new breed of ecological enthusiast. It positions the traditional environmentalists as a bunch of wimpy, tree-hugging sissies and firmly puts the conversation right in Audi's sweet spot – performance driving.

Things to Remember

Your product brand must do more than just meet a specific functional need. It must also fit into the story of your customer's life. Toyota built the Prius brand from the customer mindset up, not the car down. They realized that they could sell a lot more cars if they tapped into an emerging societal trend instead of just marketing the technology of a new product line. Too many companies get so smitten with their own product that they never bother to find the customer's true motivations behind a purchase.

So a detergent brand is not just about laundry, but is a part of a customer's personal identity that is wrapped up in her "mothering" persona. Great brands build deep identities that customers can peel back like the layers of an onion. Just when one story gets a bit boring, there is another brand story that deepens the relationship.

Most product categories have multiple brands that will all do a fine job of serving functional needs. There are dozens of hybrid cars but only one Prius. The grocery store has an entire aisle filled with fizzy soft drinks. Yet customers pay more and come back to great brands like Coke because their brand fulfills a deeply human need to connect and share with the people most important in their lives. This universal feeling of connectedness has given Coke a worldwide appeal.

Here is one final thought you might want to contemplate: you may know that your customer likes your product, but do you really understand the deep emotional motivations behind that affection?

Watch a three-minute marketing lesson video from customer loyalty expert Graeme Newell showcasing environmentally reprehensible companies that have managed to market themselves as green, as well as many other training videos, white papers and other content covering "emotional marketing" at his website 602communications.com.

By Justin W. Sanders

The popular college sports league executed a serious brand extension this month when it launched Pac-12 Networks. Comprised of a national network, six regional networks (including the regions of Los Angeles, Washington state, Oregon, the Bay Area, Arizona, Colorado and Utah) and a digital network, the new enterprise lets die-hard alumni, parents and other fans watch their favorite college's teams 24 hours a day.

We recently spoke with SVP of marketing at Pac-12 Enterprises, Greg Neal, about the branding that went into the new channels. Watch for that article in the Brand/Rebrand section of our fall issue of "Brief" magazine, and in the meantime, check out these stunning images from Pac-12 Networks' on-air promos and program packaging.

By Tony Best

If there was an Olympic gold medal for promo, these spots, culled from the past 40 years of broadcast history, would have been contenders.

Games of the XX Olympiad (1972):
Aside from the implied psychedlia (hey, it was the early 1070s after all…), what makes this spot unique is the eschewment of live footage. Everything was shot on a soundstage, likely lit by blacklight and incense embers.

Games of the XXI Olympiad (1976):
Beginning in the late '60s, ABC was lauded for their super-stylized on-air marketing campaigns. This bicentennial Olympic promo is no exception, channeling the geometric influence of Saul Bass and Piet Mondrian.

Games of the XXII Olympiad (1980):
With plenty of slow-mo, long shots and canned applause, this vintage CTV promo for the Winter and Summer Games borrows liberally from ABC’s Wide World of Sports' visual aesthetic.

Games of the XXIII Olympiad (1984):
In a likely attempt to attract a larger female viewership, ABC recruited soap throb Bob Woods (Bo Buchanan from One Life to Live) to deliver a silky extolment of heroic athleticism.

Games of the XXIV Olympiad (1988):
Following a myriad of controversial events in 1980, NBC re-acquired the American broadcast rights to the Olympics in 1988, then served up this short, albeit poignant, ID for the games in Seoul.

At what has been dubbed “The Social Media Games,” Lauren Pasquale is one busy woman. As digital media director of the US Olympic Committee, she manages the organization’s digital platforms including TeamUSA.org, social media, mobile/tablet applications and TeamUSA’s new, dedicated YouTube channel. Justin W. Sanders caught up with Pasquale between her numerous flights to find out what goes into filtering many decades of epic global athletic spectacle through the tricky prism of YouTube.

When and how did TeamUSA decide to create a dedicated YouTube channel?
We launched the channel around 100 days out from the games on April 18 and we launched it in partnership with YouTube. The genesis of the idea has been around for quite some time. We have the rights to use archived footage in the United States and there are so many great moments from the Games – we’ve been trying to figure out what is the best medium for fans to access this content in a way that they can choose what interests them. The platform for YouTube is so enormous and the reach is so vast across the country that it seemed like the perfect way to release all this content.

What challenges did you face in setting the channel up?
One of the biggest concerns we had was with the way we used the footage. We wanted to make sure we presented it in a way that really respected the value of the footage and the rights that we have domestically, but made the greatest moments available for fans. You can’t really go on and watch every single game of the 1996 women’s gold medal, so how should we package the content? How should we present it?

Once we got through the footage question, then the question was really about production and what we decided to do was present four series of original programming that you can only get on the TeamUSA YouTube channel.

Can you tell us a little more about those four original series?
The first one is called Qualified and we follow 17 different athletes from the training and the trials and the qualification process all the way to London, and then for a month or so after. We do nutrition regimens, we talk to their coaches [and] their families. In some of the videos you see the send-offs, the little parties their families throw before they go catch their flight. Qualified is really about, “what is it like, the journey to London, to making the team?”

The next series is called Returning Veterans: London Bound and we follow five veterans of the military who are suffering from different injuries, whether it’s paralysis or amputation, and now, as paralympians, are training to try and serve their country once again.

The other two series are timeless – one of them is called Olympic Coaching Tips and in that series we have 15 different Olympic coaches from various sports teaching the fundamentals of their sport using graphics and imagery from the games.

The final one is totally my favorite – it’s called Gold Medal Moments and we chronicle 52 gold medal moments in Olympic history. Everything from Mary Lou Retton’s gold medal winning performance to Jesse Owens in the 1936 games and how culturally significant that was, to the black power salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. It really runs the gamut of historic to more recent moments. I love that series.

Does all the TeamUSA channel content fit under one of those four categories?
No that’s just the original programming and that’ll make up maybe about 300 videos in 2012. Then we have about another 200-300 more videos that we just call archived or curated content, and that includes the video series we create for TeamUSA.org. Some examples are a daily news report called Road to London presented by Hilton HHonors, a [nutritional] video series called Great Starts presented by Kellogg’s, [and a] series called Team USA Britain Bound presented by Samsung, which is 20 different videos of a small group of athletes we took over to London last fall, who just sort of play and have fun and enjoy the culture. 

[There are] probably about 500 videos that will end up taken from teamusa.org and added to the YouTube channel. And of course everything that we shoot in London will go up on the channel and that will include behind-the-scenes interviews with athletes after they win medals.

Does this channel work to bring more sponsorship interest to TeamUSA or is it geared more to increase awareness among viewers?
I would say both. We want to increase the digital platforms on which consumers can get TeamUSA content; by doing that we’ve opened up another avenue for sponsorship.

At the time of this interview, the channel has more than a million views and more than 8000 subscribers (that figure has since changed to more than 18,000 subscribers and more than 2 million views - Ed.) Are these figures meeting your expectations so far?
You know, we’re brand new to this so we really didn’t set any parameters around number of subscribers or page views. But we want that number to go as high as it possibly can and we really want fans to create a community here, so the sky’s the limit.

NBC is the major broadcaster of the Olympics. What is your relationship with them?
They’re one of our most important partners and they do such a great job with [the broadcast] that it can only help the Olympic movement to have NBC as our broadcaster. We definitely had conversations with them. It’s important to make sure that all the content across all platforms is being presented in the right way and [the TeamUSA YouTube channel] is just another way for fans to broaden their viewing experience.

To follow up with the Olympians and see all the great original programming and archived footage mentioned above, visit the TeamUSA channel.

By Tony Best

Old school ‘80s gamers can clearly remember when the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated the console market. Following the demise of the Atari 2600 and predating the emergence of the Sega Genesis, the “little console that could” reached its commercial peak in 1987, just two years after a rather low-key North American market launch. Who can forget classics from that year such as "Castlevania," "Super Mario Bros.," "Duck Hunt" and of course, "Double Dribble" (though beating the computer opponent by a 100 point margin got to be boring after a while).

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of its golden year of 1987, we take a look back at a few of the iconic – albeit corny – television spots that helped the NES rise to the top, if only for a little while.


Kid Icarus (Nintendo)
This commercial from Nintendo’s homeland exemplifies Japan’s penchant for surreal TV advertising. But it proves a well-known fact: most gamers like to get stoned.

 The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo)
What’s worse? The obvious mistake of a grey Zelda cartridge (it’s supposed to be gold!) or the suburbanite rap?

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (Nintendo)
A reworking of the arcade masterpiece Punch-Out!!, Nintendo executed a strong marketing push for its first celebrity-endorsed title. Plans for a sequel, Don King’s Rip-Off!!, never got off the drawing board.

 

Metroid & Rad Racer (Nintendo)
Notice the look of ecstasy on the players’ faces, who obviously hadn't reached the end of the game yet. That was when most pre-teen boys were crushed to learn that Metroid was a girl.