GARFIELD’S
ADREVIEW
BY BOB GARFIELD
Baseball
From Page 4
Torre tell-all, A-rod steroids
admission dent Yankees’ image
MGD 64’s simple poster
catches the eye, doesn’t let it go
You represent a client. There’s a lot of money on the line. And prestige. And
personal pride. Not to mention the agency trophy case. And your book. All
of that has a way of focusing your thinking.
Whether your brand is a disposable diaper or a fabric softener or a state
lottery or a savory food, you are going to lovingly (or at least obsessively)
sweat over every detail of copy, layout, production, whatever. Whatever
brand X is, you’re going to have it on the brain. And so is the boss and the
boss’ boss and the suits and the CMO.
And then the ad shows up somewhere in
the real world, at which point the lavishing
of attention comes to an abrupt halt. You REVIEW:
may as well have stapled your senior thesis
into People or Men’s Health. Sorry, nobody
MGD 64
cares.
Oh, sure, people will see it, but they’re
most likely to pass right by. It may register; it
probably won’t. No matter what medium
you are working in, as far as the audience is
concerned, your craftsmanship amounts to
just so much spam.
That’s why conventional wisdom
dictates that you try to achieve
instantaneous clarity of message. You only
have the audience for a second; make it
count. That’s also why there is no print
anymore—just magazine-size outdoor.
Simple image, simple headline, simple idea.
Boom. Or, at least, boom.
There is, of course, a second option: to
forsake that tiny bit of communications
combustion and go for the big score, to
AGENCY:
craft an ad so intriguing, so involving, so
Y&R
ambiguous that you dare readers or
LOCATION:
passersby to stop flat-footed and try to take
Chicago
it completely in. About 20 years ago,
Benson & Hedges and the late, lamented
Wells, Rich, Greene did just that in a
campaign of print ads depicting scenes of
confounding significance. Something was happening among those
characters, and it looked vaguely untoward, but just exactly how was
impossible to say. This tactic pretty much defines Diesel ads as far back as
we can remember.
And then there is the rare miracle: an ad that scans in an instant,
delivering the message to all but the most militantly indifferent, but then
keeps you looking because there appears to be more going on. It’s a
Kinder Egg, candy on the outside with a prize in the middle. It’s the
Zapruder film, after the president is shot. It’s a swimsuit model conversant
about Pushkin.
And it’s a poster, from Y&R, Chicago, for MGD 64.
The central joke is simple. Sixteen alcoholic drinks are seen in four rows
of four. But 15 of them—from pomegranate martinis to lager to white wine—
are seen as glasses only fractionally filled. Not nearly empty, but
Photoshopped to have jigsaw-shaped holes where the fluid should be. The
only full container is a bottle of MGD.
The headline: “The 64 Calorie Collection.”
Yes, if you’re watching your calories, you can have a whole MGD 64 or a
fragment of a martini. Got it.
But wait. There’s more. We have no earthly idea whether this was
intentional, but the weirdly fragmented images of the 15 other drinks look
something like letters of the alphabet. Look, there’s an L, there’s a J… is
that an F? So to see this poster is to stand there trying to figure out what
the other message is. L-Y-E-… wait, I-Y-F…. um…
After a while, it becomes obvious that, no, there is no code, no secret
message, no sneaky dis of lard-assed pomegranate-martini drinkers. But
the time invested in deciphering the undecipherable does spell one thing.
For Sonya Grewal and Todd Taber, the creative team who did the
aforementioned sweating, it spells success.
at sponsorship firm IEG. “But in an
economy where everybody is looking to cut back wherever they can,
anything that carries a risk does not
do well. … And this is a reminder
that baseball players are still a very
big risk.”
Indeed, Mr. Rodriguez’s admission reminds marketers—and consumers—that he was one of a startling 104 Major League players to
anonymously test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003.
To hear Mr. Andrews and other
sports-marketing experts tell it, the
biggest losers in the fallout from
Mr. Rodriguez’s admission may be
young, talented, charismatic, scan-dal-free players who, by all rights,
ought to be endorsement features
by now.
SPORT’S RISKY REP
Players such as New York Mets
third baseman David Wright,
Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Chase Utley, Minnesota
Twins catcher Joe Mauer and
Florida Marlins shortstop Hanley
Ramirez are, traditionally, the sort
of young stars who would be busy
endorsers, but none have managed
to ascend to that status.
“You just don’t point brands to
baseball [stars] first anymore, even
if it looks like a fit,” said Paul
Swangard, director of the Warsaw
Sports Marketing Center at the
University of Oregon. “And now,
unfortunately, A-Rod has given the
story a new in. The story has legs
again, and the sport looks even
riskier than it did just a few days
ago.”
But Alan Nero, a veteran player
agent with Octagon Worldwide,
whose clients have included baseball
stars such as Randy Johnson and
Chien-Ming Wang, disagreed that
Mr. Rodriguez’s steroids admission
would hurt younger players’
endorsement prospects. To the contrary, he said, it will help.
“I just think A-Rod puts it over
the top already, because people are
so sick of it,” he said, noting that
baseball has since tightened its
drug-testing standards. “There’s a
real hunger out there for fresh
faces.”
Neither Mr. Swangard nor
Mr. Andrews said he expected
baseball deals at the league or
team level to suffer as a result of
the latest steroid flap. Both men
noted that attendance and ratings
have been largely unaffected by
years of evidence of widespread
cheating by players.
Nor did they say they think A-Rod himself would notice much difference in his already tepid endorsement picture. His only major deals
are with Nike, Rawlings and Topps.
Nike said last week: “Nike does
not condone the use of illegal substances in sport and agrees with
Alex Rodriguez that they should
not be used. We will have no further comment at this time.”
Twenty-six world championships, the most in any team sport. Three
players—Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle—that are, arguably,
synonymous with the game. No names on the backs of their uniforms.
Personal-decorum rules such as no facial hair except for neatly trimmed
mustaches.
More than any other team, perhaps, the New York Yankees carefully
cultivate their image and fiercely protect their brand.
But that brand, and the Yankees’ marketing machine, might be losing
some luster in the wake of several issues in the past few months,
culminating with last week’s admission by third baseman Alex Rodriguez
that he used performance-enhancing drugs six years ago, before coming
to New York.
“There seems to be a separation forming between Yankee tradition
and what fans are seeing right now,” says Darin David, director of
Millsport, the Dallas-based sports-marketing division of the Marketing
Arm. “Public perception of the team is changing.”
By way of comparison, Mr. David said, just look at the Texas Rangers.
Mr. Rodriguez said it was while he was playing for Texas that he used
steroids. In the 2007 Mitchell Report, 16 former Rangers were named as
having used performance-enhancing drugs. But, Mr. David said, “no one
seems to care. … The Ranger brand doesn’t have
an identity or a perch to drop from. It’s the
Yankees who have an image to live up to.”
The Yankees, through spokesman Jason
Latimer, declined an interview request.
There have been other public-relations hits
to the Yankees’ brand. Earlier this month came
the publication of former manager Joe Torre’s
book, in which he wrote about some of the inner
workings of the clubhouse—including that some
players called Mr. Rodriguez “A-Fraud,” a
INSIDE BASEBALL:
caustic take on his A-Rod nickname—as well as a
Torre memoir.
painfully detailed account of his last day as
manager.
The franchise also suffered some backlash during the holidays for
signing free-agent pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, along with first
baseman Mark Texiera, to a combined total of $423 million in contracts at
a time when the economy is in tatters and thousands are being laid off
each week.
Then there is the ongoing saga of the new $1.3 billion Yankee
Stadium. Last month, the team had to go back to the state and ask for
another $259 million in tax-exempt bonds to finish the project. When
the stadium opens for business April 16, the best seats in the house
will go for $2,500 a pop (and who knows if the usual suspects in the
corporate world will even have that kind of money to throw around?).
Oh, and the Yanks missed the playoffs last season for the first time in
14 years, haven’t been in a World Series since 2003 and haven’t won one
since 2000.
Perhaps the New York Daily News summed it up best in its Feb. 11
edition, with a back-page headline quoting Yankee captain Derek Jeter:
“It’s Always Something.”
“Is the Yankee brand suffering? No more than baseball’s,” said Harry
Beckwith, strategic director of the New Jersey-based branding firm
Beckwith Partners. “The Yankee brand always has had these enormous
strengths and weaknesses. It’s an inkblot; it depends on who sees it as to
what people see. But the brand is good for baseball, because every great
story needs a villain, and the Yankees are that villain almost everywhere
you go.”
Mike Vaccaro, who chronicles the Yankees as the lead sports
columnist for the New York Post, said the storied franchise is too big for
even Mr. Rodriguez to make a dent, and there’s only one thing that would
hurt the brand and the business model: losing.
“The Yankees are predicated on winning; their image is as
American sports’ pre-eminent winner,” Mr. Vaccaro said. “When their
product is a 75-win team instead of 100, then they’re not getting 4 million
people to the park no matter how new their building is, and then the
brand takes a hit.” —RICH THOMASELLI
More on AdAge.com
Need a daily dose of cynicism? Read Bob’s blog at
ADAGE.COM
Rawlings didn’t respond to an
inquiry by press time, but the
glove and batting-helmet manufacturer’s track record suggests
Mr. Rodriguez needn’t worry.
The company still counts
Washington Nationals catcher
Paul Lo Duca as a member of
Team Rawlings. Mr. Lo Duca
achieved some notoriety when
images of personal checks and
handwritten notes he’d sent to a
notorious steroids dealer surfaced in
Major League Baseball’s official
report on steroid use in the game.
The report alleged he had purchased
six kits of human growth hormone
for $3,200 apiece.
