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Logos must face away from the face

Valencian football team Club Deportivo Dénia reminds players that goal celebrations are a good time to remember who pays for the laundry.

Three things we learned from the Super Bowl ads

It's Monday after the world's best-and-brightest brand marketers chunked $206 million on Super Bowl spots.

Here's what we learned about TV advertising:

Animals still sell. | Four of the ten most popular Super Bowl ads featured horses, dogs and monkeys. Many Americans thought the Budweiser Clydesdales had more relevant and interesting things to say than John Madden.

Insipid is still strategy. | The most popular Super Bowl ad was the one that ended with a guy getting a crystal ball thrown into his crotch. Bud Light supplemented it's "drinkability" angle with laugh riots like guys getting thrown out of windows and skiing into trees.

Women are still objects. | So this is how we've evolved: A guy crunches a Doritos and a woman's clothes fall off. College boys gawk at Danica Patrick in the shower. A box of flowers tells a woman that nobody wants to see her naked. A blond TV star slinks on the bed toward the camera. Two women make out in a movie ad. Models thrust themselves before a congressional committee.

You have to wonder why NBC even bothered banning PETA's ad. Women getting frisky with vegetables would have fit right in with the evening's advertainment.
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• USA Today | Watch your favorite Super Bowl ads (Photo: Doritos spot)
• Web Host Industry  |  Go Daddy Super Bowl ad pays off
• Reuters  |  Who won the big Super Bowl ad polls? Who knows?
• Gawker  |  Best and worst Super Bowl ads
• MediaPost  |  Shop Talk: The best and worst of the Super Bowl ads
  

Playing to beat the recession

"Defense wins championships. But, in a tough economy, offense is what sells those luxury suites."

... Denver Post columnist Mark Kizla, on the logic behind Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen's decision to hire 32-year-old rookie head coach Josh McDaniels. The former offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots takes over a Broncos team with the fourth-worst defense in the entire NFL.

Detroit Lions put big dent in NFL brand image

Stakeholders of the nation's most powerful sports product are demanding action in response to the Detroit Lions, which on Sunday became the first NFL franchise in 32 years to go an entire season without winning a game.

National Yahoo Sports! columnist Dan Wetzel says it's time to get tough with the team's 83-year-old owner:

"William Clay Ford Sr. has done more damage to the NFL brand than Michael Vick, Adam “Pacman” Jones and Travis Henry could ever dream.

... It’s time for the league’s image protecting commissioner, Roger Goodell, to get as tough with an increasingly incompetent owner as he would with a misbehaving player. If the hard line approach is about protecting the NFL, then what’s worse for the league right now than the chaos and carnage of the winless, hopeless, helpless Detroit Lions?

Related: The NFL has a PR problem called the Detroit Lions

Super Black Eye Sunday

The regular-season finale between the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions might impact the NFL's reputation more than the next Super Bowl.

One of two things will happen.

Either the Lions will lose and become the first NFL franchise in 32 years to go an entire season without winning a game.

Or Detroit wins, making the Packers the first NFL franchise in history to lose to a 0-15 team.

In these bad economic times, either scenario will cost the NFL some of its famously premium brand value. The Lions have already announced plans to reduce or freeze prices for season tickets next season.
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The NFL has a PR problem called the Detroit Lions

Will one lousy franchise dent the image of the nation's strongest sports business?

Maybe a little. It's quite possible that the Detroit Lions could become the first NFL team in 32 years to go an entire season without winning a game.

The Lions are historically dismal. They've won only one playoff game since Sputnik. And they haven't had a winning season since 2000 (which didn't keep owners from raising ticket prices 25 percent last year).

But going winless... That's a whole other story.

The NFL has used salary caps, free agency and other schemes to create a product based on competition. Consumers, advertisers and sports media all accept the league's brand promise that any team has a chance of winning any game. It's a belief reinforced each week by at least a few underdog victories, as well as the occasional Super Bowl upset like last season's Giants win over the undefeated Patriots.

Having a perfectly bad team will lower expectations of the people who matter to the NFL. At least a little bit.
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(Photo courtesy of The Detroit News)

HBO drops a cancellation bomb on football fans.

Each week some two million people watch HBO’s Inside the NFL, which after 31 years is cable’s longest-running program.

And most of those viewers were shocked to hear the season’s final show introduced like this:  Boy, that was an exciting Super Bowl and by the way we’ve been cancelled.  Thanks for the memories.

This has to be the coldest break-up with a devoted audience ever.

HBO made a point to drop a bomb on viewers, even telling the show’s original host Len Dawson — flown in to tape a goodbye segment — to not go public.  “They… asked me to keep the whole thing quiet because not many people knew it was coming to an end,” Dawson told the Kansas City Star.  “I was shocked at first.”

The abrupt ending was made even more insulting by the way HBO explained itself.  Network execs referred to Inside the NFL as just another “highlights show” among a plethora of competitors.  This is ridiculous.  NFL Films is unparalleled in making each game a cinematic event.  Add to that the expert commentary, the casual format of hosts talking with each other, meaningful interviews and human-interest stories.  There’s no show like it.

Sure, not everything on Inside the NFL hit the mark — I took out the trash during the piece on the parole officer cheerleader — but it was without exception the best hour of TV for football fans, both casual and dedicated.  That made it unique.  And I’ll bet it was why a lot of people paid for HBO in the first place.

Inside the NFL will almost certainly turn up next year somewhere else, but it won’t be the same as the show was one-half the work of HBO Sports. There are rumors that HBO was pressured to drop the show by the NFL so it can add it to its own struggling cable network.  Or maybe NFL Films got a better offer to partner somewhere else.

Either way, it was a sad, sudden end to a great show and another black eye for HBO.
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