Monday February 12, 2023. Reprint
Super Bowl Ad Agency Fumble
During my corporate career, I was proud to see our firms Super Bowl commercials. I may not have always revered the final product but understood the intent and accepted the financial price tag as worth public exposure. Intuitively, I respected the expertise of our adverting agencies that were paid big bucks to know the pulse of the public and create the resulting strategies that best suited their goals. This year, the Super Bowl commercials were as usual, good, bad, and mediocre. Yet what seemed to be ill advised by adverting executives, was the Robert Kraft commercial.
Sadly, Jewish hatred is at an all-time high and no single group has suffered longer with that or have been clandestinely ridiculed than Jews. All the way back to the great pyramids, Jewish people have been reviled. It is the only group in the world to have a noun, anti-Semitism, to define the longevity of abhorrence —but advertising it seemed exploitative. Worse, couching it in a broad stroke with other very different minority group histories seemed patronizing. It was a slick production by the agency, but their client could suffer an opposite response of the intent.
Drawing attention to yourself for not being liked, could create a bigger problem. If a bully picks on someone and the target continues to reinforce it with poor pitiful me, the blowback can be a “pile on.” Announcing your victimization during a football extravaganza, is like walking into a high school locker room after being picked on and saying, “here I am, in my tighty-whities stop picking on me.” I may not be an ad executive, but I have been in a locker-room. There are better ways to change opinions of people who don’t like the cut of one’s jib.
Plenty of good commercials made sense Super Bowl Sunday, but slavery and hatred are different. A good PR firm should deflect the negative not by complaining but by accentuating the positive to improve perceptions. In this case, the client lost yardage on a quarterback sack. Too much was spent on that ad to risk a boomerang effect. Jewish discrimination is too serious of an issue to be commercialized during a major national sporting event.
SMA Institute
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