Preparing for the 2025 Super Bowl With Key PR Strategies Prior to Kickoff
Super Bowl 58 is now history. But the discussions of whether a TV commercial costing $7-million, not including production and talent costs, got the desired results will be on-ongoing for weeks. That will be discussed between brand marketing managers, their advertising agencies and marketing experts.
Next year’s Super Bowl will take place on Feb. 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, home of the New Orleans Saints. While the teams that will play in the game will not be known for many months, we can still be sure of the following:
Positive earned media for brands associated with the Super Bowl will still be very difficult to obtain.
The great majority of coverage leading up to the game will again be negative. Articles about betting, and, maybe players’ health, will dominate the pre-game coverage. (Last year, articles about player’s injuries to their brains, and other health-related issues, were spread throughout the year, instead of as in previous year’s when they dominated pre-Super Bowl coverage.)
If Kansas City qualifies for the Super Bowl, they are certain to obtain significant three-peat coverage.
If Kansas City qualifies and the Swift-Kelce relationship is still intact, they are certain to receive significant coverage.
Brands’ spokespeople will say that coughing up more than $7-million dollars for a 30 second commercial, not including production costs which can add many more millions of dollars to the ad, was money well spent, even if they are disappointed with the ROI.
Advertising agencies that created the commercials are certain to say that the cost was worth it.
And if clients complain to the PR agency about not getting positive earned publicity, high-level agency execs will never blame themselves. Instead. some lower-level individual, who was following orders, will be blamed.
Which brings us to what PR people whose clients have a tie-in with the Super Bowl should do. Starting right now. And that’s plan for Super Bowl 59. If I was asked as a consultant what advice I would give that might deliver more earned media than was received in Super Bowl 58, the first thing I would suggest is to add a former newspaper reporter or editor to the account team. That person would bring a journalist’s thinking to the planning. These days with newspapers cutting staffs there are probably loads of journalists who would be happy to be hired full-time by a PR agency or as a consultant.
If it was me, the second thing I would advise is to ditch the old and tired playbook of hiring a former football player as a brand spokesperson.
I would say that that any print, radio or TV interviews would concentrate on the former player’s career, with most likely a one-line sentence saying, “So and So is a spokesperson for the XYZ company.” Securing placements like that will certainly help the PR firm’s report, but will it help the brand? Probably not, because missing will be any talking points about the product.
The third thing I would advise is to consider hiring more than one brand spokesperson. Too often, PR people have tunnel vision when it comes to hiring spokespersons to deliver client’s messages. They offer the same spokesperson to various sections of a news outlet, ignoring that each section has different needs. To paraphrase a statement I originated many years ago about client’s crises, and which has been copied by many other PR people without giving credit to the originator, “There is no one size brand PR spokesperson. Different facets of news outlets have different needs.” Editors and reporters of those facets will not change to accommodate you. You must change your approach to accommodate them. (Remember, journalists don’t need PR people. PR people need journalists.)
An example: When honchoing an education program, I hired a former New York City mayor to be the spokesperson. The reason? Before entering politics, he was a school teacher. A perfect fit for the program.
Proponents of hiring former football players would argue that for a Super Bowl spokesperson there is no better fit than a former football player. While true, it misses the point. And the point is that brand talking points are hardly ever mentioned in those news stories.
The fourth thing I would say is that there is only one way to assure gaining meaningful earned publicity. And that is to separate yourself from the pack by offering journalists something that they are not used to getting from PR people – pitches with new ideas. And that mean’s thinking outside-the-box, which in our do no harm copy cat business is hardly ever done.
For readers who might have missed my thinking outside - the-box Super Bowl suggestions when it originally appeared on this website, here they are:
Account people should try and think like a journalist who writes around an event instead of the event itself.
Pitch a psychiatrist who specializes in gambling addiction to journalists in various sections of a publication and to TV producers.
Or a dietitian who can suggest how to prepare a healthy Super Bowl party.
Or because people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease are more apt to have a heart event during the Super Bowl (and other sporting events), hire a cardiologist to talk about how to reduce stress while watching the game.
There are many other tactics that can be used to gain reporters’ attention that can result in earned media. What’s needed are account staffers who are not afraid to toss the stale playbooks and can think like a reporter who writes around an event and is not afraid to try something new.
The fifth thing I would suggest is to not staff a sports marketing account team with sports fanatics. Staff it with people who like and follow sports but realize that sports are a big business and unlike years ago is now covered like any other big business. And since there is so much controversy surrounding mega-sporting events, the account team should also have a member who has PR crisis experience.
The sixth thing I would suggest, if a client insists on a former football player as a spokesperson, is that everyone being considered must have an unblemished past. What you don’t want is a reporter including past unsportsmanlike actions in a story about the athlete. That means some
athletes you were considering would be eliminated. But as my mother told me when I first began dating, “Take your time before cementing a relationship. There are plenty of fish in the sea.” The same is true about athlete spokespersons.
And for brands that don’t want to pay millions of dollars in order to be able to say “official sponsor, “the seventh thing I would suggest is to consider ambush marketing. Leagues and brands that spend big bucks in order to say that they are the “official sponsors of this or that” think ambush marketing is evil. But history shows that news outlets don’t. They will report on ambush marketing campaigns if they’re cleaver enough. Just make certain that you don’t use any of the legally protected logos or language. Clear your program, press releases and pitches with an attorney.
Considering the past actions of the National Football League, which include denying that concussions can cause life – altering brain injuries, including suicides and deaths, and their efforts to destroy the reputation of the medical scientists who discovered the link between concussions and brain injuries, and the league’s recent partnership with legalized bookies and alcoholic entities, who advertise during hours when young teens are watching, I have no compunction about recommending ambush marketing programs.
