Saturday’s Boston Globe carries an Op Ed piece masquerading as reporting by Globe reporter Joanna Weiss. The headline “Taco Bell promotion is off base to some” is apt. “Some” is the Globe's witness of last resort who coincidentally shares the same opinion as its reporters and editors. In this case “some” consists of a single CNBC reporter. Here is the beginning of the article: We're accustomed, by now, to unsubtle product placement on TV. We accept the intrusion of Nissans into every other frame of NBC's "Heroes." We don't flinch when Fox's "American Idol" set shares its color scheme with a Coke bottle. We accept that every statistic uttered during a sports broadcast is sponsored by some company or other. So it says a lot about the unexpected reach of Taco Bell's "Steal a Base, Steal a Taco" promotion - and the fervor with which Fox Sports has embraced it - that so many people would find this one so dirty. So Orwellian. Whether it is or not.
So dirty? Orwellian? So many people? Here is the single complaint actually reported in the article:
"A World Series game broke out in the middle of a Taco Bell commercial," grumbled CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell, who calculated the free advertising for Taco Bell: $8 million over two games.
The article concludes with this Op Ed piece [emphasis mine]:
It's Clayton who seems the big loser here - shilling for Taco Bell without getting a dime. Fox Sports, though, is bearing the brunt of the frustration, a signal that viewers might be reaching their limits when it comes to accepting the devil's deal that sponsorship entails - or drawing lines when the players get involved.
Using the players to shill for your sponsors - however innocently - seems that much more unseemly. And when announcers do it, too, it's no wonder that the skeptics have the day.
We've been trained to accept product placement when we know there's a quid pro quo. We understand that the networks have to pay the bills. But given the festival of endorsements that every sports game has become, it might have been nice for McCarver and Buck to show more restraint. Talk about Taco Bell once, if you must. Because you must. But give away publicity like so many free tacos, and the viewers will start questioning your motives.
Exactly who is so frustrated here besides Darren Rovell?
Plenty of folks may be fed up with the gushing announcing of Tim McCarver, but the Taco Bell ads are the least of McCarver’s issues. Meanwhile the Rockies are getting thumped, Ellsbury is a budding star, and Taco Bell has pulled off a publicity coup by linking themselves to his performance and fame.
Could it be the folks in the Globe newsroom who are feeling frustrated? Has the subject of advertising been a source of frustration at the Globe recently?
8 comments:
And on Thursday, Fox Sports announcer Chris Myers conducted a fawning interview with Taco Bell honcho Rob Savage, who said, with an impressively straight face, that this giveaway was "for our customers."
That exchange was painful. But this is a non-story - go to you tube and watch any televised show or event from the 50s and 60s and everything is product placement. How exactly did the walls of Fenway (boards at the Gahden, too) lose advertisements in the 70s and 80s? Their return is acually a throwback.
Pot is black: Where do I go to whine about the Globe's real estate product placement associated with fawning interviews of gushing agents fantasizing about a bubble re-inflation?
Yes. Especially, flymorgue, since real estate is the one local advertising source that hasn't been diminished by business consolidation or internet competition.
I'm not sure if the advertising has gone "too far." What it IS doing is showing us the ugly truth of our economic system...EVERYTHING is a commodity to be bought and sold. We don't just have economic markets...we ARE the market, we've been ENTIRELY consumed by it. I hate watching FOX, not because it "goes too far" but because it blatently illustrates the ugly truth of who we've become. I think we get angry because we can't even watch the baseball game to escape this ugly reality. We can't watch a flashback to past World Series memories without them being "brought to you in part by" and being partially obstructed by giant corporate logos. When we buy and sell domestic labor, sex, and body parts...why not sell every aspect of World Series coverage?
When we buy and sell domestic labor...
You lost me on that one, and unless we return to scratching out meager existences on Vermont family sheep farms and hunting for turkeys in the back woods with blunderbusses, we will be 'buying' labor for some time to come.
Baseball will always be a game whose enjoyment can not be lessened by Taco Bell or Scott Boras. We were going all the way! and now we did!
I said "domestic" labor, not ALL labor. I think there's a place for the market economy, but it has consumed our entire humanity. I wasn't arguing that we should go back to being hunter-gatherers. I was arguing that we've come to a point where even house work, raising our children, taking care of our parents, sex, and genetic material are bought and sold as 'commodities' in the market economy. If we're going to allow for markets where we buy and sell not only things but our labor and our very selves, at what point does it hit "a little too close to home?"
Also, the joy of the game HAS been lessened for many people because of the corporatization of the game...I'm not the only one saying this. People don't want to endure one long tv commercial. We're subjected to unending ads from the very corporations that have made it impossible for the average person to even get into the park for these games. It's a slap in the face that I hope will be a wake up call. I'm not too optimistic though...most people just use sports as an escape from reality and identify the accomplishments of the players as their own. "We" did it! I love baseball, but its supposed to point us to the importance of teamwork, struggle, and sacrifice for the common good (see Youkalis). Sports isn't supposed to make us put our heads in the sand so we can't see reality.
I love baseball, but its supposed to point us to the importance of teamwork, struggle, and sacrifice for the common good (see Youkalis).
I love baseball because it is a game, and like any game the joy is in the winning. Sports for me is a suspension of reality that takes place in an engaged mind locked in horns of competition. All the frets of our tawdry existence disappear for the moment. You can do it or watch it, but the real joy of the game is about winning - that is the heart of compeition and if it becomes about anything less (anything else is less), I stop watching or playing.
Yes, flymorgue, but part of the power of sport is to see yourself in your opponent.
e.g. Trot Nixon of the 2007 Cleveland Indians.
Sports is about more than sports...its not merely a drug, an escape from reality. This is why we should care about how they are presented. But your comment actually illustrates my point flymorgue, though unintentionally. You seem to think that your view of competition is about escaping reality...but really all you are doing is reflecting the very reality that you're trying to escape. You think that competition is fundamentally about being better than someone else because you live in an economic system and society based upon that very same premise. Really, what's the difference between U.S. society, a game of Monopoly, and your understanding of sports? Very little.
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