PR 101

So  I was scratching my head, trying to decide what I was going to rant about. I am about to throw up my hands when I stumbled across a survey on personal products as I am going to a favorite website. It is survey on personal products. It wants to know whether or not I will buy a certain deodorant because its maker sponsors rock concerts.

I have to say that as criteria for buying a personal hygiene product, knowing that the manufacturer  sponsors concerts is not even on the list. I tend to select the brands that perform the best according to my needs.

As I was taking the survey, I started thinking about companies that sponsor concerts or buy stadium-naming rights or plaster their names all over race cars. I know the theory is that potential customers will buy a product because of the company sponsorship. Frankly, I don’t buy it – figuratively or literally.

As an aside, I have to again laud my Green Bay Packers. They have played in Lambeau Field since 1957. They still play in Lambeau Field. There is no Lambeau Field sponsored by Acme Meatpacking. The Packers will not allow their stadium to be sullied by some company seeking to market its products. Ditto for the New York Yankees.

I think social media has changed consumers’ attitudes. Companies have, for the most part, learned they have to sell a quality product. If they don’t, the Internet will rise up and slap them down. It doesn’t matter whether the logo is plastered on the side of a race car.

I think the companies who spend some of their money on sponsorships are, for the most part, wasting their money.

There is an exception to that though. If I see a company supporting a cause I agree with, I am more likely to consider their product. My wife and I back a number of charitable organizations, including the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. If I see a company contributing to those organizations, I will take a look at what they are selling.

Even then, I will take the time to check the company out. There are companies that will make charitable contributions as a way to hide their real image. Tobacco companies, as an example, can make all the contributions they want, I will never buy their products.

Which brings me to another point. I will sometimes not buy a product because of something the company has endorsed. I am not going to discuss my beliefs here. But if a company endorses something I feel is morally wrong, I am not going to buy their product.

Frankly, I think it would be a lot smarter if companies used their endorsement dollars to make products. They would probably make a lot more money that way.

So, I am watching television the other night. A commercial pops up for the Chrysler minivan. One of the lines the narrator says is that the van is “the mother of all minivans.” That makes me sit up and take notice.

I object to using that line for two reasons: the late Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein coined one the phrase. That’s like quoting Hitler in an ad. Two, it’s just lazy writing. Rather than come up with something original, the copywriter fell back on something easy. Of course, the client approved the script. But, that’s no excuse.

Using clichés is never acceptable in my book – except in an ad that is deliberate satire. On that matter, I beg you if you are creative not to try satire unless your name is John Stewart or Jonathan Swift. Most people are just not any good at it.

Getting back to clichés, there are so many phrases that shouldn’t be used; yet they are. Let’s run down a few:

• “To be perfectly honest – so you have perfected honesty. What imperfect honesty, lying?
• Pushing the envelope – that phrase originally came from test pilots, who were pushing the limits of their planes. It meant they could die if something went wrong. That is not how that phrase is used now. You really thinking you are going to die with the new campaign?
• For the record – a legal phrase that originally meant something to be entered into the court record. I have heard and read this in too many campaigns. Is this campaign meeting some kind of legal requirement?
• World famous – I see this on restaurants a lot. So, the next time I am in Dublin, can I ask what they think of Joe’s Hot Dogs?
• Fantastic and amazing – Usually used when describing some new product, such as a cleaning soap. I got news for all of you, chemically all soap is exactly the same. I am rarely amazed by ketchup or beer bottles.
• Prices will never be this low again – yeah, until the next sale. That one is a favorite of car dealers. While I am the subject of car dealers, why do they always shout? Why would I buy anything from anyone who shouts at me?
• We always give 110 percent – mathematically impossible.

I could go on, but I am curious what clichés you crazy. If I get enough responses, I will publish them.

I am a soccer fan. I grew up the playing and watching the game. I only quit playing because I dislocated my right shoulder for the second time.  I was glued to my television during the entire World Cup, watching every game I could.

So, I was really happy to find out how active FIFA and ESPN were in their use of social media to push the beautiful game in the United States. I think it definitely increased interest in the entire tournament. It was an impressive effort that paid off.

For you non-fans, FIFA is an acronym that stands for The International Federation of Association Football in English. In French it stands for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, hence FIFA. The word soccer comes from the word Association. The English shortened “Association” to soccer. Don’t ask me why, I’m Irish by descent.

ESPN stands for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Enough with the language lesson.

Overall, viewership was up 41 percent from the English-language World Cup telecasts four years ago, according to the WorldCast website. Coverage on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged a 2.1 rating, 2.3 million households and 3.2 million viewers for the 64 World Cup games. The rating was up 31 percent from the 1.6 posted four years ago, while households increased 32 percent from 1.7 million and viewers rose from 2.3 million, the site said.

“Viewership in the U.S. was at its highest when the home team was playing in the tournament,” WorldCast said. “Through the first 50 games, the rating was up 48 percent, households increased 54 percent and viewers increased 60 percent.”

I should note that attracting viewers in the rest of the world is not an issue. According to ABC News 700 million people watched the championship game between Spain and the Netherlands. Show me any American television event that attracts even 25 percent of that kind of worldwide audience.

FIFA would like to make more inroads into the USA. We are, after all, the wealthiest country on Earth. Soccer is growing in popularity as a youth sport. We would seem to be a natural place for FIFA to focus.

FIFA and ESPN are run by very smart groups of marketing people. They knew if they encouraged the use of social media good things would happen. They apparently do not worry about things like trademark infringement. The results speak for themselves.

ESPN’s Facebook World Cup had over 600,000 people who “liked” the page. I know don’t where that ranks among Facebook sports fan pages, but it is impressive number. The Facebook soccer page has over two million fans. I didn’t count because who has that kind of time, but there has to be over a thousand pages of tweets with the hash tag “worldcup.”

Googling the term “world cup soccer blogs” produced 49 million hits. Now, as a blogger myself, I am willing to bet that there are not 49 million blogs about the World Cup. But, if there is even 10 percent of that number, that is impressive.

A quick YouTube search found just over 800,000 videos that somehow mention the World Cup.

You get the idea. As I said in a blog last week, FIFA knows what use to work won’t necessarily work anymore. So it moved on to a new method and it worked.

Although this wasn’t a rant, I do have one note. On Sunday, a friend and I rode our bikes to Port Washington, Wis. – 26 miles north of where I live. We stopped to enjoy that small city’s wonderful lakefront and marina.

Like any public area, there are posted rules of public conduct. What brought me up short was a sign that read: “Violations Will Be Enforced!”  So apparently rule breaking is required?