I had always been under the impression March Madness was called so, because millions of Americans were going nuts for a few weeks a year by drinking and screaming their brains out watching a bunch of sweaty kids throwing a ball into a basket. The entire annual ritual is still somewhat of a mystery to me, as all 64 colleges, and their fanatic fan bases must simply understand at some point that there will only be one national champion at the end, not 64. Oh well.
A few days back, I noticed that March Madness was also spilling over from the court, and the sports arenas to our TV screens. Watching one of the first, or second round games - I don't even remember which one it was - with the second quarter coming to an end, it was time for yet another round of brilliant half-time analysis, filled with intelligent comments and pure substance.
The five minute commercial break ends, and a short trailer announces:
"The AT&T Half-Time show is presented to you by AT&T".
Before we continue, let us read the last sentence one more time:
"The AT&T Half-Time show is presented to you by AT&T".
No f...ing way! By AT&T? Really? I would have never thought. Thanks for telling me. Because for a split second there, I almost thought it was Verizon who presented to me the AT&T half-time show.
I don't even know where to begin my tirade about the stupidity at work here. Either the makers of this blurb of brilliance had been giving empirical research data showing them how dumb the tv audience (or the sports-watching audience?) is, or they themselves were too dumb to understand the redundancy of their brainchild.
Besides the fact that it is just plain stupid, it doesn't add any extra value other than mentioning AT&T one more time. We all know they exist. After all, they tell us a million times every day. So throwing out the brand name cannot really be the reason, can it?
Fast forward for a moment to the point where the FCC approves of the AT&T and T-Mobile merger that is currently in the works. Then, and only then, this could have played out just fine, with a nice twist. Imagine for a moment:
"The AT&T half-time show. Presented to you by T-Mobile." With some clever line attached to it. But that, I will leave to a copywriter. Not the one who wrote the one above.
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