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TAC - Keep the support alive

Last weekend I went to the Melbourne Victory game. There is a league wide policy that at every potentially controversial moment in the match, instead of showing the highlights on the stadium screen, it shows an advertisement. I presume this is to prevent the referees from being undermined should they make an incorrect decision and are subsequently shown up for it. This season the Melbourne Victory have a partnership with the Traffic Accident Commission (TAC), so that every time this happens a TAC ad is shown with the words “Keep the support alive”.

During the game, one of the players received a straight red card and instead of showing us the replay we are forced to watch the advert. Sitting in the stands, there had seemed to be minimal contact between the players and without any further information to go on, the home crowd soundly boo’ed the referee. Later in the game, the Victory keeper makes a fine save with the opposing striker bearing down on him. The two players collide slightly, instead of showing the replay we are once again treated to the ad, instead of a replay of some good play. It wasn’t until I got home later that I found out what the red card was given for. The combination of this policy and this advertisement makes the fans at the game resent the TAC instead of respecting them for supporting the team.

I know that effective advertising comes in a range of different forms from entertaining to infuriating and that repetition is one of the many tools often used by advertising executives. But particularly with this sort of message, trying to make people drive safely and not under the influence of alcohol, having it rammed down your throat repeatedly has a very negative effect upon how people will perceive the message.

On another football related topic, the cable sports channel Setanta, recently won the rights to show the away games of the English football team in their World Cup qualifying campaign. Something that would have been quite a coo over the domination that the Sky network holds in the UK.

They were running a tag line of “The Only Place You Will See England in Belarus in October”. While they were able to sell on the coverage in Wales and Northern Ireland, none of the free to air networks in England were willing to pay their asking price. Given the England sides fairly dismal performances of late, this might have not been a significant issue. But the game away to Croatia turned out to be one of their best performances in recent years. Setanta were actively trying to keep coverage of the game off youtube and the like. Proclaiming your exclusivity while large swathes of the nations fans are unable to watch a classic game isn’t a very good way to build your brand.

Several days after the match, Setanta released a 30 minute highlights package to the free to air networks as a means of trying to assuage the jilted fans. But by this stage the damage had already been done.

I found this post which outlines a much more sensible strategy that Setanta could have pursued.

Decline to sell the rights to the highlights to other channels, I agree with that.

Put the goals free-to-view streaming in high quality on the Setanta.com website as the only place to watch them. Make it a good experience, make the quality excellent and allow users to watch it as many times as they like and send to their friends

Put clickable pre-roll and post-roll adverts on the clips that promote Setanta subscription packages and allow the customer to click-through and order if they want to buy

Mobilise your media sales team to contact all your best sponsors and sell banner-advert space on the web page at an extreme premium, as the best and only place that the 60m residents of England can watch the clip. The revenue would be more that than you have ever made from a webpage

PR-the-arse off the fact that you are declining rights-sales and making the content free for fans. What nice guys you are.

I think that companies should be more careful when it comes to putting their brand in between a sports fan and their passion.