It All Ads Up, Part 1
In the good old days, baseball teams typically used one pitcher per game. Some guy named Pud Galvin would come out and shove for nine innings or until it got too dark to play, and then he’d come out and do the same thing the next day. At the turn of the 20th century, more than 80% of starts resulted in complete games. But teams gradually realized that pitchers performed better and stayed healthier when used in short bursts, and the workhorse starter gradually gave way to larger, more specialized pitching staffs. These days, complete games make up about 1% of starts.
This shift is widely understood by Baseball Knowers to be a Bad Thing, and much energy has been expended trying to resurrect the traditional role of the starting pitcher. Frequent pitching changes add time, suppress offense, and break up the continuity of the game. And while I grew up watching the game’s peak reliever area and so am generally inured to its effects, I can say one thing for sure about watching the pitching parade: when it’s time for a change, think SpeeDee Oil Change and Auto Service, your trusted oil change, tune-up, and smog experts.
SpeeDee Oil, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Grease Monkey International, has sponsored every pitching change in every Giants game for as long as I’ve been a fan. I can find clips of Giants broadcasters reciting that slogan going back to 2010, though some elder netizens remember it at least since the 90s. Let’s estimate, conservatively, that I’ve watched 50 Giants games per year since 2009. With teams averaging around four pitchers (three changes) per game in that span, I’ve heard that tag some 4,200 times.
And that’s how I ended up owning a drop-shipped SpeeDee raglan. Just look at that cute little oil can! He’s spilling oil (presumably his very blood) in his haste to provide you with auto service you can trust. Advertising works, it turns out.
While baseball doesn’t have quite the same reputation as the other major sports for being fully infiltrated by advertisements, there are nonetheless plenty of branded intrusions to the viewing experience (and many more total impressions over a 162-game season).
So with that in mind, I sat down to watch last night’s Giants game (a good one, featuring a Patrick Bailey walk-off dinger) and catalogued every brand to appear on-screen. Here’s what I noticed:
There were fewer sponsored segments than I thought.
By my (surely incomplete) count, 66 companies are paying for space on Giants TV broadcasts or in the stadium. I broke down these appearances into six categories:
Sponsored segments (any recurring part of the broadcast with a named sponsor)
Ad reads (ads narrated by Kruk & Kuip, without a game event tie-in)
TV graphics (ads or logos shown on-screen during play without narration)
Ad break bumpers (ads shown narrated by a non-Kruk/Kuip voice, upon returning from commercial)
In-stadium ads (permanent signage or digital advertising visible in the stadium)
Other sponsorships (jersey logos, named stadium locations visible on the broadcast, etc)
My sense going in was that just about every in-game event had a named sponsor. But when the 21st out of the game came and went without mention of Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beer from 21st Amendment Brewing, I realized that my memories of radio and TV broadcasts must have melded over the years. (I’ll come back to do this analysis for a radio game soon.) Rather, I counted a sensible 16 sponsored segments. Most came in the first few minutes of the game: weather by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, lineups by Buick, defensive alignments by *your* Bay Area Chevy Dealers, and of course, the Nissan keys to the game.
After that, things quieted down but for a few sponsored stat and highlight packages (e.g. a “Pitching Decisions” highlight reel courtesy of Sage, an enterprise software company). There was one entry here that I swear I’d never seen before, the Arby’s Extra Innings Watch when the game continued scoreless into the eighth inning. Perhaps America’s least favorite fast food restaurant hopes to inspire some desperation DoorDash orders should the game go to extras?
The official sponsor is dead.
Official sponsorships are often the subject of ridicule among sports fans for their seemingly unnecessary micro-segmentation. I’d pay to be the Giants’ official beer, and maybe their official light beer, but how much is it worth to be the team’s official session IPA of weekday day games when both starters have ERAs under three?
Companies seem to have come to the same conclusion, as several brands in the same categories jockeyed for space on the broadcast rather than paying for exclusivity. Automakers (Buick, Toyota, Nissan, and Chevy) and beer companies (Lagunitas, Blue Moon, Corona, Budweiser, and Coors) are aware of the obvious synergies between their customer bases and the baseball-viewing public, and have flooded the zone accordingly. This being San Francisco, professional services companies and telecoms are also extremely well represented. In an era when one megacorporation is likely to own a dozen brands, I wondered whether this might have been a case of false competition, but a bit of further research confirms that the Giants are indeed accepting sponsorship dollars from several rivals in the same space.
Similarly, the ubiquitous insurance companies (AAA, State Farm, and Progressive) have each rented space in Oracle Park. Then my eye was caught by a logo on the left field wall that I couldn’t immediately identify. In the same way that Japanese companies flocked to advertise with the Angels because of Shohei Ohtani, it turns out that Hanwha Life Insurance of Korea is trying to capture the attention of new Giants fans lured by the signing of Jung-Hoo Lee. Of course, real Giants heads get their coverage from Heffernan Insurance Brokers, who dominate the radio broadcast and grabbed a couple of TV spots returning from commercial breaks.
What happens at the end of the Coke Slide?
For brands hoping to make a lasting impression, one would assume that a named sponsorship of a popular stadium location would be a worthy investment. But I’m less convinced of this having noticed last night, for the first time, that Molson Coors has been trying to make the “Coors Light Cove” happen. Stop trying to make the Coors Light Cove happen! The Cove belongs to Willie McCovey, the Landing belongs to Levi’s, and nothing belongs to those Quebecois-Coloradan pretenders.
Of course, that sort of name association is fungible. What is today the Coors Light Cove could tomorrow become the Samuel Adams Sound, for the right price. Just ask Cruise, the driverless car company that had a prime logo spot on Giants jerseys until its vehicles started hit-and-running San Francisco pedestrians and quickly lost its sponsorship deal.
But what happens if the Giants end their partnership with Coca-Cola, the longtime name and silhouette sponsor of the enormous slide on the left field concourse? Does Coke’s San Francisco pied-à-terre give them leverage in negotiating future sponsorship deals? Are the Giants mere prisoners of the cola wars? The mind boggles.
Best and Worst in Show
Throughout this two-hour, forty three-minute ad blitz disguised as sporting event, only a few times did I become overwhelmed by the realization that I as the viewer was truthfully the product for sale in every advertising transaction. But I’ll tell you what sure did give me that feeling: the periodic reminder that I could follow the Giants from anywhere using the NBC Sports App…brought to me by Toyota. What the hell is even that? The ads are metastasizing, spawning micro-advertisements within themselves! That realization made my blood run cold.
Dishonorable mention goes to the Giants themselves, who dispatched CEO Larry Baer to the broadcast booth for a stilted full-inning infomercial about the Giants’ property development being erected across the Cove. While I am genuinely thrilled to know I’ll soon be able to get an Ike’s sandwich mere steps from the ballpark, they sure could have sent out a more compelling figure to deliver that news. If you’re going to let a guy who assaulted his wife talk on the teevee, at least get the guy some media training.
Antepenultimate honor, as long as I’m at it, shall be awarded to The Organic Coup, which makes chicken sandwiches or something, and which leased a strip of wall directly behind home plate for this game. In plain white text, the ad displays their web address and the hashtag #organicallycocky. I get that wordplay is your part of your brand (coup = chicken coop? I shan’t be looking it up.) But I submit that while we’ve moved beyond the need for hashtags, we have not yet obviated the need for context in storytelling. Better luck next time.
The best ad experience of the night, SpeeDee excepted, belongs to UA Local 38 Plumbers and Pipefitters and their billboard out near the bleachers. Theirs also lacks any context to speak of, but it’s my blog and therefore my points to award the honorable pipefitters union. Good on you.
Olipop probiotic soft drink slide for the win!