Post-Super Bowl/Pro Bowl tidbits, wrap-up
+ Super Bowl XLIV wasn’t just a huge event for TV, it – along with the Pro Bowl – helped Sun Life Financial score from its brand new naming rights deal with the Miami Dolphins’ home stadium, according to Joyce Julius, which measures sponsor exposure. The Michigan firm says the two games helped the Toronto-based financial services and insurance company, which signed the naming rights deal Jan. 20, realize more than $27 million in exposure in TV broadcasts and media coverage. CBS’ telecast of the Super Bowl was responsible for 36 percent of Sun Life’s exposure with ESPN’s Pro Bowl broadcast adding another 5 percent. Combined, Joyce Julius reported, the Sun Life logo got 17 minutes and three seconds of airtime and was mentioned 25 times. The company measured the exposure against what advertising during the broadcasts would cost and added in exposure from other media coverage.
+ Saints QB and Super Bowl XLIV MVP Drew Brees already went to Disney World for the post-championship ad and was part of the parade in New Orleans last night that some estimates say attracted as many as 800,000 people. His marketability should skyrocket, experts say. In his Super Bowl XLIV Sports Marketers’ Scouting Report, Bob Dorfman of Baker Street Advertising, wrote before Sunday’s game that Brees “has the most marketing potential of any Super Bowl XLIV player, and a win in Miami could vault him into the upper echelon of athlete endorsers.” Dorfman placed only Colts QB Peyton Manning higher on his endorsement list, but said this about Brees: “articulate, comfortable on camera, a genuinely nice guy, better looking than Peyton, and his cheek birthmark adds a distinctive touch.” Brees, the father of a toddler, is already starring in an online ad for Pampers, so Dorfman believes he’s a good bet for Gerber or Fisher-Price. He’s also in the running for the cover of Madden NFL 11. Since Brees is already known as "Breesus" around NOLA, Dorfman suggests “a Bank of America ad headline ‘Breesus Saves.’”
+ The Super Saturday Night concert on Fort Lauderdale Beach was so successful that some wonder whether the city’s lifting of its ban on open containers just for the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl should be extended. Watch my colleague Brittany Wallman’s video montage from the concert here.
CRAIG DAVIS In more than 33 years at the Sun Sentinel, Craig Davis has written about a wide variety of sports topics from baseball to yachting, fishing to triathlons, and also worked as a copy editor and page designer. Recently he reported on local sports, including running, swimming, cycling, equestrian and beach volleyball. He enjoys sports as a participant as well as a spectator, is active in the South Florida running scene plays in the curling club at Saveology Iceplex. This blog offers a glimpse at the business side of sports in the interest of enhancing enjoyment of the games and sporting options as a spectator as well as a participant.
