Thursday, October 8, 2009

Striking Out...on a Missed Opp

Unfortunately many of my friends from college are from what I like to refer to as the armpit (usually I use a more inappropriate part of the human body that rhymes with ain’t) of America....Wisconsin. Like me, many of these friends care more about sports than someone probably should. As you can imagine this has led to some pretty heated arguments and some serious name calling.

Because this group of Wisconsin loving scum is so dedicated to their teams, they are pretty crafty in their tactics for finding ways to watch their games despite living in the great state of Minnesota (except for the Milwaukee Bucks…there has really never been any name calling over the highly celebrated boarder battle between the great Milwaukee Bucks and the dominant Minnesota Timberwolves, not sure why).

One of these strategies is having someone sign up for MLB.TV allowing them to many of them to log in under the same information and watch Milwaukee Brewers games on their respective laptops anywhere with an internet connection (MLB.TV might want to address this). Often times my cheese loving brethren watched these games in the living room while I was busy rooting for a team competing in a real baseball league, the American League, rather than that silly powder puff boy scout AAAA league they call the National League.

What struck my advertising fancy was what happens in between innings during these MLB.TV broadcast games. You might be thinking, “What happens in between innings? Don’t they just show stupid ads or something? That’s not worth getting all worked up over.”

Guess again. They show this…




MLB.TV chooses to inform you that a commercial break is in progress. How ridiculous is this? I have not read into any of the legal ramifications for MLB.TV, but I am guessing that it would not be unreasonable to think that they could utilize this space for more than a “no sh*t Sherlock” statement like this.

I would also guess that someone watching this game, who has probably watched a baseball game on TV before, would not be appalled by a form of advertising in between innings.

How about a simple can of Miller Lite with a logo? I bet some of those dirty Wisconsinites I talked about earlier might even have some of those delicious adult beverages in their buzzard cart smelling mini fridges. They might even be persuaded to go and grab one of those cold brews with one hand in their pocket and the other one on their laptop.

How about ads promoting ticket packages for that team or a local team? Or how about anything sports or dude related?

This appears to be an opportunity lost for MLB.TV, especially considering the fact that the online medium allows for much more creative ideas than the off the top of my head crap I just suggested.

I realize that people are beaten over the head with advertising everywhere they go, but when you are telling the consumer that an ad is being run right now, it might be OKto run one of your own.