THE BIG SHILL
Rothschild, Matthew
The Big Shill Star athletes are the army's first draft choice BY MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD It's the fifth game of the NBA championship. Ralph Sampson has just acted out his Joe Frazier fantasy, and the...
...NFL games carry a price tag of about $160,000 for thirty seconds...
...The glamour of war...
...In fact, it was NBA Entertainment, not the Army or its ad agency, that proposed the vignettes for professional basketball games...
...The Army's advertising agency, N.W...
...We feel the clubs and the league have been abusing that right and impliedly using players for commercial, not promotional purposes," Briggs says...
...But they sweeten the Army's side of the deal by not charging for the vignette, which runs for thirty seconds prior to the regular thirty-second "Be All You Can Be" ad...
...So Weltman contacted the Army and N.W...
...Any student who participates in such a promotion, Evrard warns, may jeopardize his eligibility...
...In 1985, CBS proposed a package to us...
...says Ayer's Gene Lastorino...
...The logistics were complicated...
...Sports advertising is crucial to the Army's promotional campaigns, and the vignette ads take up between 25 and 50 per cent of the Army's sports budget...
...In the case of college players who were used, the Army appears to have violated NCAA regulations, thus jeopardizing the eligibility of the athletes...
...Evrard says the Army "is a commercial service that is trying to encourage people within the age range of recruitment to join this panicular organization...
...Segue to the Army's familiar "Be All You Can Be" commercial...
...Army...
...Now that's not a concept I happen to agree with, but CBS agreed to it...
...I have carte blanche," says Ken Sheil, the producer of the vignettes at NFL Films...
...They came to us and said we had an opening for such an ad...
...says John Hosier, associate sports information director at Notre Dame...
...The NFL Players Association is angry about this and other similar abuses by the league...
...A thirty-second advertisement during an NBA game runs about $40,000...
...When I started here, one of the things I wanted to do was these vignettes," says Arlene Weltman, who was vice president of NBA Entertainment at the time and is now vice president for sponsorship sales at NBA Properties...
...The player in the vignette is not endorsing the product...
...During televised NCAA football games, the Army highlighted twelve "student athletes" in vignettes preceding the "Be All You Can Be" pitch...
...The additional aura of achievement and excellence generated by the vignettes makes the viewing audience more receptive to the advertising message that follows...
...Bird is just one of twenty-seven NBA players the Army used as front-men for its recruiting effort during last year's season...
...His name's being used without approval...
...nor, it seems, was their permission obtained...
...Ayer wanted the vignettes to precede Army commercials because we felt that they would create a better atmosphere for delivery of the Army's message of inner growth and leadership," says Gene Las-torino, account executive at Ayer...
...Segue to "Be All You Can Be...
...It started with the NFL," says one of the persons involved in the campaign...
...Last season, the Army enlisted players from the ranks not only of the NBA but also from NFL and NCAA football...
...Here is how the vignette ran on January 12, 1986: "An inspiration in Chicago's drive to the NFC title game has been the play of Number 19, quarterback Jim McMahon...
...By unselfishly going beyond the normal duties of a quarterback, Jim McMahon is the best he can be...
...It was an honor to be chosen for such a thing...
...Sheil prepares a vignette featuring one of the players who will appear in the nationally televised game during which the advertisement runs...
...Why weren't the players paid, or even notified about the Army's commandeering of their names and likenesses...
...Footage shows McMahon scrambling, getting tackled, bouncing back, then cuts to McMahon catching a touchdown pass.] His willingness to pay any price to move the football forward even extends to being a receiver on the Bears' half-back option...
...NFL Films would edit the footage and write the script, and then clear it with Ayer...
...What the Army worries about is selling the Army to young adult males...
...But Briggs says such advertisements as the Army's violate this provision...
...Cut again, and Bird hits a long jump shot...
...the pride of national service, the adventure of travel no longer turn the trick...
...Ralph Sampson has just acted out his Joe Frazier fantasy, and the Houston Rockets have surged by the Boston Celtics, 52-to-41, with three minutes and forty-four seconds left to play in the first half...
...All the ads, whether for football or basketball, end with the statement that the featured athlete is "the best he can be...
...And since there's no draft to swell the ranks of America's fighting men, more clever advertising techniques arc needed...
...As far as the NFL ads go, players aren't paid and their permission is not sought...
...We asked for space in the fall schedule, and they came to us with a product called 'student athlete* " Lastorino says CBS produced the vignettes, though the network denies it...
...In the Rams-Bears playoff game last year," Sheil says, "I had [Bear quarterback Jim] McMahon all ready...
...He's playing for the U.S...
...It was a calculated effort to tap the prestige of these stars for recruiting purposes...
...We were trying to play off the "Be All You Can Be" theme...
...This isn't live action, and Bird's not playing for the Celtics...
...What I thought was, what a wonderful theme for achievers...
...I watched the games, and the Army was advertising already with the 'Be All You Can Be' theme...
...provided such publicity and promotion does not in itself constitute an endorsement by the player of a commercial product...
...We want to have the players regain a certain control of themselves...
...There was never a question of participating," says Heisler...
...With the athlete campaign, the Army has hit upon perhaps the ideal way of luring boys into fatigues...
...Notre Dame's star running back, was the other athlete from South Bend who appeared in an Army vignette...
...Suddenly, the camera zeroes in on Larry Bird, who executes one of his patented passes...
...The vignette is considered program time," says Larre Barrett, ABC's vice president of sports sales, who acknowledges that the networks do not charge for it...
...The days of "Uncle Sam Wants You" are long gone...
...It was just a matter of the CBS people coming to us," says Heisler...
...it ranks as the eighty-ninth largest advertiser on the air...
...To our mind we are not saying Larry Bird is endorsing the Army...
...The Army's slick advertising drive began three years ago, when an Ayer account executive seized on the idea as an effective recruiting device...
...CBS filmed him walking around campus and studying: the ad ran during the Notre Dame-Miami game on November 30...
...That's an implied endorsement," says Lee Fentress of Advantage International, the agent for Moses Malone, another player the Army has turned into an unwitting shill...
...All told, some seventy athletes were drafted as flacks for the Army...
...Its 1986 budget for television ads is $22.6 million...
...And all during the game, John Madden [the announcer] was raving about how great McMahon was...
...To come up with the names and obtain the footage, Ayer contacted NFL Films, a branch of the league, which scoured its files for the best clips on each player...
...Ayer, and the basketball campaign was under way, with NBA Entertainment producing the vignettes...
...By deftly transforming those heroes into warriors, the Army may hoodwink a whole new generation of soldiers...
...The days of "Larry Bird Wants You" are upon us...
...CBS and ABC don't allow the ads to show a player giving a direct pitch for joining the Army...
...But the NCAA considers it an infraction, not an honor, "That is not within the purview of the rules of the NCAA," says Rick Evrard, director of legislative services for the NCAA...
...We chose athletes that were perceived as real hard-working, who made the most of their abilities, who gave 100 per cent—all-out-effort guys...
...But at Notre Dame, where two players were filmed...
...Notre Dame's defensive tackle Greg Dingers was one of the featured athletes...
...ABC is not happy about giving the vignettes away free, but the network goes along with the arrangement...
...But the networks maintain the fiction that the vignette is not part of the advertisement...
...The Army loved it...
...The Army, though, doesn't seem to worry about jeopardizing players' eligibilily or misusing players' names and likenesses...
...The initial campaign, which began in September 1983, featured such players as John Riggins, Gale Sayers, Joe Theisman, Walter Payton, and Dick Butkus...
...They may be taking advantage of Moses...
...CBS actually came and filmed the athletes on campus...
...Aver, the Army's ad agency, the idea actually came from the network...
...The NCAA's constitution prohibits the use of a player's "skill or reputation to endorse any commercial product...
...The vignettes, provided gratis by the networks, reach tens of millions of viewers a shot, many of them avid male sports fans between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four—the primary recruitment targets...
...But wait...
...CBS pushed hard to film the ad for the Notre Dame-Michigan Game on September 14...
...What I write is pretty much what goes...
...Worshipping star athletes is like mother's milk to young males in America...
...Once the NFL ads took off, the NBA wanted a piece of the action...
...The NBA Players Association goes along...
...The Players Association has considered filing suit on the general issue of commercial abuses, and Briggs says it will definitely be a matter for future collective bargaining...
...Next season, the Army plans to continue its series of football and basketball ads on CBS and ABC, and it hopes to bring a similar campaign to cable television...
...but it was too expensive...
...The Bears pride themselves on toughness and the resourceful McMahon complements that...
...Larry Bird never stops striving to be the best he can be," the male voice-over tells the viewer...
...But Bird and the other athletes weren't paid for their appearances...
...The Army gets a break from the networks because it buys so much advertising time...
...We've had a problem here for some time with the excessive use by the NFL of players' names and likenesses," says Buckley Briggs, staff counsel for the Players Association...
...CBS apparently did show up with its camera crew...
...They wanted to go into the classroom," Alan Pinkett...
...Ayer, came up with the idea of using athletes to promote the Army, even though virtually none of the athletes had actually seen military service...
...Last fall, (he Army expanded its athlete advertising into the college ranks...
...And if that's what the competition is doing, it limits what we can do...
...The man Boston turns to in the clutch, Matthew Rothschild is managing editor of The Progressive...
...We don't pay the players and we don't get permission from them...
...According to N.W...
...And all prices go up during playoffs and championship games...
...They have the right to use the names and likenesses of players to promote the game of basketball in situations like that," says Charles Grantham, executive vice president of the Players Association...
...The overall package cost from CBS and ABC, including vignettes, is not more expensive than it would be without them," says Ayer's Lastorino...
...I never even ask," says Ken Sheil, the producer at NFL Films...
...Under the standard NFL player contract, the "player grants to the club and league separately and together the authority to use his name and picture for publicity and promotional appearances...
...The footage that is used is NBA property," says Arlene Weltman...
Vol. 50 • August 1986 • No. 8
