Melbourne Victory is one of the teams in the A League – Australia’s premier football (soccer) league.
This weekend in Melbourne, 2 Australian Rules Football (AFL) teams are playing off in the Grand Final. It’s the Australian equivalent of the Super Bowl – in excess of 100,000 fans watch live with millions more around the nation glued to TV screens.
Advertisement Rejected
Melbourne Victory play a game on Sunday – so they tried to take an advertisement in the Footy Record – the AFL Grand Final program magazine that gets read by the 100,000 fans on the Saturday.
The AFL, which has veto over what ads can appear in the magazine, refused the ad.
“…..we want to let our fans know…..”
“It’s a huge weekend for sport in town, a great celebration and we want to let all the fans know, especially the ones coming from interstate, about our game against Queensland on Sunday,” Victory chief executive Geoff Miles told Fox Sports.
“We got a call yesterday that the ad had been pulled. We understand that the reason was because we are a rival code and the AFL have a discretion to take out any ads that they’re not happy with.”
“We’re disappointed, we’re supporting the Storm this weekend, the (NRL grand final against Brisbane will be live) on the screens at Telstra Dome for all the fans.”
Excellent work Geoff and whoever is advising you!
$100,000 Coverage For Free
So now instead of taking a 5,000 advertisement, Melbourne Victory go to the media and get about $100,000 worth of coverage. For free. And they come out looking like the nice guys.
Loving your work Melbourne Victory.
Check out the full story here. Notice how Geoff covers all the important points:
- tells everyone when the game is
- tells others that his sport supports other codes (and he gives an example)
- make the AFL CEO look like a liar (or at least full of hot air)
A great example of different thinking generating excellent coverage – way more than the costly ad would have.
Cheers
I wonder if he was expecting to get knocked back when he signed up.. Good job either way 🙂
It’s a clever tactic. A bit like Godaddy who seem to consistently get lots of coverage for having their superbowl ads rejected.
All the publicity and none of the advertising cost.
The (almost) recent ads to see Australia are another good example. (Where the bloody hell did they go?)
They were rejected in England, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the aussie tourism people encouraged the english censors to ban it. They must have gotten 10 times the publicity because of that, easily!
Thanks for the feedback
Anthony, the Australian ad agency who made the “Where the bloody hell are you?” ad apparently got told before they even made the ad that they could use the word bloody or it would get banned.
So it appears their entire strategy was PR, not the ad. The ad gave them the PR and they milked it for all it was worth.