We’ve spoken on this blog before about how public relations is less about advertising and more about building associations about brand.
Branding and marketing are distinctly different.
Marketing is the strategic implementation of what you want your brand to represent.
Over time, embedded, repetitive marketing and advertising can create the connotations and associations with your brand you want.
And interconnections are absolutely valuable in building that, even if the consequences that emerge over time aren’t what you expect…..
In the last few years, the pervasive and invasive increase in advertising within AFLM and related television shows around it has become overwhelming.
The rapid proliferation of gambling ads on Fox Sports in general has been part of an attempt to reframe the conversation about sports gambling.
Most gambling advertising will attempt to change the conversation around gambling by re-framing it as a social, leisure or entertainment pursuit.
A lot of gambling advertising is specifically designed to take away any problematic or troublesome implications of betting and posit it as all a bit of fun, something with no down side.
In Australia, one of the most popular framing devices is the notion of gambling as a past-time with mates, something that provides extra entertainment during the game while everyone yucks it up and has plenty of laughs down the pub.
Over time, gambling companies have sought likeable characters gambling – and none of this is by chance.
Each person used in advertising has a particular likeability (or forgive the crude term, “blokeability”) that is used to target (usually young) males to use their product.
Each gaming or betting company then uses that celebrity to create extra connotations around the company, reasons to use them.
Shaquille O’Neal promotes ease of use.
Mark Walhberg promotes “fun” (lets Ladbrokes the world).
Sportsbet uses James Brayshaw on voiceover (link to Triple M, blokeability…….) and subliminal “average winners” marketing….
Australian gambling adverts usually use a male voice over (ideally well known), have at least some kind of humor or “anti authoritarian” streak, bold color, chaotic noise, or one of the aforementioned celebrities.
Gambling is seen thus as fun, exciting, providing adrenalin.
Providing escapism……something to do in a lockdown maybe….
If all this is understood, it makes the implementation of gambling and betting into AFLM coverage easier to understand.
Fox Footy has always had an association with betting companies.
No one who saw Matty Campbell donning an akubra and pretending to drink a brew while promoting the “Rural Round bet of the week” is likely to forget it.
Howev
Haynesplaining 