Taken from their Sweepstakes page

I know what you’re saying, what in the world is a Fathead Jr. anyway? I know I was when I was first contacted to help promote this sweepstakes! In layman’s terms, a Fathead is a life-size wall decals done in superb quality High Def images that are safe for walls as they peel ‘n stick and taken from memorable moments. Disclaimer: in return for running this ad, I’m getting a free sample (Fathead Jr. for my boys ages 4 and from Fathead/Smile.ly.

About the Sweepstakes

The following advertisement comes directly from their site & the sweepstakes ends on April 30^th (2010):

We think that’s quite generous on our part considering we don’t even know you yet. Still, we’re sure to be friends and if giving away free stuff is what it takes to be friends, then we’re happy to do it. This sweepstakes was specially created for people like you and is not advertised anywhere else (not even on fathead.com) so don’t go blurting this out unless you’re planning on inviting everyone you know. If you do, make sure to include a link to http://www.fathead.com/sweepstakes/mlb

EXTRA SUPER BONUS – You only have to enter once but you’re eligible for the drawing every day. If you win then you have to sit down and let someone else win – it’s only fair.

$500 FATHEAD GIFT CERTIFICATE. Once we’re done giving away a FREE Fathead Jr. every day we’re going to draw the grand prize winner who gets a $500 Fathead Gift Certificate! With $500 you can get enough Fatheads to do a 2,514 square foot house or two downtown lofts plus the service elevator.

Want to know more about Fathead? Click here.

Want to do some shopping? Click here.

Want a chance to win? Click here.

In addition to the sweepstakes, here are some more special offers from the kind people at Fathead…

• Our 15% off coupon code for select Fathead products, SML15C
• Our free shipping coupon code, SMLSHP1

Please take advantage of these special offers and the sweepstakes while there are still days remaining in the month of April and I hope you enjoy them!

If anyone has any of these products, please tell us about them in the comments section below!

First, as a writer for Baseball Reflections, we will add your blog to our blogroll.

Second, you will get your own “About the Author” section above every post where we could provide you with a backlink or two to your blog or profile of your “other” writing.

Third, if you agree to write for Baseball Reflections on a weekly basis (column) then we will provide a graphical link of about 300×100 (height can be negotiated) on our right sidebar about the Stub Hub advertising in addition to the previous two benefits.

We will now allow for multiple writers to cover the same team as long as they are not posting on the same topic or scheduled to post on the same day.

We are also open to new idea/angles for weekly columns or other regularly scheduled articles.

We are also looking for book and movie reviews just so long as they are of the baseball variety.

All submitted articles will be submitted to the content director fr editing and approval. Not every article will be posted, but then again we haven’t turned anyone away yet. We do not allow articles on gambling or betting and we do not believe in adding any racy imagery in attempt to gain traffic.

Any further details can be asked by e-mailing me at peter@baseballreflections.com

When MLB picks their players for their nation-wide advertisements, they try to get those who are from the largest markets. In all likelihood, if a player in Kansas City is producing on the field exactly as much as a player from New York, the player from the Big Apple will have the better chance of gaining national recognition through the league’s advertisements (Vrooman, 1997, p. 600). There has been no debate from the owners in the league over this issue of unfair treatment because of the recent revenue sharing agreement. The old policy of MLB was to treat the revenue gained through such avenues as the MLB Store in New York City and MLB.com as going towards whatever team’s memorabilia was purchased. This led to the teams with more popular players selling more merchandise and making money to purchase more players who were more likely to be popular. Since this was the case, a perpetual cycle was created which made parody in baseball really hard to achieve because “the relative player costs for large revenue clubs, of course, are still higher than those of small revenue clubs” (Vrooman, 1997, p. 598). This meant that it became increasingly more difficult for teams from small markets to be able to compete with those from larger markets due to the growing difference in the money available to spend on free agent talent. Some of the owners from the small market teams brought this issue to the league office, and one of their arguments centered on of the league’s advertising with players from larger markets (Vrooman, 1997, p. 599). It was because of their argument that the league now has a policy that divides the revenue gained through these sources evenly to all of the teams in the league. This process is called “revenue sharing, which allocates money from large market teams to small market teams in an effort to level the financial playing field” (Arcella, 1997, p. 2424).

MLB also uses the players from the larger markets in their advertisements because it has been shown that the league benefits from these teams being showcased. When teams from larger markets are in the playoffs, the ratings for those games are much higher than if small or mid-level teams are playing. While advertising a certain player cannot directly help that player, or that player’s team, play any better, it may make it more enticing for those players who are free agents and enjoy the limelight to lean towards playing in one of those larger markets (Arcella, 1997, p. 2444). While this has not been found to have any supreme effect on why players chose one team over another, it could become a deciding factor if players’ sponsors offer them more money to go to a larger market.

While the league has been shown to have a preference for using a single player in their advertisements, they have illustrated that they are not arbitrarily choosing the players who appear in their advertisements. They will not use a player with off-the-field issues just because they are producing on the field. They have also shown over time that it takes a lot for an entire team to be the focus of one of their advertising campaigns. This stems mainly from their idea that while a single player from a team can appeal to many geographical audiences, an entire team has the specific city tied to it too much to be able to appeal to outsiders. When the league does their blanket advertising, they attempt to appeal to as many people as possible in one advertisement (Huddle, 1943, p. 109). This is why advertisements will feature four or five players from different teams from large markets who usually have different ethnicities in order to entice as many people as possible to watch or attend their product or event. It should be noted that the advertisements put out by individual teams are an entirely different issue, because they are not trying to appeal to an entire nation. It is because of this that they can better use their entire team as a force to appeal to potential fans. While MLB has dedicated much time and effort to the advertising projects that they have undertaken during the league’s history, they always have to be aware of how their advertisements are going to affect the certain ethnic or economic groups that they are targeting.

Bill Jordan is a contributing writer to BaseballReflections.com and can be reached by e-mail at billjordaniv@yahoo.com.

PS – There will be a bibliography for the sources after this post.

Part 1 of 2

Companies have been using their own workers to advertise their product, even if they are not celebrities, for some time now. A much publicized Tylenol advertisement came out just a few years ago in which Tylenol used their own workers to sell the product. This technique is also used by major sports leagues across the country as they try to get people into the stadium and their stores, but professional sports leagues use this idea a little differently because their employees are the reason people come to the stadium. Their task is to pick the players whom they believe to be the most influential among their target audience and have them in the forefront of their advertising campaigns. Even though the players work for the organization, they may receive extra money from the league for being in an advertisement, especially if it is something that takes a large amount of time. This is interesting because most assume that all of a player’s spokesman revenues come from outside the league, but for some, it can come internally (Scully, 1974, p. 926).

The hard part for the league is to portray these players in a positive light to everyone around the country, whether they play for that fan’s specific team or not. While MLB seems to have their main strategy, they have shown over time that they are not incapable of altering their efforts for something out of the ordinary, such as an occurrence of an unexpected record breaking performance. If there has been one constant in how MLB has used their advertising over time, the message has always been one of getting people either to the ballpark or to a store to purchase the material. Even though the league has used different strategies to illustrate this goal, their overall message has always stayed the same.

The advertising from professional baseball has changed much over time and has had some major hurdles to jump since other leagues proved to be able to vie for the population’s constant interest. At the outset of professional baseball, very little advertising was done, especially on the national stage. There may have been lists in the paper of when the local games were played, but much of that was more reporting than anything else. At first, the games may have been reported on the local radio stations as something to do that afternoon, but it was hardly as if advertising was being pushed at that time. The extension of baseball advertising grows along the lines with more popping up of entertainment that mediums competed for people’s interest. From the beginning, the major point of the league’s advertising was to somehow “substantially connect to sports, baseball, and the local team” (Johar, Pham, & Wakefield , 2006, p. 187). This became much different in later years, however, as baseball moved away from having a local team emphasis. This was especially surprising since most of the companies that used MLB as an avenue for advertising spent a lot of energy trying to figure out how they were going to be able to relate to the local team. According to a study done in 2006, being able to relate the product to the local team was the second most important aspect of advertising to outside companies, but for the league itself, it was not even in the top five (Johar et al., 2006, p. 187).

Ever since baseball really had to start advertising, they have stayed with the idea of using their star players to promote the game across the country, regardless of the quality of the team they played on. What was very interesting about baseball’s advertising is that they very rarely attempted to use an entire team to promote the league, but almost always focused on individual players. When baseball started advertising, since there was not nearly as much mass media as there is today, they tried to focus on a sense of community with the local team (Simons, 2007, p. 13). To do this, they would show the players as if they were everyday people living in the same community and facing the same issues, as the fans, usually on billboards and in print media. Historically though, at this point, these players were almost like regular people because they did not make inordinate amounts of money and their faces were not on the television every hour. This made an advertising campaign much easier than it would be if it were attempted today.

More recently, the league has marketed single players nationwide and used pertinent statistics to do so. Over the last twenty years, the league has followed players nearing milestones much more frequently than they used to, and they have used it as one of their major strategies for advertising. Their strategy was a bit different, however, when former San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds was coming close to surpassing the all-time homerun record (Cuneo & Tomaselli, 2007, p. 8). This was a very special situation for the league, because normally they would have produced advertising about this that would have been broadcast to a very wide audience, but considering Bonds was close to being under a federal investigation and was suspected by many to have taken performance enhancing drugs, the promotion was not nearly as great as was expected. During this time period there were suggestions that perhaps this momentous event should be ignored; some even said outright, “Major League Baseball should not plan marketing around San Francisco Giants superstar Barry Bonds as he draws closer to. . . the greatest record in sports” (Thomaselli, 2006, p. 4). In essence, MLB almost ignored this amazing feat by one of the game’s biggest players, and even baseball commissioner Bud Selig claimed he had no interest in attending the game where Bonds would break the record.

This was in no way true in 1998, when MLB was faced with a situation where they marketed what was happening on the field more than any other time in the history of the game. During that time period, there were a number of players who were on the verge of making history, which gave MLB new avenues for marketing their game. Halfway through the season, it seemed as though three players, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Ken Griffey Jr., had a shot at breaking Roger Marris’ thirty-seven-year-old single season homerun record (Butterworth, 2007, p. 228). For much of the season, the advertising department of MLB practically ignored everything else that was going on in baseball at the time and chose to focus on this historic chase. One of the ideas that they attempted to do as it became obvious that it was a two man race between Sosa and McGwire was to try to relate these players to the everyday American people. Through this technique, the league “hailed McGwire as the embodiment of the rugged individualist and Sosa as an exemplar of the American Dream” (Butterworth, 2007, p. 230). Even with the Yankees on pace for one of the best seasons in MLB history, they were virtually overlooked by the league’s advertising, as McGwire and Sosa were the main focus, especially during the second half of the season.

Bill Jordan is a contributing writer to BaseballReflections.com and can be reached by e-mail at billjordaniv@yahoo.com.

PS – There will be a bibiliography for the sources after the final post.