I wrote a post last week for those unfamiliar with “The Super Bowl”, which is apparently some sort of sporting event that aired on television after the big Amanda Gorman poetry recital. From what I’m told, this sporting event features a variety of expensive advertisements for things like snack foods, beer, and trucks.

Recognizing that these companies aren’t necessarily the ones that need a big sales boost, Stephen Colbert did his best to create a similar commercial for a struggling small business. He chose an independent local bookstore to highlight, an essential part of any community that remains near and dear to all of us at The Scholarly Kitchen. Colbert pulled in a couple of celebrities for the ad below:

Did it work? According to the bookstore’s owner, she’s gone from worrying about going out of business to hiring extra help to fill orders. This offers evidence toward the counterintuitive notion that football can actually do some good in the world.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

4 Thoughts on "The Super Bowl Ad We Really Wanted to See"

So suuuuhhhweeeeeet! I’m in Kansas, my niece from Alabama is at App State ….and Foggy Pine is her favorite bookstore!

Separate from the Foggy Pine Bookstore experience, I think there’s a lesson to be learned for all of us pre, during and post pandemic.

Products and services don’t fall from a tree. There are people, families, economies behind them.

Consumer choice is power. When we press click or swipe a card, we are making more than a transaction, we are making a small decision that kicks off a course of action and a domino effect on the entities mentioned above.

My personal experience was when, immediately after the first lockdown, I decided to make a rather large investment into a road-racing bicycle and, instead of buying online, I decided to pay more to support the local pro shop just to learn that, when opening the box, my pro racing bike said (small in the frame) “Made in Taiwan”.

That was an aha moment for me and what triggered the thoughts above and the decisions forward.

I could have asked the pro shop, spend a bit more time around asking and sourcing for a bike that would fully support the local pro shop and local bike manufacturers

Love this! Another ad that really resonates as authentically altruistic is on CNN from the owner of the Colts (another one of those sports teams) about Kicking the Stigma of mental illness.

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