I Took A Knee

On Super Bowl Sunday, I performed a grand experiment – I didn’t watch the Super Bowl - I took a knee.  I didn’t care about the 2 teams playing in the game (sorry Pats/Rams – I’m an Eagle’s fan), could have cared less about the network it was being played on (sorry CBS), and though I’m a marketing guy, I see fresh new creative video daily on the internet & I really didn’t care about the commercials (sorry advertisers).  That’s harsh, but it’s also the mindset of 2 other groups of people – they didn't care or they were busy.

Truth be told, I didn’t totally boycott the game – again, this was part of an experiment.  I agreed not to watch the game - and that truly was the difficult part, not watching it.  There are screens everywhere now the house - with a simple push of a button, I could have been watching, but I didn’t. I allowed myself to monitor the game through social media channels (Facebook primarily), but I also used other digital outlets  - i.e. News apps and game cast on the ESPN app (which is simply a graphic display, etc), but that was the extent of me monitoring the game – purely digital.   

Without watching the game at all… and still having not seen any highlights – I am able to share with people – “Patriots won the game, 13-3.  It was a low scoring game, lot of people called it one of the worst Super Bowls they have seen - very boring game.  Patriots Wide Receiver Edelman, did very well.  Didn’t see the commercials, but saw that people liked the Game of Thrones/Budweiser crossover commercial - not a lot of chatter about ads either this year.  Half time show was terrible – social media ripped Adam Levine for wearing a tank top with a pattern that resembled something from the Target At-Home collection : lot of comparisons with pillows & curtains.  When going shirtless, Adam was also compared to the outside of a Chipotle take-out bag”. I immediately get a lot of laughs on the Chipotle reference and then they say, “that’s about right”.  I smile.

The entire experiment was very gratifying. Without watching on our platform’s biggest medium (broadcast TV) … I kept a very accurate track (in real time) of all that was happening in and around the game. We live in amazing times; technology is incredible.   Local advertisers spent a lot of money to broadcast their local ads in the Super Bowl – I missed all of them.  Maybe next year.