Denver Broncos (15/32)

September 29th, 2013

Matchup:  Denver Broncos (w) vs. Philadelphia Eagles

Setting:

• Section 500 (VERY high up) but at least it was at the 45 yard line.
• It was pretty hot out (75-80degrees)

Game Highlights:

• Trindon Holiday - kick return for a TD
• Thunder the horse gallops across the field for every touch down. 
• Their statue bronco's spit fire after every Denver touch down. There were enough TD's during the game I was able to get lots of photos.
• Second time for me, but first time for Steve, to see Peyton Manning in action.
• Happened to be Michael Vick at QB for the Eagles

Trip Memories:

• Met up with my co-worker, Charlie K after the game and had Denver-famous green chili
• Parking at the Pepsi Stadium Center was listed online as a 10 minute walk... however it's really a 30-40 minute journey to the stadium entrance! 
• Day before we took a trip to Colorado Springs where we a van took us to the top (14,000 feet!) of Pike's Peak and we took bikes down the mountain!
• We recommend Falling Rock Bar/Restaurant for their fried mushrooms! 

NFL Team 15 / 32
Award: Highest Elevation 

Sah's Top 9 Reasons to Support the Saints!
not necessarily in any order

1. Katrina

2. New Orleans had never been to a Superbowl before

3. Peyton's arrogance needed to be put into place

4. If Colts won, they'd be compared to Patriots even more

5. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities and definitely my favorite vacation trip taken with Stevers.

6. Shawn Smith's team

7. I actually have gear to wear to support NOLA

8. Football is one place where when you go with your heart, you will come out on top

9. Peyton & team have enough superbowl rings, spread the love

Superbowl Ratings Not Optimal for CBS

I believe this year CBS will be the broadcasting station for the Superbowl. This lucky network however could have had bigger ratings if things had turned out differently during the NFC championship game this week.

CBS execs were routing for the Vikings... and not because they like Adrian Peterson. They were routing for Vikings because the head-to-head matchup of "Peyton Manning vs. Brett Favre" was predicted to bring in higher viewership and higher ratings.

Their worst case scenario? Jets vs. Saints.

Hey, you can't win them all.

2010 Superbowl Prediction

I hesitate to write out of superstitions... I don't want to jinx anyone! My gut tells me that the Colts are more likely to win on February 7th. When thinking about Peyton vs. Brees, I would have to go with Peyton.

But to quote my favorite player (Plaxico for you newbies), to win it takes heart:

"Throw Your Heart Over the Wall and Your Body Will Follow"

I believe the Saints are the better posed team to win this from the heart. My trip to New Orleans for the BCS game gave me a new respect for the city ... and an emotional attachment.

Let's go Saints.

Donde Esta The Advertisers?

As much crap as we gave Peyton for all the commercials, I kinda miss them. Where are the commercials of Eli and Peyton showing the sibling love? Where are the clever beer commercials that make us laugh? Why no call to action to go online and play a game?

Why is every commercial I see about insurance???! Between State Farm, Geico and Progressive... well guess what... I don't have a car!

We used to have good commercials. Coors Light has tried to move their coach quotes to the next level - but they just aren't as funny. Even Burger King has given up on the King. And Verizon? I get it. Your network is everywhere. (BTW, who came up with the line "The towels are kinda scratchy").

Priceless "Prep Talk" Peyton Campaign

One of the great intersections of my life is the football marketing programs. It brings my work and pleasure together. Of course I love what I do so the equation has pretty obvious results.

This week's commercial featuring a "pep talk" from Peyton drove consumers to priceless.com/preptalk.

Failures:
With no disrespect intended for the online marketers at Mastercard, if you're going to spend the money on the commercial, you could at least spend a little bit of budget for some search engine keywords on Google.

First I tried typing in the url and I got "page not found". So maybe it was priceless.com/peptalkS (plural) or maybe i just totally remembered the url incorrectly. Either way, I considered typing in a direct url my user-error.

So I moved onto the omniscient Google. I typed in "priceless prep talk" and what I was looking for did not come up. In fact, no advertising even came up for those keywords. I tried three more sets of keywords and still nada.

I had to resort to a generic "priceless mastercard" search and got priceless.com homepage.

Successes:
Well at least on the homepage I found exactly what I was looking for. From there my experience was great.

This customized (i got to type in my name to hear Peyton cover his mouth and say "Sarah") experience had cute clips of the charming QB giving me advice. Very well and smoothly done. No quirks. I sent to a friend easily. I had a great time. And if my name wasn't there, there were some awesome options like "Mr. Man" or "Babe".

Definitely recommend everyone attempt to find the campaign. But I won't make it easy for you. You should experience the mistakes of MasterCard yourself.