Marketers Gearing Up for Football Season

Put all that talk of concussions and what Joe Paterno knew and when and just how Tim Tebow is going to fit into the New York Jets offense, real football is coming soon. Actual bodies wearing actual pads in actual games will soon be filling up America’s TV screens and you can be sure that marketers are getting ready for some pigskin action.

Fantasy football from Yahoo! got underway today and big brand names were all over it. Citi, Miller Lite, Snickers, Toyota, and Visa all found ways to get their names onto the Yahoo! Fantasy Football pages in one way or another, whether it is the Toyota Hall of Fame: Legends of Fantasy Football or the Visa Stat Tracker. Snickers and Miller Lite have both selected to sponsor content that is “personalized” to each individual fantasy user. They’ll all benefit from Yahoo!’s attempts to push their fantasy users to keep up with their teams across a variety of platforms, including Connected TVs and mobile devices, a company release notes.

Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Steelers took care of a bit of brand business this week before their season gets underway. A man had been selling versions of the team’s famous Terrible Towel that were written in Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew.

This, of course, led to a trademark lawsuit from the Steelers and a local charity that benefits from the sale of the towels against the man, Nick Rossi. Rossi has agreed to stop making the towels with those words written on them and the suit has been dropped, according to the Associated Press.

And college football fans have got something new to bring to their weekly tailgating party: college-logo-branded Pop-Tarts.

“Five schools have come to agreement with Kellogg's to be represented on Pop-Tarts boxes and also will have their logos appear in the frosted topping,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The five new flavors will be Bulldog Berry (Georgia), Razorback Red (Arkansas), Tar Heel Berry (North Carolina), Go Blue Strawberry (Michigan), and Florida Gators Strawberry.