NEW YORK - Baseball legends Hank Aaron and Willie Mays are going to
bat for a credit card provider offering another "priceless" experience
in a commercial debuting on Tuesday's telecast of baseball's All-Star game.
| George Brett, who will join Aaron and Mays in baseball's
Hall of Fame later this summer, and San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds
also appear in the new commercial for MasterCard International.
The All-Star game telecast, which will be carried from Boston's venerable Fenway Park on the Fox network, is expected to be one of the highest-rated TV shows of the summer. Audience ratings for the annual exhibition game between all-star teams
of the American and
|
Mays and Hank Aaron will appear in the Mastercard commerical that will
air during the All-Star game. |
Even with the rise last year, the rating was 28 percent below what it was for the All-Star game in 1994, which came a month before a strike that ended the season prematurely and forced the first cancellation of the World Series.
Baseball has been struggling to rebuild its fan base since then and make itself a more attractive partner for marketers.
In addition to MasterCard, advertisers on this year's All-Star game telecast include the Blockbuster video store chain, brewers Anheuser-Busch and Coors, automakers General Motors and Nissan, Quaker State motor oil, discount broker Charles Schwab and John Hancock financial services.
Allstate Insurance, the nation's second biggest provider of property and casualty insurance, is launching a new advertising campaign with four commercials planned for the telecast.
The ads feature Allstate agents, claims adjustors and investigators who recount their own experiences on the job to demonstrate their personal commitment to the company's customers.
The new ads retain the longtime theme "You're in good hands with Allstate" but each ad ends with the featured employee adding, "Mine."
Raleigh Floyd, spokesman for Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate, said the telecast was chosen for the campaign kickoff because it draws "a pretty attractive audience'' both in terms of raw numbers and the type of people who buy home and auto insurance.
The new MasterCard ad will be the fourth with a baseball theme in the "priceless" campaign from the agency McCann-Erickson.
The card provider from Purchase, N.Y., showed a father taking his 11-year-old son to a ballgame for the "priceless" chance for real conversation in the first ad in the series in October 1997.
Last year, it was the "priceless" experience of taking a Little League team to its first big league ballgame. Also last year, another MasterCard ad suggested that witnessing a record-breaking home run by Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals or Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs during their historic chase that shattered Roger Maris' single-season home run mark was "priceless."
The new commercial opens with a mother using a camcorder to show her husband and two children leaving for a ballgame. "Camcorder: $400," the ad says. The ad shows Dad and the kids inside the car as they drive to the stadium and later as they head to their seats. "Three hour tape: $7," the ad says. "Extra battery: $25."
Some seats. Aaron and Mays are in street clothes sitting with the kids. "Home movies with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays: priceless," the ad says.
As in each of the 20-some ads in the series, the commercial then adds, "There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's MasterCard."
It also notes that five MasterCard users will win tickets to a World Series game and sit with legends like Aaron, Mays, Brett and Bonds.
"We wanted to have players who inarguably would be considered legends of baseball and had a high recognition factor," said Larry Flanagan, head of marketing for MasterCard. "These are pretty recognizable guys even for people who aren't baseball fans."
Who would Aaron and Mays want to sit with to watch a World Series game? Aaron told MasterCard publicists it would be baseball legends Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson; Mays said Robinson, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio.