Peyton’s Place

Here’s a bit of unsurprising news for Sunday afternoon television enthusiasts: Indiana Colts quarterback Peyton Manning is the National Football League’s “Most Marketable Player,” according to a survey of sports marketing and media executives.

The vote wasn’t even close: Manning snapped up more than half of the first-place ballots, with only Tom Brady, the New England Patriots’ quarterback, anywhere within striking distance.

Now, Manning comes with a great story: His father is Archie Manning, renowned quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, and his brother Eli – five years younger than Peyton, with a somewhat thinner resume — is a quarterback for the New York Giants. The family connection is occasionally used in advertisements.

The problem is that Peyton is teetering dangerously close to overexposed territory. Were he to limit himself to one or two products at a time, Manning’s boyish enthusiasm for whatever he hawks might be quite winning. But by diversifying his charms – currently he speaks in favor of DirecTV, ESPN, Gatorade, MasterCard, Reebok, and Sprint, among others – his affability takes on an overtone of insincerity. After the fourth Peyton Manning endorsement, it takes a pretty lunkheaded viewer not to realize he’s only in it for the money.

Now, there is nothing wrong with being in it only for the money. The problem is Manning doesn’t allow himself to be linked too closely with a single product. When New York Yankees immortal Joe DiMaggio spoke out on behalf of Mr. Coffee, one didn’t have to stop and go through the mental process of “It’s Joey D! Wait, who’s he shilling for now?”

But the marvelous money machine that is Peyton Manning will never produce this sort of instant association. This is as much the fault of how thinly he is spread as how wildly inconsistent advertisers are in using him.

Take Manning’s Gatorade commercial. In it, a football splits open to a rather sickening squelching sound effect, and via some surprisingly unconvincing stop-action photography Manning emerges from an oversized amniotic sac that looks strikingly like a reinforced Hefty bag. The whole sequence is strikingly reminiscent of the “Aliens” movies, none of which were especially good vehicles for moving sports drinks. The final shot is of Manning chugging a bottle of Gatorade.

This leaves a viewer with the following sequence of reactions: “What the hell is this? Ooh, it’s Peyton Manning. He’s good. What is he selling?” And then the commercial ends.

The most unfortunate aspect of this spot is that Manning is not allowed to speak. When he does in other commercials, he’s actually quite affable, whether clowning around with his father and brother in the ESPN studios (touting one of its shows), or appearing in one of MasterCard’s “Priceless” spots. He delivers his lines well, and comes across as someone a consumer might want to know and trust. But once a viewer has seen Manning in the fifth, or 15th, different spot, the messages run together.

Manning – or someone at an ad agency – may be catching on to this: In one of his more recent Sprint commercial, Manning seems to have realized that his ubiquity ain’t doin’ him no favors. The Sprint commercial features Manning, sporting a hideous toupee and a lopsided fake mustache crawling across his upper lip. He touts a cell phone that allows subscribers to watch their favorite football stars “Like Peyton Manning! That guy’s pretty good, if you like 6’ 5”, 230 pound quarterbacks [with a] laser rocket arm.”

I’ll hand it to Manning: Somehow he convinced Sprint to pay him to broadcast his resume.

The commercial works only because a) Manning manages to mention the product’s name several times – a tactic curiously absent in many of his other spots – and because yes, we’ve seen an awful lot of Peyton Manning in recent weeks.

Don’t shed a tear for the Manning family fortunes any time soon, though: While Brother Eli didn’t make the top 10 list of most marketable players in the NFL, he tied for 11th. Ten bucks says Papa Archie is one of the few dads in America who doesn’t mind that one or two of his sons have to work on Thanksgiving.