Know about the Captain Morgan pose? You should--it's very clever marketing!

It's also ingenious, rebellious, cheap, and best of all--its powerful!

So you haven’t heard of the Captain Morgan pose?  Well, if you haven’t you’re not without company.  The phenomenon has taken root in the sports subculture—but it’s quickly coming to the attention of non sports fanatics for its sheer insidiousness and naughtiness.  Here’s the scoop in a nut-shell:  Diageo, corporate owner of the Captain Morgan brand of rum, has pledged that whenever a major sports player strikes the pose on a field of play at a major sports event that is televised, the firm will make a contribution to a fund that supports players with injuries stemming from the game.  Pledges by Diageo were $10,000 for each game pose during the regular season, $25,000 for each occurring in play-off games, and $100,000 for the Superbowl. 

Last Friday night on Pardon The Interuption [an ESPN sports commentary and talk show, weekdays at 5.30pm EST] Tony Kornheiser and Dan Levitar reported that in a previous Sunday football game, the Eagle’s Brent Celek celebrated a completed touch-down pass by striking the Captain Morgan pose in the end zone, which was part of a secret advertising campaign by the Captain Morgan Rum Company--a pose typical of the brand’s character.  Since then, Yahoo has reported that the NFL has demanded that players refrain from this kind of shenanigans in all future games. Here's their commentary...

In the Captain Morgan pose controversy, all the elements are there, the rebelliousness of the product as well as the brand, the subtlety of the message—turning an ephemeral act by a sports figure—the Captain Morgan pose—into a commercial message and, by implication, an endorsement.  Now it's a naughty "game" for viewers and players to be actively on the lookout for--and all of this is done in the name of doing good [the company’s contributing to the worthy cause of financially supporting injured needy players of the game].  Here’s the best part—all of this is accomplished for comparatively free “air-time" to Diageo and, in specifically in the case of an NFL game, in front of 21 million fans of the game!  It doesn’t get more ingenious than that! 

The brand has a long-standing celebration of “the pose”…with parties, contests, and “pose-off” contests among both ordinary people as well as celebrities. Here's how that works...

The explanation for why this is being banned is easy to figure out:  With this campaign Diageo has likely antagonized some of NFL’s major sponsors [e.g., Budweiser and Coors], forcing the NFL to forbid it.  However, that condemnation has inadvertently taken the brand’s exposure to new heights with the ban—now causing people to talk about Captain Morgan at the office water cooler, cocktail parties, on television, and even in blogs like this!  Captain Morgan likely has never had enough budget to become the leading brand of rum by share of voice—indeed, there is simply not enough dough to pay for this kind of exposure and positive impressions by anyone. 

Time will tell if it’s to be seen again in NFL games…but it will still occur in other sports venues and—more importantly—around water coolers, the cocktail circuit, and everyday parties.  Considering what's transpired just until now, marketing-wise that is, it simply doesn’t get any better than this.  And the best part is--you can’t buy this kind of word-of-mouth and wider exposure!  

I don't know if anyone at Diageo got a promotion or a salary hike for thinking this up--but they should have!  

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Comments

[sukki]

keith, i had a chance to converse with the creative director who came up with the pose. the discovery of this pose was by accident: while they're discussing the captain morgan ad campaign, one of the creatives made a pose without a chair (or a stool) which was not available at the moment. this (the cm pose without a chair) became the ad concept. cool, isn't it?