Fox Sports has rejected a 90-second spot Pittsburgh agency Brunner created for first-time Super Bowl advertiser 84 Lumber for being “too political,” Campaign reports.
Sources close to the project told the publication that that the building supplies company, worth approximately $2.86 billion, planned to run an ad from Brunner showing a wall blocking people from looking for work in the U.S. Fox, allegedly, shot down that ad as being “too political,” presumably for its allusion to president-elect Trump’s xenophobia-stoking campaign promise of a giant border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
According to another Campaign source, the spot’s director, Cole Webley, is considering removing the wall from the ad in order to appease Fox. It’s unclear how exactly this will impact the concept of the ad in question.
What is clear is that 84 Lumber is not letting Fox’s script rejection stop it from advertising in the Super Bowl.
“This is a big platform where we can tell an important story,” Brunner vice president and head of public relations Steve Radick told Adweek today. “And so throughout this entire process, we’ve been working closely with both the client and Fox to think through a number of different ideas. Some have gone further than others, and we’re continuing to explore all of our options.”
“We’ve got a great story to tell about our company in our 90 seconds and are exploring many different ways to do that,” 84 Lumber director of marketing Amy Smiley told Campaign in a statement. “That’s why we’ve been working closely both with Brunner and Fox on how to best take advantage of all the platforms we have available to us.”
In other words: if at first you can’t appease the network censors, try, try again.