During the NFL conference championship games on Sunday, the league aired an Inspire Change social justice ad featuring Anquan Boldin retelling the story of his cousin Corey Jones, who was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer in 2015. The ad will also be airing during the Super Bowl, where it will be seen by a wider audience.
In case you missed it, here’s the ad.
Also, here’s a story from the South Florida Sun Sentinel about the conviction of Nouman Raja, the officer who shot Jones.
Tim Ellis, the chief marketing officer of the NFL, talked about the ad and the league’s choice to run it during the Super Bowl in a statement to Ad Age (background information between quotes clipped out).
NFL’s Ellis said “the only way to answer those critics is to simply continue to focus on bringing people together and continue to shine a light on all the great work that NFL players and teams are doing to bring about positive social change in communities across our great country.” He pointed to “more than $25 million in grants has been awarded to social justice organizations as part of Inspire Change. This includes over 500 grants awarded to current and former NFL players for social justice programs and initiatives.”
[…]
Ellis, who joined the NFL in late 2018 from Activision, defended the decision to run the ad in the Super Bowl. “We feel this is an incredibly important topic and deserves visibility in our biggest game of the year.” With the Boldin spot, “we want to tell the story of how one family’s tragedy inspired the creation of the Players Coalition, led to a historic partnership between NFL players and the league, and sparked one of the largest social justice efforts in sports history.”
I’m sure there wont be any backlash to this at all. Between this ad, the dueling Trump and Bloomberg presidential ads, and who only knows what other social/political themed ads that will air in 13 days, everyone is going to find at least one ad to get upset about for whatever reason.
[Ad Age]
