There is a very interesting post over at the Biz of Baseball about how sports marketing expenditures from companies which received government bail-out money are coming under attack and how they are attempting, or not, to respond. To me something falls under the heading of PC [politically correct], if someone or something disagrees with an accusation made of them, but they capitulate to the accusations because they doubt their ability to make a more nuanced argument through the media din [i.e. headlines repeated ad nauseaum]. This from Toms’ article:

In the midst of this public and political turmoil, Nielsen Media Research has released some figures that show banking companies have decreased spending by 10 percent over the last year, but have increased the amount that they are spending on sports advertisement by 36 percent in 2008, showing that these businesses see sports as great return on investment.

According to Nielsen, “Banks spent $122 million – or 18.7% of all its TV ad dollars – on sports event programming in 2008. In 2007, the banking industry spent $90 million on sports broadcasts, or 12.5% of the industry’s total TV ad expenditures.”

That’s why Bank of America has a PC problem. They walked away from a sponsorship for the new Yankee Stadium, despite the fact that sports advertising is a considered a good buy in their industry.

As an aside, you can read the article by Pete Toms just as an example of why online articles are not a competitor, but a great compliment to, the regular media. Toms article gives the casual reader input on the issue from a variety of sources. But to those who are really interested and would have tried to read up further, absent his article, he just saved us [trust me on this], at least a couple of hours of research.

I became aware of the article through Shyster Ball, Craig Calcaterra’s blog, another good source of baseball related writing. I know the web can appear to be made up of angry people. But it can also be viewed as a community of bright people who learn about ‘stuff’ and are happy to share and encourage others to do the same. I met a few local bloggers recently at Tobacco Road. Perhaps I am guilty of too much much Hobbes in my cereal, but I’m always slightly amazed and appreciative of the random generosity I’ve encountered in the on-line community. Toms and Calcaterra are good examples of that.