Kerre Woodham: It's time AB sponsors abstained from making us cringe
The campaign has done to Fitzpatrick what many a Wallaby and Springbok failed to do - made him look like a fool. Photo / Herald on Sunday
I do wish corporate sponsors of the All Blacks would just write the cheques then leave the bloody team alone.
Fair enough that you get to use the lads in your adverts. Fine that you force the ABs to attend boring cocktail functions where they have to press the flesh with you and your most important clients. And reasonable you get the best seats for all the important games.
You've put up the big bucks - you're entitled to some perks. But honestly, trying to contort the All Blacks and their fans' passion for the team and the game into corporate shenanigans is never going to work.
Plenty of ad agencies have tried to infuse a manufactured sense of fun into the population and have failed miserably and now Saatchi and Saatchi and Telecom have done it again.
The awful Abstain for the Game campaign has done to All Black great Sean Fitzpatrick what many a Wallaby and Springbok failed to do - made him look like a fool.
The All Black management team has been forced to issue lukewarm support for their sponsors - first adidas and then Telecom - while privately they must have been wondering what they'd signed up for.
And it's no good the slick, sharp creatives from the ad agencies consoling themselves with the thought that their idea was TOO brilliant and TOO cutting edge for the rabble to get it. If we don't get it, you don't have a contract.
Still, there is an upside. This time last World Cup, the controversy was all around the rotation and resting policy and the All Black combinations.
While the sponsors take the heat, at least the All Blacks are left to rotate in peace.
If there's one thing that's now graphically apparent, it's that the rwc and all associated shenanigans have little to do with rugby and nothing to do with rugby supporters except as targets for rip-offs.
The extent to which the nz people continue to support the All Blacks is and will be a tribute to our history and traditional experience. The rwc is an exercise in marketing, big-noting and profiteering at the expense of taxpayers.
It has never been more important for the All Blacks to win, not because nz will be depressed if they don't but because if they don't, the whole exercise will truly have been for nothing more than a few entrepreneurs to make greedy profit.
If they don't win, rugby in nz will be seen to be nothing more than 'smoke and mirrors' at the public expense.
The All Blacks don't deserve that.
The 'sponsors' certainly do. Whoever is running pr at Adidas and Telecom need to emulate the principles of "Undercover Boss" and spend some time with real people instead of living inside their own overpaid heads.
I find it difficult to understand that (Sir? - pending?) Sean Fitzpatrick, whom I admired for his rugby skills and post-match diplomacy, could make such a fool of himself, for presumeably, a large sum of Telecom's dollars. His image for me is now tarnished.
Does Telecom NZ hire accountable professional managers, and if so, what attributes do they look for in these people ? How about Saatchi & Saatchi ? Do they hire accountable professionals ? I'm sure a down-to-earth NZ farmer could have designed a more realistic advertisement to support our national rugby team going into the RWC, for a lot less dollars.
I wish these senior staff from Telecom NZ and Saatchi & Saatchi worked for Donald Trump!