After all the hoopla and controversy over the Focus on the Family-sponsored Tim Tebow ad during the Superbowl, a Christian-oriented research group says the ad failed to change people’s minds about abortion.
The Super Bowl made TV history, drawing about 106 million viewers. The Barna Group conducted a nationwide phone survey of 1,001 adults from Feb. 7- 10, including the night the ad aired. According to Barna, 43% of those polled said they saw the Focus-Tebow commercial. “This included one out of every 11 Super Bowl viewers (9%) who were able to recall the spot without prompting (often referred to as unaided awareness).”
One Barna finding:
“While millions of Americans watched the commercial, many viewers expressed confusion regarding the commercial’s meaning and sponsor. In fact, when asked to describe what they thought the main message to be, one-fifth of viewers (20%) were not able to venture a guess about the ad’s main message. A minority of ad viewers described it as anti-abortion (38%) although the commercial never used that term or discussed that procedure. Another 19% thought it was about being pro-family or expressing that family is important.
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The sponsor of the commercial was also a mystery to most viewers….Most viewers (78%) admitted they were not sure who sponsored the spot featuring the Heisman-winning Tebow.”
Another finding – the ad was ‘upbeat.’
“Still, if there is an upside to the ad’s fuzziness, perhaps it is that most people found it non-threatening and upbeat. The Barna survey explored five different opinions of the commercial. Nearly four out of every five viewers of the ad (78%) said they felt the commercial presented a positive message to viewers and three out of every four (75%) claimed that the commercial was appropriate to show during the Super Bowl. That statistic seems to support CBS’s decision to air the spot despite pressure from many pro-choice advocacy groups to reject the commercial.
Half said they thought the Focus-Tebow commercial was intended to influence their views on abortion (51%), a reflection of the pre-game controversy over the expected content more than a reaction to the message that viewers of the spot actually took away after watching it. Small proportions of viewers of the ad claimed that the commercial was offensive (8%) or that the commercial personally caused them to reconsider their opinion about abortion (6%).
Surprisingly, whether a person is pro-life or pro-choice made only minimal difference in their reactions to the commercial. The only striking differential between the two groups was that 82% of those in the pro-life group felt it was appropriate for the Super Bowl, compared with just 66% among those who believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Despite this gap, among those who favor pro-choice policies the commercial was received favorably: three-quarters said it presented a positive message to viewers (78%), two-thirds felt it was appropriate (66%), and just one-tenth felt it was offensive (10%). While most pro-choice adults claimed to understand that it was intended to influence their views on abortion (57%), just 4% of this segment said it caused them to reconsider their opinions about abortion.”
Their analysis:
“In terms of the execution and reaction of the Tebow Super Bowl spot, the results are a mixed bag,” commented David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, which independently funded and conducted the study. “On the positive side, it was widely viewed and remarkably well received, even among those who hold fundamental differences of opinion on abortion with the pro-life sponsors, Focus on the Family.
“The downside from the standpoint of the commercial’s sponsors is sure to be that the main message and organization behind the ad were lost to a majority of viewers. In this respect, even if Focus simply were trying to reach a wider audience of pro-life Christians through the power of the NFL’s super-sized audience, most viewers never made the connection to the Focus organization. Perhaps this comes from misunderstanding the fact that many evangelical ministry leaders and organizations are comparatively unknown to the broader population.”
And then there’s this conclusion – which, if may actually be something for LGBT politicos and people of faith to consider, as well.
“Still, the decision by Focus to create and place the ad – and the controversial choice by CBS to air the commercial – made this a unique event. Faith and values intersected mainstream culture in a significant new way. As American culture becomes more polarized and fragmented into various ideological camps and ‘faith tribes,’ finding ways for these groups to interact in respectful and productive ways will become more complicated and perhaps less frequent. ‘Soft’ efforts such as the Tebow-Focus ad may set a standard for tribes to consider as they contemplate future opportunities.”
Here’s the ad. Abortion?
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I saw the ad on the net, and thought, “wow, that was weak.” I sent it to my partner to see what she thought. She’d seen it on television, and said that if I hadn’t told her it was for an anti-abortion group, she’d have had no idea. She thought it was a confusing ad that was maybe about health care.
Right.
The thing is – we’re probably going to see a lot more of these kinds of soft ads to help turn the image of Focus on the Family and others from haters to really nice guys who just happen to hate gays, softly though.
We need to start figuring out a way to both combat them and “join them” – ie do soft ads ourselves.