Mehring Monday: Fantastic Finishes

If you grew up in the 1970s and watched football, you would be familiar with Alcoa Fantastic Finishes.

Alcoa, a producer of aluminum, had some cheesy commercials during the 70's.  (Of course, what company didn't have a cheesy commercial in the 70's?).  But, they also sponsored the last two minutes of every Sunday football game during the 70's and 80's.  A short video piece would be put together on a football game with an incredible finish.  For example, finishes to the Immaculate Reception and the Sea of Hands games would be shown.  I remember a few Roger Staubach finishes in there, too.

What triggered this little walk down memory lane?  The weekend in sports, of course.

Start with the conclusion of the Indiana-Kentucky basketball game on Saturday.  The last second three point basket gave the Hoosiers a victory over the #1 Wildcats and gave the IU students reason to storm the court.  This was the complete opposite of the end of the Xavier-Cincinnati basketball game.  Also the complete opposite of the Xavier-Cincinnati game was the end of Army-Navy.

Those were just appetizers for the Fantastic Finishes on the Sunday of NFL Football.

In no particular order:

Houston scores a touchdown with three seconds left to win their game at Cincinnati to clinch their first ever playoff berth.

The Vikings have a typical Vikings finish to lose to the Lions.

The Titans fall just short in a comeback against the Saints.

Washington rattles Tom Brady and the Patriots, but can't get the win at the end.

The Falcons rally to beat Carolina.

Arizona also rallies to beat San Francisco.

Giants-Cowboys.

Tebow & the Broncos.

I sent a few text messages to Bears fans I know after that last one.  I have not heard back from them yet.  Maybe I should check on them.  Nah.  I'm sure they are fine.

In doing actual research for this column, I tripped across this article from just about a year ago about the genesis of Fantastic Finishes.

After some research, [HBM/Creamer, Alcoa's advertising] agency determined that more than two-thirds of the nation's top influencers watched the NFL and that the highest viewership of NFL games came in the final 15 minutes.

And so HBM/Creamer concocted a plan for a feature it felt would really connect with those influencers. The agency's creative team sifted through the NFL Films archives to find the greatest game finishes in league history.

The idea was to run a 30-second clip of those finishes at the 2-minute warning, the point in each game when both teams get a free TV timeout, followed by a 30-second Alcoa commercial. (See clip)

The problem was that HBM/Creamer didn't quite have the budget for it.

"The big issue was we couldn't afford to buy 60 seconds. We had a 30-second vignette that creative had produced and a 30-second spot that told how important [Alcoa] was. We didn't want to cut the budget in half," Linderman says.

So HBM/Creamer approached CBS with a plan. What if the network aired the first 30 seconds as part of the program time? CBS said the NFL would have to sign off on the plan first.

"If we could convince the NFL this Fantastic Finish we were going to create would enhance the experience of the viewer, they would allow us to consider that 30 seconds to be part of the program and not pay," Linderman says.

It didn't take much convincing. The NFL embraced the idea, and the networks agreed to move 30 seconds of ad time from the 2-minute warning to halftime.

The thing that I like the best about Alcoa Fantastic Finishes is that it one of the few pieces of 1970's nostalgia that can be enjoyed without thinking, "What the HECK were they thinking? I can't believe this was ever popular!"  That is a fantastic finish all by itself.