Everybody is talking about Omaha.
The reason is a little bizarre. No, Warren Buffett did not waste his entire fortune creating a white sand beach on the Missouri River. There was no announcement on network television that a revival of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” was in the works. And I’m reasonably certain Omaha Steaks issued no statement promoting vegetarian diets.
Did I miss anything related to Nebraska’s largest city? Oh, yeah—the College World Series, otherwise known as the only time 20-somethings excitedly exclaim “We’re going to Omaha!”
On Sunday, as Denver Broncos fans quieted to allow Peyton Manning’s calls to reach his teammates’ ears, television viewers heard the famed quarterback shout “Omaha” as many as 44 times.
“Commercials cost money to make, and you have to come up with the idea and hire a production company to make it. It could cost $4 million just for the production, and we get it for free,” Doug Parrott, executive vice president for Bailey Lauerman public relations told the Associated Press. “Everybody in Omaha really needs to root for Peyton to take down Tom Brady and the Patriots so we can hear Omaha in the Super Bowl.”
Of course, Brady has been known to use the signal “Omaha” at times. So has Tony Romo of America’s team, the Dallas Cowboys. Even Eli Manning, Peyton’s little brother, bounces the city name around what will be the Super Bowl stadium. In the film “Remember the Titans” one of the linemen uses “Omaha” as an audible. The city of 400,000-plus apparently doubles as a common football term.
No one outside of the Broncos huddle knows just what Manning means by “Omaha.” It may just be an empty signal, a bit of distracting gibberish.
Besides, not all inadvertent celebrity endorsements pay off. It would be hard to argue, for example, that Dennis Rodman’s presence increased the tourism potential of Pyongyang. Way back when, Joe Namath cast his marketing prowess behind booze, “broads” and panty hose. Following the game, Manning cast his spokesperson credibility in doubt by his desire to cap Sunday’s playoff win over San Diego by downing a cheap, mass produced, low calorie beer instead of one of Colorado’s fine microbrews.
A multi-million dollar contract does not buy taste.
Now, when I played for a minor league team in Dallas, we relied on a litany of daily meals to set the snap count. During line calls, the center was instructed to shout out a breakfast food for one. Something like “soup and sandwich” meant the ball would be snapped on two. If you heard “steak and potatoes” it clearly meant three. We never learned four, but the coach certainly had dessert in mind. No one from Omaha Steaks ever dropped by practice to hand out advertising contracts.
My experience in Prague was a bit different. I tried out as third string quarterback for one of the Czech Republic’s top American football teams. Plays were called in a confusing mix of Czech and English. One day, with the third team on the line, the coach leaned into our huddle and said “Detroit prava trinact read.”
I knew “Detriot”—no real PR opportunities there—signified the formation. “Prava is the Czech word for “right,” meaning the tight end would line up on that side. The last word indicated the play was a read option.
The only problem was “trinact.”
Our word processing program does not have the ability to place the necessary diacritical marks over the letters. “Trinact” simply means “13.” But it is pronounced “zhtrnats”—very similar to “ctrnact” (sounds like “shtrnats”), or “14.” To make matters worse, 13 was a read option left, while 14 took off to the right. And I had no idea, as quarterback, which direction we were running.
It didn’t matter in the end. I fumbled the snap.
So who am I to take away from Omaha’s moment in the spotlight. It’s a fine city with an arts scene and good restaurants. It may never be a tourist destination, but given Nebraska’s strong foreign trade presence and business-friendly environment, Omaha (and the entire state) should attract more companies to relocate. The guy from Bailey Lauerman is right—there is a way to use just about anything word or phrase in a promotional sense.
Unless, of course, you’re just a washed up third stringer in some backwater league.
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