Players' Tribune launches ad campaign against hateful rhetoric and social injustice
HOUSTON – Just in time for the Super Bowl, and coincidentally timed just after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, The Players’ Tribune, a media platform for professional athletes, launched a new campaign Friday morning called “Stand Up,” featuring several well-known athletes speaking out against hateful rhetoric and social injustice.
The campaign debuts with a video featuring Derek Jeter, Von Miller, Danica Patrick, Michael Phelps and Karl-Anthony Towns.
On the video, the athletes read hateful comments that have been directed at them on social media – so-called “mean tweets” – and discuss the broader implications of the nasty language.
“We wanted to create something positive at a time when the national climate is often negative,” Jaymee Messler, president of The Players’ Tribune, said in a phone conversation Thursday. “We wanted to harness the power of some of the biggest names in sports to take on the divisive rhetoric that has infiltrated our national conversation.”
In the video, Jeter, the former New York Yankees great, addresses the problem: “Everyone’s anonymous, there’s no connection there, you have people who don’t know you, never knew you and probably never will know you that are saying hateful things. ... We know what it’s like to be bullied or trolled.”
The video also features advice from the athletes.
“Surround yourself with positive people,” said Patrick, the NASCAR star.
“I know if somebody’s going to say something mean or negative I just don’t give them the time of day,” said Phelps, a 23-time Olympic gold medalist.
AD METER: Vote for the Super Bowl's best commercial
Messler said the campaign was not planned to coincide with Trump’s executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States.
“This is actually something that we’ve been working on for a while,” she said. “It happens to be an interesting time in regards to the last several weeks, but we were working on this back in 2016.”
The campaign, presented in conjunction with American Family Insurance, will roll out additional videos over the next several weeks featuring other athletes, including Andrew McCutchen, Alex Smith and Abby Wambach.
MORE SUPER BOWL ADS