No #spon Zone

If  Drew Brees's face can sell us Jimmy Johns and NyQuil and boy bands and such, I don't see how this is really any worse.

From WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge:

A Louisiana mother has a warning for other parents after her teenage son had a bad reaction from smoking what she's calling a new synthetic drug.

Mary Hughes is on a mission to protect other kids.

It all started this past weekend with a little plastic bag of a product called "Blue Brees." The Denham Springs mom said her 16-year-old son got it as a present and smoked it, which led to a scary night.

"His eyes were basically real droopy," Hughes said. "His speech was very slurred. He had no emotion. He barely could stand and absolutely no emotion, so 'Zombieland' was really correct. He was a zombie."

Hughes admits her daughter, who is of age, bought the product at a store called Zombieland.

Assuming Brees has no contract to receive payment for his.. um.. endorsement here, this might actually be an improvement. On the other hand, the symptoms exhibited by the young man in this story scan awfully close to Brees's performance at Atlanta this year so maybe there is a connection after all.

Still, it's probably not an official NFL licensed product which means 1) It's probably not an approved supplement and so could violate the league's drug policy and get somebody in trouble. ... sort of like Adderall used to do.  And 2) you absolutely cannot sell it within the confines of the "Clean Zone"

NEW ORLEANS -- As New Orleans prepares to host the Super Bowl, the city is also preparing to enforce temporary rules inside a so-called "clean zone" surrounding events leading up to the big game.

Host cities agree to adopt "clean zone" ordinances to help control activities that conflict with NFL sponsorships and the integrity of the game.

City approval for things such as temporary structures, signage and advertising are tightly regulated in the zone.

The zone boundaries include much of downtown, the French Quarter and the CBD.

"These clean zones are areas that are free of temporary ambush marketing, signage and events and other recognition of conflicting sponsors of the NFL," said New Orleans Sports Foundation President and CEO Jay Cicero.

In other words, NFL marketing agreements will dictate the kind of signage you can display at your home or business, as well as what sorts of products you can distribute,  if it is located within the "clean zone" I guess because the NFL marketing agreements take precedence over constitutional niceties during Superbowl week.

This doesn't mean we can't figure a way to test the limits if we're creative.  According to the city's information packet about the "Clean Zone"

Any temporary signage approved by the City shall be required to consist of at least 60% Super Bowl/NFL branding, look and feel, and no more than 40% third party commercial identification.

So if any downtown business wants to display a banner that reads "Mitch Landrieu is Roger Goodell's bitch" it's probably okay to do that so long as 60% of the background consists of NFL logos.  The downside is if the city happens to cite you anyway I'm pretty sure your only recourse is to appeal to Paul Tagliabue because, again, NFL is the ultimate civil authority during Super Bowl week.

Also one footnote to this article worth highlighting is this.

"These clean zones are areas that are free of temporary ambush marketing, signage and events and other recognition of conflicting sponsors of the NFL," said New Orleans Sports Foundation President and CEO Jay Cicero.

The city forced ambush marketers to remove Coke and Power Aid advertisements from sidewalks in a similar clean zone during the NCAA Final Four Basketball tournament earlier this year.

That's interesting because, at the time, we were under the impression that the city's move against the Coke ads was based on citizen outrage at having the public sidewalks used as an advertising vector.  But, according to the WWL report, they were actually just enforcing their corporate agreement with the NCAA.  Guess we should have known.