Opinion: What Focus on the Family learned from the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad uproar

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Earlier this week, The Ticket wrote here about the terribly controversial Super Bowl commercial that had some women’s groups very exercised and pressuring CBS to pull the ad sponsored by Focus on the Family of Colorado Springs, Colo. Even without actually seeing it.

The ad dealt obliquely with the decision by a woman named Pam Tebow years ago to reject doctors’ advice and not terminate the pregnancy that ended up producing Tim Tebow, the healthy, happy 2007 Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Florida.

Viewers of the ad (see video below) are directed to a Focus website that tells the mother’s story in more detail, which would probably leave many with the sense that choosing life over abortion was a wise choice for her.

Here’s the actual Super Bowl pre-game ad, which left many of its critics slightly red-faced for causing such a commotion. As we warned earlier this week CAUTION is advised viewing this. The video contains graphic images and words of parental affection:

OK, now Focus on the Family has produced another video (see top of this page) with workers candidly discussing how the ad came to be, how the controversy accidentally but so helpfully came about boosting the ad’s impact immensely and the lessons that the sometimes controversial family values organization has learned itself from the experience to apply to its future advocacy work.

Forget the subject, for students of public communication and how those messages are designed, released and spread, this two-man discussion provides interesting video insights into the inner dynamics of one recent popular culture controversy -- and the politics of it. You can draw your own lessons and conclusions.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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