In Pfizer commercial, Bruce Brown (and Nets?) endorsed COVID vaccine. Will it run again?

Will this ad run again?

In case you missed it, Bruce Brown is being featured in a commercial that COVID vaccine makers Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have been airing. Called “Don’t Miss Your Shot,” the 30-second ad uses the Nets forward to promote the companies’ vaccine. It has aired regularly on the YES Network during game coverage as well as on other programming in at least the New York market.

In it, Brown talks about how he was “super excited” when word came that the vaccine would be available. “There was no doubt I was getting vaccinated,” Brown says in the spot produced by Young & Rubicam, the big Madison Avenue agency. “I worked way too hard to get here.”

At the end of the commercial, the logos of Pfizer, BioNTech and the Nets appear together on the screen, suggesting the ad is a partnership between the pharmaceutical companies and the team.

The commercial also uses video from Nets practices and games, further indicating a connection. BSE Global, the Nets parent company deferred all questions on the commercial to Pfizer who in turn said the company “does not engage on stories related to its marketing efforts.”

The Nets, of course, have been very pro-vaccine since the beginning of the pandemic, offering tests and vaccination at its facilities around Barclays Center. The Joe and Clara Wu Tsai Foundation has supplied millions of dollars in PPE and even ventilators to hospitals in New York, New Jersey and California

The Pfizer ad, in fact, is the second time that Brown has promoted vaccination against the disease that has so far killed 800,000 Americans. On September 1, a month before training camp began, he, teammate Blake Griffin along with Sean Marks and Steve Nash appeared in a public service announcement distributed by the city on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s official Twitter feed.

Ironically, the commercial is airing while Brown is in the NBA’s health and safety protocols. And of course, Kyrie Irving is returning to the Nets even though he, unlike Brown, has refused to get vaccinated.