• by Joan Voight , May 14, 2010

University of Florida's former star quarterback Tim Tebow and his evangelical missionary parents knew a golden opportunity when they saw one. Focus on the Family, a Christian activist group, came calling in late 2009 with an offer to put Tebow, known for his clean-cut image and faith-based charity work, in a Super Bowl ad designed to send viewers to the Focus on the Family Web site. The Tebow family saw that such an ad - which they could never afford on their own - could also indirectly send people to a Tim Tebow site that could collect donations and volunteers for the family's missionary work.

The subtext of the partnership was abortion politics - both Focus on the Family and Tim's mother, Pam Tebow, work tirelessly for the pro-life cause. Mixing football, family, religion and abortion was a potent recipe for generating the kind of buzz that the Tebow family wanted for Tim Tebow's fledgling nonprofit foundation and its soon-to-be created Web site. Both organizations recognized that online social media and word-of-mouth would do most of the heavy lifting for the joint Super Bowl effort.

The actual Super Bowl commercial showed Tebow, winner of the 2007 Heisman trophy, and his mother in a loving moment, talking about football and family values. It ended with the Focus on Family's name and URL. No mention was made of political or religious issues. But social media made sure that by the time the ad ran, most people had heard about Pam Tebow's story that doctors advised her to consider abortion when she was pregnant with Tim. That backstory gave the feel-good ad meaning and a political edge, which was underscored with anti-abortion content on the Focus Web site.

Behind the scenes was Tim's father, Bob Tebow, founder of the 25-year-old Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association, which employs 50 Filipino evangelists and runs Uncle Dick's Home, a Christian orphanage in the Philippines. As soon as Tim graduated, father and son established the Tim Tebow Foundation, which is operated by Bob Tebow and other family members with the help of business manager Angel Gonzalez. The foundation, which is funded by Tim's autograph-signing fees and public donations, serves "Christ-centered orphanages around the world," particularly Uncle Dick's Home.

This is how it all unfolded.

Long before the Super Bowl spot came up, Tim was well-known on the Florida campus and in evangelical circles for talking about his faith. And as his fame grew, so did the online parodies and sarcastic blog posts. "Tim's position on social media has been, 'If you are making a stand, you can't stop people from saying what they want about you. So you need to put your voice out there as well,' " recounts an insider. As Gonzalez puts it, "Football is the platform that God has given Tim and his family ... and Tim has worked hard at creating an image."

Only four weeks before the ad aired, the Tebow family hired digital agency Purple, Rock, Scissors. Its job: create a site for the new Tim Tebow foundation and craft an online campaign to channel all the attention from the TV ad into traffic to the foundation site.

Almost overnight, the shop created the Tim Tebow Foundation Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages, and reached out to influential blogs. The goal was to establish the Foundation's authenticity and accumulate a big fan base. "The idea was to go where the people were; people were already out there talking about the ad," says Bobby Jones, agency CEO.

The foundation site was launched five days before the Super Bowl, featuring a prominent call for donations and giving top billing to Uncle Dick's Home. A potential hitch in the plan was getting the designers of the Focus on the Family site to give good placement to the link to the Tebow Foundation site. There was a tug of war over making the Tebow link look like content rather than an ad, and "to put Tim's link 'above [the] fold,' " (on the part of screen you see before you scroll down) Jones says. Both details were settled in the Tebow family's favor.

Then the hype machine kicked in.

More than 106 million people watched the Super Bowl this year. By the time the game started, there were 2 billion gross impressions about the Tebow Focus on the Family ad, says Gonzalez.

One pro-Tebow blogger sized up the mood: "Again and again I have seen evangelicals lured into providing advance publicity for some piece of trash from Hollywood. It is great fun to see Focus on the Family pull that stunt on other gullibles by getting their subtle little ad hyped to the skies."

Before the ad hit, the Tebow Foundation site averaged 20-80 visitors at any given time. Within 24 hours after the spot aired, that number swelled to 250-350 concurrent visitors, say agency execs. About 95 percent of the traffic was coming from the Focus on the Family site. Views of YouTube videos from the Tim Tebow Foundation also increased by more than 50 percent following the game.

Weeks later, traffic to the foundation site sunk, eventually leveling off to just under 10,000 total visitors a day, says Gonzalez. That number jumped somewhat as NFL Draft day hype put Tebow on the back page once again. For the month of March, traffic to the site was 10,262 visits and 31,111 page views, according to Purple, Rock, Scissors. Chatter hit a crescendo on April 22 when the Denver Broncos drafted Tebow a surprisingly high 25th overall.

In April, 20 percent of the site visitors clicked on "please donate," the email sign-up or a social media link, per the agency. At the same time, the percent of visitors to the site who actually made donations grew after the Super Bowl hubbub died. Because the curious can find Tim Tebow information so many other places on the Web, the foundation site seemed to evolve into a haven for Tebow supporters. The hope is to have a community of socially committed people, so that "when something happens, you can put out a call to the group asking them to help those in need and have 10,000 people respond by tomorrow," says Jones.

And then there is Facebook. "The foundation site treats Facebook as its right hand. It is the congregation, the meeting place, where people go to talk to each other about the foundation and Tim's work," says Gonzalez. From the week before the game to the week after the game, the foundation's Facebook page added 7,000 fans. By the end of March, the page had well over 10,000 fans.

Some experts think the emerging Tebow brand will bring Tim significant endorsement money during and after his football days. Others see politics ahead. "Tebow's NFL career and the fame of his foundation could easily be a stepping stone to a political future for Tebow," says Mike Flores, a strategic marketing consultant who used to coach college football in the Pac 10. "As one of the most popular college football players ever, he would have great appeal to the constituents of the politically 'red' states and the new Tea Party groups," Flores notes.

But it won't make a difference to Tebow's future on the football field. "His future as a football player is predicated solely on his ability to either show he has the tools to be a QB in the NFL or that he can play another position," says Flores.

In any case, Tebow and his family are planning ahead. The foundation no longer has an association with Focus on the Family, says Gonzalez. And Tebow will tweet much more as an NFL player and will post more YouTube videos about his charity work "as a way to talk directly to his fans, looking them right in the eye."