Back in 2004, when Eli Manning was in his first year playing for the Giants and I was in my last year covering them, the rookie quarterback told me how careful he planned to be about the marketing end of his new job.
"Right now, we're keeping it very low-key," he said that September, before he had started an NFL game. "I told them from the get-go, even before the season, let's keep things to a minimum."
So print ads for the "Got Milk?" campaign (with brother Peyton and father Archie) and Reebok (with Jets quarterback Chad Pennington) were in, but most television ads were out.