Why Patriots Owner Robert Kraft is Missing a Play

Combating antisemitism after managing a football team is possible, so long as different behavioral tactics and strategies are used. But the evidence suggests otherwise.

It is one thing to successfully lead a professional football team, as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has done for over three decades. But in respect of another of Kraft’s passions, it is quite another matter to successfully fight antisemitism, as Kraft has attempted to do through the organization he backs: the Blue Square Alliance.

To be clear, the BSA does some exceptionally good work monitoring antisemitism online. Their Command Center produces some of the best analyses out there. But beyond that their activities are worth reviewing – as it shines a spotlight not just on them but on Jewish organizations’ activities generally who have applied themselves to this space.

The methods employed by BSA, notably the high-profile Super Bowl commercial – which has been done for several years now – and the promotion of a simple blue square as a unifying symbol, reveal a crucial issue. They suggest a failure to engage with behavioral science to understand the shaping of mass persuasion. Visibility alone, even at the scale of the Super Bowl, is not the same as influence.

Yet there was an appreciation something was needed beyond the usual in conceiving the latest Super Bowl offering. BSA’s president, Adam Katz, stressed that the ad wasn’t trying to appeal to a Jewish audience. Instead, the Super Bowl provides an opportunity to reach an audience that is “unengaged – and in many cases uninformed – about antisemitism… We’re very focused on this audience that’s lacking awareness, empathy and motivation to act.”

Despite appropriate intentions, the commercial nevertheless attracted criticism almost immediately on airing, and several Jewish users even produced alternative AI-generated Super Bowl ads on social media. It may have been a knee-jerk reaction born out of frustration for what might have been done with the opportunity, yet it also touched on something deeper. Without a framework grounded in how people actually think, feel, and adopt beliefs, even the most expensive campaigns (and this one reputedly cost $15m), and though reaching a viewership in excess of 100 million, risk becoming gestures rather than transformative interventions.

The BSA’s own campaign evaluation underscores this concern. Testing conducted by HarrisX and the Anti-Defamation League suggested that the commercial – suitably aimed at a non-Jewish audience – performed relatively well by conventional metrics. It ranked 5th across measures of creative effectiveness and impact compared to all Super Bowl spots, and participant viewers reported a 10% increased motivation to address anti-Jewish prejudice. Some, 13%, indicated they would be more likely to challenge antisemitic remarks or jokes made by friends or family. On the surface, these findings, though modest, appear encouraging.

But they also raise fundamental questions that expose whether such campaigns can achieve anything beyond a fleeting tactical impact. How was the commercial’s message reinforced after it first aired? Were viewers neutral observers or already susceptible to adopting such campaign narratives or, in fact, predisposed to rejecting antisemitism?

And critically, self-reported intentions in a survey are not the same as future real-world actions. When confronted with antisemitic remarks in a social setting, would viewers actually intervene as they claimed, or would social pressure lead them to remain silent? And beyond an individual’s interactions, was there any evidence that the campaign reduced the prevalence or influence of antisemitic comments online? These are the measures today that matter, yet they appear to have remained unexamined.

Evaluating a fuller report might have shed light on some of the questions. But despite attempts made, requests were not responded to. It highlights an issue of accessibility by grassroots initiatives or individual experts (unless you know someone who knows someone), when it comes to querying leadership who act on the Jewish community’s behalf.

As it happens, there was some follow up by BSA to the Super Bowl Commercial. They would build, they stated recently, “on the momentum by giving away blue square sticky notes.” Why? Because “an ad can only start the conversation. Real change happens in hallways, classrooms, and shared spaces, when people recognize something they can actually do”. The idea was for students to write messages on these sticky notes – which would be placed in common spaces, or on lockers, teachers’ doors or unity walls – to “make everyday acts of care more visible.” It should be said, there’s nothing wrong with the sentiment, and the method in fact has uses. But we’re way beyond that. When it comes to Jew-hate, students are far more likely to be influenced by what they see on TikTok than from what they walk by in a school hallway. And it’s that failure to understand the perceptual demand on people’s minds, the things that catch their attention most to influence them, and at scale to create social pressure from peers, that are the concerns.

Like the commercial, the BSA’s plain blue square symbol is problematic. As a visual device, it carries little inherent meaning. Instead, it requires prior knowledge to interpret, and without which can appear abstract or opaque (it’s meant to represent the minuteness of the worldwide Jewish population, but who can tell?). This is not to say the symbol couldn’t be developed into something more powerful if the right knowledge is leveraged. But in its existing form, it does not evoke strong emotion, narrative affiliation, or identification – all essential components of persuasive mass communication.

The most successful symbolic campaigns, by contrast – political, social, ideological – share specific characteristics. They are immediately recognizable, emotionally resonant, and easily repeatable (i.e. “free free Palestine,” or the melon and Happy Merchant memes). They do not require explanation; their meaning is intuitive. Indeed, they align with behavioral science principles, where such symbology is effective because it engages how people actually process information, not how institutions assume they should.

The BSA’s approach likely reflects a traditional institutional Jewish mindset, one where raising awareness to create allies is treated as an end in itself. But awareness does not equal influence. A message can be seen, even widely seen, without being internalized or later acted upon. In the context of fighting modern antisemitism, that distinction is important.

These criticisms point to strategic failures in how Jewish organizations approach combating antisemitism. Indeed, success is often defined in narrow, short-term terms, with insufficient attention to what behavioral scientists call “stickiness” – the ability of an idea or symbol to embed in memory and spread organically over time. As a result, initiatives – like the Super Bowl commercial – may perform well tactically yet fail to influence long-term belief formation.

Now, contrast a benign Super Bowl commercial with an image of a suffering child in Gaza, which can promote all types of cognitive effects in the viewer to influence them. This isn’t to say many Gazan children aren’t suffering. But the image tells a powerful emotive story, despite, in many cases, not being factually accurate or providing context. The impact of such content is shaped through emotion and social media engagement, overriding rationality, with repetition – and hence reinforcement – of the image sealing its long-term impact in promoting a feeling of terrible injustice in those seeing it. And because emotion is being manipulated, the fact that the image (real or fake) may have been curated precisely to achieve that end can be completely overlooked by the viewer.

Yet in many organizations, this long-term weaponizing of narrative is often forgotten – or to put it more accurately it’s known but not fully appreciated. There remains a focus on discrediting lies which trumps a focus on changing emotions when it should be the other way round. And as a result, any injustice we show of Jewish suffering through antisemitism cannot stand up against curated suffering of children or others – especially if Israel is seen as the culprit.

In all, it reflects a flawed assumption that telling people true facts – like raising awareness of what Jews are experiencing using expensive Super Bowl spots or PR – can change their minds. Human psychology doesn’t work like that. World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder recently acknowledged the failing at the organization’s May, 2026 Congress in Geneva, “All the efforts of TV commercials, the full-page ads in newspapers and conferences — all the attempts to tell the world the facts have accomplished very little.”

The game, however, is far from over. Organizations like the BSA must continue monitoring antisemitism on behalf of the Jewish community worldwide; it’s vital and it’s indispensable. But we must also use such information to go beyond raising awareness. Negative narrative, for example, can be counteracted by an opposing positive narrative. It’s a question of implementing such an approach strategically; ad hoc attempts can only ever have limited effects. The behavioral science knowledge base provides direction for this and a great deal more besides, while AI can scale our efforts. It means we can avoid strategic mistakes while weakening the persuasive power of our enemy’s online activities that has increased Jew-hate in recent years. The resource is there for our leveraging, and it’s the play Kraft, and figures like him in the Jewish community, can only gain by to turn the tide in our favor in this battle.