ESPN’s Chris Fowler may find himself in an unusual position when he’s in the middle of calling one of the college football games slated for broadcast on ABC or ESPN. He may look up at a monitor during a commercial break and see himself talking to millions of viewers — even though the network is showing nothing but ads.
That’s because Fowler, well known to sports fans thanks to years of calling ABC’s Saturday-night college football games and hosting ESPN’s long-running “College GameDay,” is an integral part of a new ad campaign from Heineken’s Dos Equis that seeks to make the beer a critical part of the game experience. In addition to commercials that feature Fowler acting as a coach, Dos Equis has been running a sweepstakes that could reward contestants when teams “go for dos” and attempt a two-point conversion.
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“We have been seeing a lot of it in some of the most-watched games of the season,” says Fowler, during an interview.
TV networks have long experimented with blurring the lines between when segments of popular programs and the commercial breaks, as anyone who has seen a Subway sandwich become part of the dialogue in series like NBC’s “Chuck” or CBS’ “Hawaii Five-0” might attest. But the current Dos Equis campaign puts a spotlight on some of the new techniques the media companies are testing to blend programs and pitches in ways that keep viewers from toggling to other options.
“We want college football fans to feel like Dos Equis is ingrained in the sport, so being woven into the live game experience, not only during commercial breaks but on the field too, is key,” says Jonnie Cahill, chief marketing officer at Heineken USA, in remarks provided via email. During a recent telecast of a college football game featuring the Georgia Bulldogs and the Alabama Crimson Tide, for example, Dos Equis turned up not just in commercial breaks, but with on-screen graphics when teams went for two-point conversions in game time. “We love the way we are becoming woven into the full fan experience and linking it back the brand,” Cahill says.
TV companies have long tried to do this sort of stuff, but work in the past often came in the form of a “one off,” or something that was hard to repeat or show multiple times. In 2010, for example, ABC ran commercials for Stouffer’s that featured the casts of shows like “Ugly Betty” and “The Middle” dining on the Nestle brand’s frozen entrees. More recently, Wells Fargo has been running a campaign that features Steve Martin and Martin Show, with commercials that appear to turn up frequently during the new cyucle of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” in which the two actors star. But the ads would seem to make the most sense if they are shown during programs that feature the characters the celebrities play.
The new ad effort featuring Fowler can be aired across many college football games and during general sports programming on ESPN and ABC, and still have bear some contextual relevance for viewers. “We believe these spots will resonate with college football fans wherever they run,” says Cahill.
It’s not enough to make familiar network faces available for ads. Fowler says he won’t take part in commercial campaigns unless he feels a real affiliation with the product being advertised. “I’;m going to get enjoyment out of it if the brand makes sense, if I like what it stands for, if the experience of doing the commercial is nice. All of that stuff is super important,” says Fowler.
Disney takes pains to make sure its talent want to take part in specific advertising efforts, says Christina Carey Dunleavy, a vice president at Disney CreativeWorks, an in-house agency that helped produce the new Dos Equis commercial. The company “wants to make sure the talent involved believes in what they are talking about,” she says.
The campaign’s emphasis on “going for it,” spoke to Fowler. “The message lines up with what I believe in life — making bold choices, listening to that inner voice, listening to your gut and going for more,” he sas. When Fowler first joined ESPN in 1986, he did so for a college-sports highlights program called “Scholastic Sports America” — something that puzzled some of his acquaintances, he recalls. Some people told him “that’s a small cable network. They’re new. There’s no future in that,” but, he continues, “it worked out well — not because I could see the future, but because it felt right in the moment.”
Disney believes more advertisers will want to consider similar concepts, says Carey Dunleavy, particularly as more marketers see value in alliances with so-called “influencers,” or enthusiasts who are able to establish a relationship with bigger groups of fans or consumers. “I think you’ll see more,” she adds.
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