When is a two-point conversion really a touchdown?
For the brewers of Dos Equis, multiple times per season.
Since last year, Dos Equis has arranged to become part of the action during select college-football games telecast across ESPN, ABC, SEC and ACC Network getting special on-screen graphics and other elements whenever one of the teams tries to “Go for Dos” and score a two-point conversion. This year, the Heineken brand expanded its support and is expected to cover nearly two thirds of the plays broadcast this season, compared with just under half a year ago. To be sure, there are TV commercials, too.
“We’re not about just interrupting sport. We’re about being a part of it,” says Allison Payne, Heineken USA’s CMO, during a recent interview. The concept helps create a feeling of “doing the unexpected to make life a bit more interesting, and, obviously, make the game more interesting.”
Football commercials and beer go together like, well, what did we just say? But more advertisers like Dos Equis are pressing TV networks to carve out new elements from game during which they can hawk their wares. Such stuff is significantly more complicated than just running an ad and arranging for one of the announcers to bark out “this game is brought to you by….” And TV-sports outlets expect to see a significant uptick in requests for special sponsorships, particularly as sports take on new importance during the industry’s streaming wars, with games representing one of the few programming formats left that can still attract a large audience of simultaneous viewers.
Madison Avenue is pouring new dollars into sports-TV. Disney earlier this year said it sold nearly $4 billion in ad time tied to sports during the industry’s recent “upfront” sales market, when TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory. NBCUniversal said its sports properties saw an uptick of 20% in new sponsors during the annual haggle. Amazon’s Prime Video suggested sales tied to sports “provided incremental volume growth for us” during the market.
In a different era, advertisers would use their big budgets to procure similar stuff during primetime dramas and comedies. In the streaming era, “there are fewer meaningful opportunities to do this in entertainment” programming, notes Dan Lovinger, a former head of sports and Olympics sales at NBCU who now leads Lov of the Game Advisors, a consultancy. In years past, advertisers bought sports commercials to reach large audiences. They still do, to be sure, but there appears to be some pressure building to engage more significantly with fans. “Dollars follow eyeballs, and so if the eyeballs are moving to sports, the dollars and creativity will also follow,” Lovinger says.
At Main Street Sports Group, which operates a collection of regional sports outlets known as the FanDuel Sports Network, executives have been working on what they call “trigger ads” that surface at specific sports moments, like a home run or a stolen base. “Is there an ad experience that we can do when there are like three seconds left on the shot clock, or any time that there is a three-pointer or a steal or something?” asks Jim Keller, executive vice president of advertising and sponsorship sales for the FanDuel networks, during an interview. Executives are “focused on finding a way for us to create sponsor moments that actually add to the viewers’ enjoyment of the game.”
Advertisers aren’t guaranteed to hit a marketing home run. Indeed, the live, spontaneous nature of a sports telecast means that tying ad messages to specific moments can be fraught with challenge. Rocket Cos. earlier this year ran an ad during Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl LIX that used a version of John Denver’s “Country Roads, Take Me Home” to talk about Americans striving for home ownership. Marketing executives then tried to get the crowd watching the live game at New Orleans Caesar’s Superdome to sing along — with decidedly mixed results. When Fox came back to live broadcasting following the commercial break that contained an ad from Rocket, many fans appeared to either ignore the music or look puzzled as to why they should take part.
Fox and the NFL initially turned down the live, in-stadium singing session, believing that there would be more control around the concept if crowds were taped singing the song during pre-game coverage when the network was in commercial breaks. The advertiser insisted on trying to create a live spectacle. Once Fox cut to the commercial break that included the Rocket ad, the stadium crowd as invited to participate via use of promotional announcements, a D.J. and the facility’s various screens.
Getting viewers to associate Dos Equis with the two-point conversions requires “high-level coordination,” says Payne. Ther are traditional commercials, and football announcer Chris Fowler has been enlisted to help emphasize the sponsorship. “We have signage. We have college football team sponsorship, We have tailgate activation,” says Payne. “We are very good at bringing brand experiences to life, but it requires quite an in-depth coordination” between Heineken, Disney, ESPN and Dos Equis’ media agency, Dentsu.
Disney has become more open to similar requests, says Mike Denby, senior vice president of sales for the company. “We believe the more that we do integrations, the more that we elevate brands, it drives results,” he says. At the same time, he adds, the company can’t oversaturate the playing field with dozens of similar ideas during a single game.
Creating other bespoke ad concepts may be as hard as winning the games themselves. Sports remains “an unpredictable format,” notes Lovinger, and advertisers will want guarantees that a special appearance close to a goal, touchdown, stolen base, or foul that can’t always be given. What’s more, some leagues can be very careful about how much space they give advertisers as their games are being played. “There are leagues that are less restrictive in terms of how the broadcasters can access inventory and you’ll probably see more of it there, “says Lovinger.
Dos Equis remains undaunted. “My long-term vision is like, can you imagine whenever two-point conversion is in the cards that the whole stadium is chanting ‘Go for Dos?’ asks Payne. “That’s the Nirvana. I feel like we can get there.”
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