Sports marketing has become a year-round multimedia effort that goes far beyond game day activations and the occasional Super Bowl ad.
Sports are a powerful driver of emotional value, as well as being one of the last live events marketers can count on to deliver audiences at scale, but brands have to do more than buy naming rights or put logos on team jerseys, said speakers at the recent Brand Innovators Sport Marketing Summit.
“Live sports is expensive, but live sports works,” said Mark Kirkham, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Beverages US, PepsiCo.
“Sports is one of the last places to live. It’s not AI,” said Sherina Smith, chief marketing officer at American Family Insurance. Testing has shown that sponsorships are the #1 driver of brand growth and connection, she said. “People are not flipping past their favorite sport.”
The emotional content of sports programming makes it a prime platform for a message that is driven by emotion, such as an insurer’s appeal to protect home and family, she explained. The idea of sports requiring grit and persistence fits in well with the values the company tries to embody, she said.
But game-day efforts – even in a major stage as the Super Bowl – need to be part of a larger, year-round strategy, said industry experts at the event, held during Super Bowl Week in San Francisco.
“You’ve got to think differently than just: ‘I’m going to throw a logo out there,’” said John Koller, senior vice president of marketing at HP. The computer manufacturer signed a deal with soccer’s Real Madrid that included bringing players to store events and it tapped into a global audience of hundreds of millions of fans, he said.
Communal Viewing
The Super Bowl remains a “communal viewing” event in a time of fragmentation, said Gail Horwood, chief marketing and customer experience officer, innovative medicines, U.S. at Novartis. But she added that “it’s really important for us to think about it as an ecosystem,” she said.
“Don’t just make it about a campaign, The Super Bowl is a moment and you need to turn that moment into a movement,” said Kirkham.
Even Super Bowl commercials need to be seen in the context of a larger strategy and media plan, said Ryan Washatka, senior vice president of sports & entertainment at Rakuten Rewards.
“If you’re looking at it only as a 30- second moment in time to drive impressions, you’re leaving a lot of value on the table,” he said. “It’s really getting into those important three months after, which is where you start to look at the acquisition and the retention and the loyalty. That’s where the brand value comes in.”
Rakuten launched an ad in last year’s game featuring a callback to the movie Clueless that was part of a larger plan starting six weeks before the game and lasting for months after, leading to a partnership with New York Fashion Week, all created to expand how people thought about the brand, he said.
Less than 1% of a team’s fan base will have the opportunity to experience their team live at their home stadium, so “it’s more important how we show up in that everyday fan’s life,” he said.
From left to right: Nataly Kelly, chief marketing officer at Zappi; Stacey Andrade-Wells, chief marketing officer of Liquid I.V
“This is not a small cash outlay to play in the Super Bowl, so we really had to approach it from a full 360-degree standpoint,” said Stacey Andrade-Wells, chief marketing officer of Liquid I.V. The beverage company had a striking Super Bowl ad but it was part of a “truly omnichannel approach” that included retail-level activations and partnerships with Doordash and Amazon, balancing short-term sales building and longer-term sustainability of the brand, she said.
Following on from its research that the day after the Super Bowl is the biggest day to call in sick from work in the year Liquid I.V. decide to own National Rehydration Day in partnership with Doordash as a strategy to keep the momentum from the game going. The brand built “an entire content suite” around hydration’s benefits to launch after the game, sampling and other activations.
“There’s an opportunity for us to continue that story and really close the loop,” she said.
“You can surround an event and do it in a way that’s very, very healthy,” said HP’s Koller. But he warned: “don’t be a tourist.” That means to really focus on performance marketing, using data to target customers with relevant messaging and offers that build brand advocacy. “That’s the kind of output you need,” he said.
Performance vs. brand: “It’s a false choice”
Sports partnerships make emotional connections, but in the end, brand metrics are important, said Dedra DeLilli, vice president of marketing communications, Toyota Motor North America. She cited a Kantar study that showed brands seen as culturally relevant grow six times faster than others.
It’s “intellectually dishonest” to separate branding and performance, said Will Flaherty, senior vice president of growth for healthcare platform Ro. “It’s a false choice” to have separate those budgets, he explained. “Every dollar that we spend in media has to be accountable to driving some performance back,” he said.
Novartis’ Horwood agreed. The pharma company saw measurable results from its first time outing last year with a PSA promoting breast cancer screening. “It gave us the data we needed to say this is a good place to have a serious health message,” and come back this year, she said.
Sports, and the Super Bowl in particular, are a vehicle where results are often quite clear, almost in real time, Flaherty said. Ro placed a streaming-only spot in last year’s game and saw responsiveness and engagement “in excess to what we normally see,” validating how Super Bowl audiences watch for the ads, he said. That shifted both expectations and benchmarks, he said. Looking at those results and the current momentum of the brand made the decision to run a broadcast Super Bowl ad for its weight-loss products easier, he explained.
From left to right: Gabrielle Wesley, chief marketing officer, confectionery at Mars Snacking North America; Anders Mortensen, chief revenue officer at The Trade Desk
While sport is powered by sentiment and team spirit, data and research are a big partner to storytelling, said speakers. Long-term brand equity and sales performance are not opposites, said Gabrielle Wesley, chief marketing officer, confectionery at Mars Snacking North America. They have to complement each other, she said: “They have to walk hand-in-hand in the sand together.”
When Lowe’s came up with its “Earn Your Sunday” football campaign, cultural relevance was a top priority, since on the surface, hardware “is not endemic to football,” recalled Gerardo Soto, vice president of media & sports marketing. The home improvement retailer used data insights to shape that effort so “it’s not just a campaign, but it’s a platform that can live beyond one year or one season,” said Julie Lee, director brand & sports marketing. That campaign increased purchase intent by 14%, said Soto.
As part of its efforts, Lowe’s partnered with Electronic Arts and its Madden football games, not only as a forward-looking tactic to approach Gen Z consumers who may not be homeowners yet, but also to reach Millennials and Gen Xers who turned out to be big players of those games. Soto noted data showed those demographics clock in three hours of game play daily.
“Think about the engagement of seeing our brand pop up during the time they are most engaged and focused,” he said. “It goes well beyond any TV or social media engagement.”
“An Epicenter of Culture”
Sports is a strong platform for storytelling and creative expression, said speakers.
“When you talk about partnerships beyond game day, for us that’s the bread and butter,” said Stephanie Dittmer Rogers, executive vice president marketing of the San Francisco 49ers. The team has one of the largest fan bases in the U.S. and perhaps the world – this year, it increased YouTube engagement 200% and added 500,000 fans on its Spanish and Arabic language channels.
While the team plays a minimum 18 times a year “that’s not enough to fulfill the insatiable appetite of our fans all over the world. They want 365 days a year, 24/7,” said Dittmer Rogers.
“There is no amount of content that you can deliver to them that is too much.”
In spite of the attention to Super Bowl ads, the content that sports marketing strategies are built around today is increasingly fan- and athlete generated content, said speakers. Younger demographics such as Generation Z approach fandom differently than their elders, consuming sports in small clips on social media, or via creators, many of whom are athletes themselves.
“As we all know, we’re in the attention economy right now,” said Kamal Bhandal, senior vice president of global at Invisalign brand, consumer & Americas marketing at Align Technology. The dental appliance brand works with creators—including a large helping of sports stars—to put forward its message about the health benefits for teeth alignment.
“Gen Z doesn’t follow teams, it follows players,” said Jennifer Jones-Latz, head of global brand marketing at Lucid Motors. “They don’t just want to watch the game. They want their second screen. They want to follow them along.”
The National Football League has tried to create “an epicenter of culture around game day” by launching activations centered around cultural interests, education, fashion and its emerging flag football league, in order to draw a diversity of fans, she said.
It’s important to “create multiple entry points for fans, so you’re able to meet them where they are,” said Caroline Davis, the NFL’s manager of global brand & consumer marketing.
The NFL management keeps a calendar to maintain connections with sponsors and offer them opportunities year-round, said Mike Minnella, senior director of business development at the NFL. The NFL scouting combine, training camp and the draft and other milestones offer off-season opportunities, he said.
“We really try to make sure that when we talk to partners, we’re not a September-to-February business,” he said.
“Everything starts with culture,” said Jessica Grigoriou, senior vice president of marketing, dressings at Unilever North America. The company’s Hellman’s mayonnaise brand returned this year to the Super Bowl with retro ads playing on the use of the song “Sweet Caroline” at sports events. Hellman’s teased the ad for weeks before the game and launched a number of experiential activations to “build an ecosystem around it,” said Grigoriou.
From left to right: Glenn Cole, founder & creative chair at 72andSunny; Tim Ellis, chief marketing officer of the NFL; Scott Howe, CEO of LiveRamp
The league has focused on a “helmets-off” strategy built around the players off the field, as much as their play on it, to “make the league much more human,” said Tim Ellis, chief marketing officer of the NFL. “Open your arms wider and you’ll get more people into the NFL.”
“Continuing to showcase these players that brands could work with is a big part of our strategy of how we’re going to continue to grow,” said Mike Minnella, senior director of business development.
Working with creators is “a circle of trust,” that starts with the choice of players and then giving them space to create something that resonates with consumers, said Steve Hartmann, head of integrated marketing at Experian. The company chose San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner as one of its creator cornerstones and is a sponsor of his podcast, supporting it with activations and other efforts.
“What’s really important is building that relationship. It can’t be a one-and-done thing,” he said.
To make the best use of their efforts, marketers have to be willing to learn, both new tools and new ways to approach consumers, said Mars’ Wesley. The candymaker’s Skittles brand experimented at the Super Bowl, shooting an ad live during the game from the front lawn of a fan who won a contest. This can be a risk, but it’s what marketers need to deal with today, she said.
“You have to be open to how consumers experience your brand that may be a little different than how you want them to,” said Wesley. “Brands now belong to the consumer and they get to shape that through their advocacy.”
