When is a two-point conversion actually a touchdown?
For the brewers at Dos Equis, multiple times per season.
Since last year, Dos Equis has been part of the action during select college football games aired on the ESPN, ABC, SEC and ACC networks, arranging for special on-screen graphics and other elements to appear every time one of the teams “Go for Dos” and attempts to score a two-point conversion. This year, the Heineken brand has expanded its support and is expected to cover nearly two-thirds of the plays aired this season, compared to just under six months ago. There are certainly TV commercials as well.
“We’re about participating in sports, not just interrupting them,” Alison Payne, CMO of Heineken USA, said in a recent interview. This concept helps create a sense of “doing unexpected things to make life a little more interesting, and obviously making the game more interesting.”
Soccer commercials and beer go together so well, what did I just say? But advertisers like Dos Equis are putting pressure on TV networks to cut new elements out of games while selling merchandise. Something like this is much more complicated than simply running an ad and arranging for one of the announcers to shout, “This game is brought to you by.” Sports TV networks also expect special sponsorship requests to increase significantly, especially as sports takes on new importance in the industry’s streaming wars, with gaming still one of the few programming formats that can attract large numbers of concurrent viewers.
Madison Avenue is pouring new money into sports television. Disney announced earlier this year that it had sold nearly $4 billion in sports-related advertising time in the industry’s latest “upfront” sales market, where TV networks are trying to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory. NBCUniversal said its sports properties saw a 20% increase in new sponsors during its annual haggling session. Amazon’s Prime Video indicated that sports-related sales “provided the company with incremental volume growth” during the market.
In another era, advertisers would have spent big budgets procuring similar content for prime-time dramas and comedies. In the streaming era, there are “fewer meaningful opportunities to do this with entertainment programming,” said Dan Lovinger, former head of sports and Olympic sales at NBCU who now heads Lov, a consulting firm called Game Advisors. In years past, advertisers were buying sports commercials to reach large audiences. Sure, they still do that, but there seems to be more pressure on them to engage with their fans more. “Dollars follow the eyeballs, so when the eyeballs move to sports, the dollars and creativity will follow,” Lovinger said.
At Main Street Sports Group, which operates a collection of regional sports outlets known as the FanDuel Sports Network, executives are working on what they call “trigger ads,” which appear at specific moments in sports, such as home runs or stolen bases. “Is there an advertising experience that you can have when there’s like 3 seconds left on the shot clock or when you make a 3-pointer or a steal or something like that?” asks Jim Keller, executive vice president of advertising and sponsorship sales for FanDuel Networks, during an interview. Executives are “focused on finding ways to create sponsored moments that actually enhance viewers’ enjoyment of the game.”
Advertisers are not guaranteed marketing success. Indeed, due to the live and spontaneous nature of sports television broadcasts, tying advertising messages to specific moments can be challenging. Earlier this year, Rocket Company ran an ad during Fox’s Super Bowl 11 broadcast that used a version of John Denver’s “Country Roads, Take Me Home” to talk about Americans striving for homeownership. So marketing executives tried to get the live audience at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans to sing along, with decidedly mixed results. When Fox returned to live broadcast after a commercial break that included an ad for Rocket, many fans either ignored the music or seemed confused as to why they should participate.
Fox and the NFL initially rejected live in-stadium singing sessions, believing they would have more control over the concept by recording the crowd singing the song during the network’s pregame broadcasts during commercial breaks. Advertisers insisted on creating a live spectacle. As Fox entered a commercial break that included an ad for the Rockets, the stadium crowd was invited to participate using promotional announcements, a DJ, and various screens throughout the facility.
Getting viewers to associate Dos Equis with two-point conversions requires a “high level of coordination,” Payne says. There will also be traditional commercials, with soccer announcer Chris Fowler helping to highlight the sponsorship. “We have signage, we have college football team sponsorships, we do tailgate activations,” Payne said. “We’re good at delivering brand experiences, but it requires pretty close coordination” between Heineken, Disney, ESPN and Dos Equis’ media agency Dentsu.
Disney is open to similar requests, said Mike Denby, the company’s senior vice president of sales. “We believe that the more you integrate, the better your brand will be, and that will drive results,” he says. At the same time, he added, the company can’t saturate the playing field with dozens of similar ideas during one game.
Creating other bespoke advertising concepts can be just as difficult as winning the game itself. Sports remains an “unpredictable format,” Lovinger said, and advertisers will want to guarantee a special appearance near a goal, touchdown, steal or foul. Additionally, some leagues can be very selective about how much space they give advertisers during games. “Some leagues are less restrictive in how broadcasters can access inventory, so you’ll probably see more inventory there,” Lovinger said.
Dos Equis is undaunted. “My long-term vision is, can you imagine an entire stadium screaming, ‘Go for it,’ every time a two-point conversion is in the cards?” Payne asks. “That’s Nirvana. I feel like I can reach it.”
