NBA’s ‘Dance Never Ends’ Play-Off Promo Leverages NCAA March Madness

It’s impossible for Americans to resist the lure of ‘March Madness’, even the NBA, which could technically be described as the NCAA basketball tournament’s biggest competitor, has embraced college hoops with its own campaign leveraging the 2015 tournament called ‘The Dance Never Ends’.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) might well be a direct competitor of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) – after all, the two basketball properties overlap at this time of year and thus battle for TV audiences, ticket sales and sponsorship deals – but this year sees the first time that the NBA has embraced the NCAA’s championship with a major, integrated campaign that connects its players to the college game.

This campaign, which spans TV, traditional media and digital platforms, features current NBA stars (Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry, Houston Rockets’ James Harden, Washington Wizards’ Paul Pierce, Oklahoma Thunder’s Russell Westbrook, Toronto Raptors’ Kyle Lowry, Atlanta Hawks’ Al Horford, Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade and Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs) and links them to their college ball backgrounds.

Thus, the 15-second spots feature the NBA players in action on the court and while the footage rolls out a touch of CGI sees their uniforms morph from those of their current pro teams back to the jerseys of their college alma maters.

For Westbrook it is a UCLA jersey,

and or Curry it’s Davidson College, for Harden it’s Arizona State, for Kyle Lowry it’s Villanova, for Al Horford it’s the University Of Florida and for Dwyane Wade it’s Marquette

while Pierce reverts to his University of Kansas top.

While Duncan wears the Wake Forest colours in the print executions.

The campaign has its own digital hub that includes a set of short films in which NBA stars recall ‘My NCAA Experience’ and it also runs across the league’s social channels.

#TheDanceNeverEnds for the @UConnHuskies' own @KembaWalker of the @Hornets! http://t.co/tUHOLElGru pic.twitter.com/lebBBlLa4U

— NBA (@NBA) April 1, 2015

Dwyane Wade sigue volando alto con el #TheDanceNeverEnds – http://t.co/rAArYf5Oo3 pic.twitter.com/glo6qGI807

— SOMOSBASKET.COM (@SomosBasketweb) March 31, 2015

Another creative link between the two properties sees all ‘The Dance Never Ends’ ads also feature the familiar , over-the-top voice of legendary former college basketball and NBA coach and broadcaster Dick Vitale.

‘If you think about it, March is the best time of the year for basketball fans — period,’ explains NBA chief marketing officer Pam El.

‘Our goal is to grow our fan base — and one of the best places to look is to the college fan who already loves the game of basketball.’

Comment

To some it might seem surprising that the pro-league NBA, supposedly basketball’s pinnacle property and dominant rights owner should turn cheerleader for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) annual championship.

Especially to those outside the United States where university sports simply don’t register in the national psyche.

But March Madness genuinely captures the national US sports’ zeitgeist and so the NBA’s tactical approach is either one based in a collegiate in spirit (‘’If it’s good for basketball, then it’s good for us’), or one that accepts the inevitable (‘If you can’t beat them, join them’).

Links

NBA ‘The Dance never Ends’:

http://www.nba.com/thedanceneverends/

NBA YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/NBA

NBA Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/nba

NBA Google+:

https://plus.google.com/+NBA/posts

NBA Twitter:

https://twitter.com/nba

NBA Instagram: