Early November saw Nissan North America trumpet its ground-breaking new four-year, NCAA and 100-university official college sports sponsorship programme with the launch of a face painting strand of its Diehard Fan initiative.
Launched on 5 November, it was promoted through a 30-second digital and social spot called ‘The Easy Way’ that features past Heisman winners and Nissan ambassadors Troy Smith, Eddie George and Tony Dorsett.
This commercial, developed with agency Critical Mass and which may transfer to TV later in the campaign, aims to encourage fans to download the car brand’s free ‘Paint Your Game Face App’ at diehardfan.com.
A proud supporter of NCAA football and specific partner with more than 100 universities nationwide, the campaign aims to drive college football fans to download the ‘Nissan DieHard Fan’ app and then virtually paint their game face using a smartphone or tablet.
‘DieHard Fan’, which is available for free from the App Store and Google Play, is an augmented reality tool that uses inventive technology to enhance the fan tradition of face painting in team colours with by creating an immersive and shareable digital experience.
It employs proprietary, patented facial analysis technology that enables users to select from a choice of 1000s of different ‘game faces’- each individually representing the 100 college teams in Nissan’s sponsorship portfolio – and then enables that fan to instantly ‘paint on their game face’ over a favourite photo or video.
In a bid to maximise ‘realism’, Nissan added an analogue step to this digital process – as each face paint was meticulously hand painted on real human models by a champion face painter.
It was then digitally re-mastered to produce as realistic a look as possible.
‘The DieHard Fan mobile app delivers on Nissan’s brand promise of innovation and excitement for everyone,’ explains Nissan North America marketing communication and media VP Jeremy Tucker.
‘This is just one way for sports fans to unleash their colours anywhere, anytime, and engage with Nissan and our College 100 Sponsorship of men’s and women’s college sports programs throughout the US’
The objective is to ensure the brand has a ‘nearly ubiquitous presence at college campuses nationwide – including 64 out of the 65 schools in the ‘Power Five’ sports conferences (the missing college is Michigan State, which has a long term partnership with local car giant GM).
‘Nissan will have a presence at all sporting events, 11 months out of the year. Nearly every week that college sports are played we’ll have something going on campus unique to Nissan,’ says Tucker.
This deal spans 22 men’s and women’s sports and reaches thousands of student athletes, 22 million alumni and 188 million fans across the nation.
This will not only see combined activation strands like ‘Diehard Fan’, but also ensure university stadiums and sports arenas display Nissan ads, auto maker sports scholarships and equipment supply streams, plus more than 100 local Nissan dealers participating in the ongoing campaign.
‘We created a custom playbook for each one of these schools to allow the dealers to go through market by market and leverage all of the media they currently place, in addition to new media that we’re purchasing as a part of this deal that will be encompassing television, radio, digital, social and assets from their local college,’ adds Tucker.
‘So we get access to the mark, the colours, the slogan, and we can bring that not only to the Nissan brand level, but all the way down to the dealership level for them to activate.’
The deal, which has been reported in the marketing press as being worth anything between $100,000 and $400,000 per college, saw Nissan negotiate with each school’s media rights owner the media rights holder of each school.
The partnerships with the individual schools were developed with agency OMD, while Zimmerman structured the activations and worked with local dealers and agency TBWA/Chiat/Day will work on future activations and ad campaigns.
Nissan is also an official corporate sponsor of NCAA Men’s Basketball and has rights to activate at select NCAA Championship events.
Comment
This technology is not just an activation first, but it also benefits from being quick, easy-to-use and fairly lifelike too.
It backs up a blockbuster four-year agreement with both the NCAA and 100-plus US universities aims to give Nissan the dominant brand presence in college sports.
The Japan-based automaker describes the multi-college partnership programme as ‘the widest-reaching deal in the history of collegiate sports’.
The routes of this deal lie in the expansion of Nissan’s Heisman Trophy Turst partnership which was activated in 2014 and 2015 through its Heisman House campaign that initially featured 11 partner colleges and focused on a single sport – football (see case study).
‘People lined up out the door waiting for hours to experience the event and meet the Heisman winners,’ recalls Tucker when explaining why this led to Nissan to take its college sports sponsorship programme ‘to a whole new level beyond just football’.
‘It’s one thing to do the deal and spend the money on it, and everybody can logo-slap and do that,’ argues Tucker.
‘It’s another thing to create an experience that hits hearts and minds and creates an unforgettable fan experience.’
It is part of Nissan’s current, umbrella ‘Go Big’ marketing strategy which aims to create unforgettable moments.
Thus far, these have also included Nissan’s return to the Super Bowl with a spot during last year’s game.
Links
Nissan North America ‘Diehard Fan’ Hub:
Nissan North America Website:
NCAA:
Critical Mass:
OMD:
Zimmerman:
TBWA/Chiat/Day:
