Buffalo Wild Wings kicked off its 2019/20 football season activation programme with a campaign that sets out to present its restaurants as the place to watch live games and which even suggests fans abandon their couches and their autumn obligations in favour of wings, beer and sandwiches.
The campaign launched with a pair of 30-second commercials: ‘Man Cave’ (which laments the popularity of sport watching home man caves),
and ‘High Fives’ (which again focuses on the benefits of watching the game out and also on the chain’s $5 gameday specials – an extension of a promotion that began last year).
These two commercials were followed with an additional spot highlighting the problem of clashing personal/football scheduling with ‘weddings’.
The brand then followed up by offering up a solution by urging fans to pen a branded Football Prenup.
Protect your season with a Football Prenup (Yes, you read that right.)
Fill yours out: https://t.co/zMom9VBXA4 pic.twitter.com/LevN4WNZxK
— Buffalo Wild Wings (@BWWings) August 26, 2019
This is positioned as a comic way for fans to make sure their significant others allow them to skip other obligations to watch games important to them.
How does the prenup work?
It is based on the idea that football season is known to test even the strongest of relationships and to help avoid such relationship woes, Buffalo Wild Wings is offering a ‘legally binding – not’ Football Prenup allowing fans to customise their own season-long terms so that watching the games and domestic bliss can co-exist.
Even Buffalo Wild Wings Chief Marketing Officer Seth Freeman admits he has a man cave, but claims that it isn’t as good as watching at the restaurant.
“It doesn’t give me the opportunity to enjoy football the way it is supposed to be watched,” Freeman added.
“Running wild with the heard is kind of the spirit of the idea of the campaign,” says Freeman.
The campaign was created by the Martin Agency with Mindshare handling media.
Comment:
Despite the Man Cave creative concept, the objective of this opening wave of Buffalo Wild Wings’ football marketing aims to get people out to watch football.
Later in the season, creative and messaging will evolve to put more emphasis on its food.
A brand that puts sport at the heart of its marketing mix, this football kick-off work follows on from Buffalo Wild Wings’ March 2019’s ‘That’s March Madness’ campaign for the NCAA hoops tournament (see case study).
Links:
Buffalo Wild Wings
https://www.buffalowildwings.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/buffalowildwings
https://www.facebook.com/BuffaloWildWings/
https://www.instagram.com/bwwings/
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