NBA drinks sponsor Mountain Dew launched a new audio activation to leverage the 2021 season playoffs in the form of a basketball-themed ‘The Dew Zone With Druski’ podcast.
Hosted by comedian and influencer Druski (a young comedian with 2.4m followers on Instagram and 1.1m followers on TikTok), the podcast series will features hoops stars, other athletes and celebrity guests and will focus not only on the NBA playoffs, but also cover all aspects of professional basketball – including the WNBA – and include player origin stories.
The 10-episode project, which will run from 18 May through the course of the NBA Playoffs, is a partnership between Mtn Dew and sports podcasting platform Blue Wire.
The audio activation will run on all podcast platforms – including Apple, Spotify and Stitcher – and is being promoted through Mtn Dew and Blue Wire’s social channels and the latter’s existing audio channels.
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Part of the official soft drink sponsor of the NBA and WNBA’s strategic push to engage with new, younger consumers, this is Mountain Dew’s first branded podcast and sees the PepsiCo owned drinks brand enter a competitive, white-hot media space which has rocketed during the pandemic.
According to IAB, total US podcast ad revenue will surpass $2bn by 2023 so it is little surprise that more brands, sports sponsors and rights owners are getting in on the act, while Statistica’s 2021 survey shows that 49% of monthly podcast listeners are Gen Z.
Another strand of its youth-targeting strategy saw Mnt Dew launch a new mobile game with New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williams (who signed a five year brand partnership in 2019)earlier in the year.
This podcast initiative follows hot on the heels of the mid May launch of NBA mega star LeBron James’ first campaign for Mtn Dew Energy Rise called ‘Morning Makes You’.
The other notable new branded sports podcast to launch during the same week was ‘Hublot Fusion Podcast’ leveraging its UEFA Euro 2020 partnership.
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