In a shake-up of both its seasonal and creative ad strategy, this autumn sees the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has released a new series of commercials featuring celebrities to drive interest in the new football season
Previously, the NCAA has historically used its college basketball Final Four showpiece tournament to launch its new annual ad campaigns, but 2016 sees it roll out new creative in the Fall (autumn to non-Americans) in order to leverage the growing audience for college football.
October sees the NCAA – the non-profit association that regulates athletes of 1,281 institutions, conferences and organisations and organises the athletic programmes of most US colleges – roll out a campaign fronted by legendary football receiver Jerry Rice to promote the value of a college education.
The spot sees Rice note that only 2% of the 480,000+ NCAA college athletes will turn pro in their given sport, but at least those who don’t make it will have the advantage of a college degree.
Something he argues is more important than private jets, shoe contracts or fan clubs.
The new campaign – developed by agency SS+K New York, produced by Superprime and directed by Samuel Bayer (with a soundtrack called ‘Endorsement Feels’ by composer Dan Sammartano) – also includes a second late September commercial promoting NCAA women’s sport called simply ‘Done’.
This second ‘female athlete empowerment’ spot, perhaps timed to coincide with the WNBA playoffs, sees two basketball players defiantly say ‘genders don’t play sports, athletes do’.
The two ads, which were both shot in Los Angeles, were developed by New York ad agency SS&K, are reported to have cost more than $1m to produce.
Yet, due to its network broadcast agreements, the TV air time is free for the NCAA and the spots are running across ESPN and CBS, as well as conference-controlled networks like the Big Ten Network and SEC Network.
According to NCAA VP of communications Bob Williams, Rice was chosen because he represents academics, fairness and well-being and that thus far the response on the new ads has been extremely positive.
He also claims that the fresh spot promoting women’s empowerment also has been receiving ‘very high marks’ from viewers.
The Indianapolis based NCAA, which also helps more than 450,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports, generates around $1bn annually from broadcast and sponsorship deals (around 80% of this is generated from its flagship Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament) which it largely redistributes to various college sports focused organisations.
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One reason behind the revised strategy is simple: football is the USA’s number one sport and the college football market is huge with major games drawing up to 30 million TV viewers according to Nielsen.
Plus, whilst there is some overlap with the college basketball audience, it’s not 100% match so using football as a communications space offers bigger and fresh engagement opportunities.
Another advantage to the new campaign timing is that the Fall marks the start of the new school year and the new college athletics year – so it first the ‘new start’ ideal.
Plus, if you are going to use big name former sports stars to front your campaigns, it certainly makes sense to air these executions during the sports events in which they became famous.
The new strategy is a pillar of a wider plan initially launched 18 months ago which is built around the idea of ensuring all of its ads promote the NCAA’s three main ‘pillars’: academics, fairness and well-being.
These individual pillars are also promoted through a supporting set of September 2016 NCAA spots in a series called ‘Focus On..’ which includes ‘Fairness’,
‘Well-Being’,
‘Academics’ and
‘Opportunity’.
Plus the organisation rolled out a spot earlier in 2016 to explain how it distributes its revenue called ‘Where Does The Money Go?’
‘There are a lot of people who try to frame our mission in a way that isn’t accurate. We want to try to ensure as many people as possible understand what the [NCAA’s] focus and mission is,’ explains NCAA VP of communications Bob Williams.
Indeed, these new Fall commercials mark the second major change in approach to the NCAA’s marketing strategy in the last six months.
In addition to this new ‘time of year’ and ‘NCAA football sports platform’ change, the previous tactical switch came in March 2016 during the more traditional Final Four annual campaign which marked the first time that the NCAA used celebrity endorsers – led by retired NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal,
and tennis icon Billie Jean King.
– to front its new ads.
The NCAA’s own research suggests celebrity endorsers are effective in boosting the NCAA brand: around 50% of its own focus group respondents said they had a more positive opinion of the NCAA after seeing the ads featuring the celebrities (compared to 25% of respondents who said they had a higher opinion of the NCAA after watching earlier ads without celebrities).
The NCAA has yet to say whether its celebrity commercial stars are being paid to appear in the executions.
Payment, of course, is a relevant topic as the new approach is largely an attempt to refresh and reinforce the NCAA brand and come in response to some recent criticism relating to the ‘amateur’ status of NCAA college sports, the (financial) exploitation of student-athletes, as well as scandals around university athlete recruitment practices.
The new approach aims to shift the conversation away from the debate over college sports commercialisation (particularly whether a fairer and more realistic approach would be to professionalise the athletes) and back to the ‘amateur ideal of college sports’.
After all, the NCAA’s brand has long been built on amateur ideals and the organisation clearly wants to keep it that way.
We would only ask whether a perception-led ad campaign is really the right route to repairing a brand image under attack and addressing the issues behind the criticism?
Links:
NCAA web:
http://www.ncaa.org/opportunity/
NCAA YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ncaa
NCAA Google+:
https://plus.google.com/u/1/107120646524338477564
SS+K, New York:
