ESPN has launched a new brand campaign, running globally across the ESPN Platform, anchored in the simple truth that ‘Life Needs Sports’.
‘Life Needs Sports’ aims to speak about how sports, at its best, serves as a powerful catalyst for bringing people together and forms an integral, important part of fans’ lives.
The fresh brand campaign aims to celebrate the powerful role sports play in fans’ lives and it acknowledges that all fans are unique – with their very own passion perspectives, languages, humour, styles and traditions.
The international work – running in markets such as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, India, South Africa and the UK – is an ode to and an exploration of fandom: from the inspirational to the emotional and from the whacky and offbeat to the mainstream.
While the campaign is united through the concept and the single ‘Life Needs Sport’ tagline, it will largely roll out through unique content and creative based on individual sports.
The new initiative launched with two initial creative executions: one focusing on basketballand the other on baseball.
A spearhead ‘Smaller’ commercial leverages current interest in and passion generated around the NBA Playoffs.
Debuting simultaneously on the brand’s Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook accounts, this hero commercial features basketball superstars Steph Curry, Chris Paul, Terry Rozier and Kyle Lowry, comes in both 30-second and 15-second versions.
It is set to a new version of Skee-Lo’s 1995 cult classic 1995 hit ‘I Wish and is a tribute to hoops stars who’ve defied the usual height standards needed to be a star basketball player and features the copy line ‘Life Measures Height. Sports Measures Heart’.
While the other launch spot, an MLB commercial called ‘True Love’, focuses on the eclectic relationship baseball players have with their bats.
This footage features a line-up of stars such as the red hot Chicago Cubs’ Javier Baez and the Phillies’ Ryan Howard and is set to the Kendrick Lamar’s track ‘Love’.
It closes with the line ‘Life Has Relationships. Sports Show Us True Love’.
The next spot to air will be called ‘Bossy’ and will shine the spotlight on the WNBA.
A wide range of additional creative executions will follow the launch spot and all tap into universal sports truths in order to forge an authentic connection with distinct fan groups and between sports lovers and ESPN
Plans also call for additional creatives to be rolled out for various sports and events in the coming weeks and months — and even the National Spelling Bee.
To make sure all the creative pieces feel contemporary and relevant, the ESPN/Droga team aims to‘actively refresh the content of the promos over their respective lifespans’.
“We’re planning to have a very nimble approach,” says Wanda Young, senior VP for marketing and consumer engagement at ESPN.
“As we go forward, we’re going to react in real-time to the moments that are happening in sports and launch very specific responses to those moments.”
“This is about a series of sports moments, moments where sports truths intersect with valuable life lessons. Those will be evergreen and will continue along the lifespan of the campaign,” Young adds.
The creative was the first work to be developed in harness with new agency Droga5 New York: which has been signed up to run the sports broadcasting giant’s integrated strategic and creative work for the parent ESPN brand.
Comment:
We like the way this fresh Droga 5 work celebrates the restorative power of sports and how it effectively expresses how the sports that we are passionate about serve as an escape from the everyday and the dull and even offer meaning.
And we like the relevancy and low latency approach to creative – after all, sport and fans live in real-time.
Droga 5’s new brand work is being supported and complimented by campaigns generated and created in-house at ESPN as the broadcaster develops a new marketing approach.
An example of the work developed by in-house agency ESPN CreativeWork (after the brand moved on from long-time agency Wieden & Kennedy for ‘This Is SportsCenter’ came last month leveraging the start of the new baseball season (see case study).
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