Considered one of promoting’s most prolific campaigns is getting a brand new jolt of life after going dormant for a number of years.
ESPN is resuscitating its iconic “This Is SportsCenter” marketing campaign with the assistance of its new lead artistic associate, Richmond, VA.-based Arts & Letters. Wieden+Kennedy produced the majority of the 400-odd advertisements that started airing within the mid-Nineties, however ESPN introduced the marketing campaign in-house in 2017 and discontinued it shortly afterward. The marketing campaign will return quickly, doubtless making a splash in the course of the Faculty Soccer Playoffs at first of 2023. Arts & Letters, which has labored on campaigns throughout numerous ESPN’s varied verticals since 2019, together with its model platform “There’s No Place Like Sports activities,” will develop the brand new iterations of the marketing campaign.
“With this new SportsCenter marketing campaign coming into the fold and being awarded to Arts & Letters, it’s simply a possibility to essentially solidify the messaging and the connection,” mentioned Laura Gentile, evp, ESPN advertising and business advertising, including, “It brings again a marketing campaign all people is aware of and loves and is core to who we’re as an entity.”
Regardless of the multiyear layoff between spots, the latest editions will “keep as true to the idea as attainable,” Gentile informed Adweek. “We really feel prefer it’s a kind of timeless wonderful concepts and it’s our job to uphold the magnificence of the concept and execute it in 2023.”
Beforehand, “This Is SportsCenter” served because the de facto model platform for ESPN, Charles Hodges, the founder and ecd of Arts & Letters informed Adweek. However with “There’s No Place Like Sports activities” filling that position now, the SportsCenter marketing campaign can spotlight ESPN as the middle of the sports activities universe via levity, mentioned Hodges, who labored on the marketing campaign whereas working for W+Ok as a copywriter.
Along with the “This Is SportsCenter” marketing campaign, the indie company works on the NFL on ESPN, NBA on ESPN, Faculty Soccer on ESPN, espnW and the ESPN model. A few of the company’s largest hits for ESPN have come within the type of stunts just like the victory goggles for the NBA championship and a “postseasoning” spice for faculty sports activities tailgates.
Our campus is extra polished, higher landscaping, extra satellite tv for pc dishes, higher cafeteria however the essence [of the campaign] is identical.
Laura Gentile, evp, ESPN advertising and business advertising
Constructing model love
To get TV viewers to devour extra of ESPN’s content material on linear TV, on-line or social media, the place the community has a sturdy presence on Snap and TikTok, knowledge reveals ESPN should foster extra love for the model itself.
“In the event you love us, you spend twice the period of time with us, and so, we’re constructing that emotional connection,” Gentile mentioned. ESPN’s aim is to at all times be prime of thoughts for sports activities followers, making followers consider ESPN once they go to their telephone for that newest piece of reports, commerce rumor or fantasy sports activities, Gentile informed Adweek.
The marketing campaign will try to enchantment to all segments of sports activities followers, like serving to the 30-something cord-cutter who fondly remembers the marketing campaign reaffirm their relationship with ESPN to creating girls and boys already acquainted with the marketing campaign develop into loyal ESPN viewers. Gentile added that ESPN has a bonus that almost all of its opponents, which embody something from different sports activities networks to the leagues and groups themselves, don’t.
“ESPN is one thing you could possibly relate to you … really feel like is a sports activities fan sitting alongside of you cheering,” Gentile mentioned. “[Others] haven’t constructed that basis, the place they’ll actually be that humane, personable and related to their constituents and their shoppers.”
Contained in the writers’ room
With lots of of iterations of the marketing campaign, “the artistic improvement cycle for this marketing campaign is a dwelling respiratory factor,” Hodges mentioned, mentioning that anybody can have a unique perspective on what would join and resonate with followers. That results in briefs on athletes, anchors or extra common culturally related concepts.
Ultimately, it’s usually about quantity and fine-tuning the perfect concepts.
“It’s been our strategy to essentially simply make lots of stuff, have a dialog about it, after which begin to form that script packet collectively,” Hodges mentioned.
And generally that quantity and collaboration pays off with a viral hit. Hodges mentioned one of the absurd concepts greenlit throughout his W+Ok days grew to become one of the memorable advertisements within the marketing campaign—NFL reporter John Clayton’s look in an advert that reveals off a ponytail and his love for the band Slayer.
