THIRD ANNUAL SCREENS ISSUE - MediaPost

sunday night football and sunday night nfl pre-kickoff photos: paul drinkwater,nbc; the ot photo: fox
Sunday Night Football: Hail,
hail: NBC’s show led all primetime;
national games on both Fox and
CBS were the first- and secondmost
watched programs in 2011
TOP 3 S PORTS
Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kickoff:
High-definition sets and fantasy
leagues are fueling hunger for more
pigskin
ners participate in a campus tour, using some grassroots marketing
to buttress its sponsorship.
Besides the regular-season games, Nissan also was a top-line
sponsor of the Bowl Championship Series on ESPN, including the
Alabama-LSU national title game. The automaker is also deeply
involved with the NFL — including a primary sponsorship of
NBC’s Sunday Night Football — but it can be harder for ads to
stand out with so many auto marketers.
“There is a lot of clutter when you compare it to the BCS
championship,” Brancheau says. Nissan’s BCS involvement allows
it to gain auto-category exclusivity for a quarter in a game.
Back to the Super Bowl, for years advertisers looked for extra
value by having their ads mentioned in media coverage. Now,
there are instant comments on Twitter and replays on YouTube.
Volkswagen’s renowned 2011 Super Bowl spot featuring a
young “Darth Vader” was viewed more than 50 million times on
YouTube over the ensuing year.
Super Bowl pricing may be set to command remarkable yearover-year
prices. In 2012, reports had the average 30-second spot
at $3.5 million, up about 17 percent from the year before. CBS
may shoot for a much higher gain for 2013.
“I don’t know that we’ve ever really tested the exact boundaries
of what the Super Bowl is worth,” says NBC’s sports group
senior vice president Seth Winter on nfl.com. “I think technology
and social media have taken that value and grown exponentially
the value to the advertiser.”
Perhaps the most glaring evidence is the load of auto marketers in
the game this year willing to deal with the logjam to try to stand out.
Kia was in the big game for the third consecutive year with a spot featuring
Motley Crue. As Kia looked to extend its impact, it released the
ad before the game in theaters, and a 90-second extended version was
on YouTube before kickoff.
Yet, perhaps nothing Kia has done in sports marketing has had
the impact of a stunt at the 2011 slam-dunk contest during NBA
The OT: Fox’s post-game
coverage, here with Howie Long
and Michael Strahan, ranked third
among sports programs
Nielsen, Household rating, 2011 through 2012 season, through 2/5/12
All-Star weekend: Los
Angeles Clippers star
Blake Griffin opted to
jump over a Kia Optima
for a spectacular dunk.
“We got lucky.
Everything fell together
just perfectly,” says Tim
Chaney, director of marketing
at Kia.
Not only did the feat
garner a lot of media
attention, but Kia had
a spot running with
Griffin’s dunk airing
during NBA broadcasts within days. Chaney says it brought an
even greater immediate spike in people looking up information
online about Kia than the company’s 2011 Super Bowl spot.
“We like being involved in sports and particularly the NBA
[because of] the passion that fans bring to it, and that passion
carries over into how they view the sponsors of the sport,”
Chaney says.
The NBA lost loads of regular-season games due to a labor dispute,
but there does not appear to have been much fan backlash.
A few reasons are storylines such as Griffin leading the traditionally
woeful Clippers to success and the Miami Heat’s pursuit of a
championship with LeBron James.
Through the first 13 games on TNT this season, NBA household
ratings were up 66 percent, while the Chicago-Los Angeles
Lakers game on Christmas Day gave ESPN its third highest regular-season
ratings ever.
Sports also brings communal viewership in bars and college
dorms — one that is unlikely to be found with other programming
anymore. That does bring a risk of viewers failing to hear an
ad amid the hubbub.
But Northwestern, for one, tries to prepare for that with ads
that offer compelling visuals and try for other bar-proof tactics.
“You have to kind of develop the creative knowing the environment
it’s going to run in,” Northwestern’s Dern says.
Over time, digital platforms will continue to impact traditional
TV, but sports may weather any storm better than other
genres — at least according to Yahoo executive vice president
Ross Levinsohn.
“The last bastion of success for traditional TV will be sports,”
Levinsohn said in January at an industry event. “There’s nothing
like sitting on your couch and watching the game. Because the
outcome is always in doubt in sports, you have to watch it live,
and because prices are so high, I’m not sure digital is going to get
there any time soon.”
Spring 2012 MEDIA MAGAZINE 19