Ahead of the late August college football season kick off, Fox Sports debuts a dramatic new spot fronting its ‘Don’t Look Ahead’ campaign that highlights the fierce rivalries and deep passions of college football fans for whom ‘every game is everything’.
The idea behind the campaign is that fans’ focus should simply be on each week’s game, rather than on the longer term, big College Football Playoff picture.
‘Every Game Is Everything’ first aired on the channel on 10 August.
This season sees Fox Sports add the Big Ten to its line-up of NCAA broadcasts – which also includes Pac-12 and Big 12 – as it aims to become a more formidable media force in college football and this campaign aims to consolidate and encapsulate its new approach to the game.
Inded, this year’s new six-year deal between Fox Sport and the Big Ten will see the bropadcaster air no fewer than 50 Big Ten football games live (ESPN will also air 50 games), including the high profile match up between rivals Ohio State and Michigan (which drew 16.8m viewers on ABC last year).
The commercial is the first work for the media giant by new creative agency Wieden & Kennedy – which parted company from rival ESPN after a quarter of a century.
It is the first of 17 different spots planned for the ‘Don’t Look Ahead’ campaign: which will include one spot for every Big Ten school, plus ads centered on two key games (Texas v USC and the Thanksgiving weekend Ohio State v Michigan match).
Michael Kelly of Netflix’s House of Cards provides the voiceover on all the spots in the series.
The commercials will run nationally, with some of the school-specific work targeted on a regional and time-sensitive basis.
“It’s very much for the avid fans,” explains Robert Gottlieb, evp of marketing at Fox Sports Group (who adds that the spot is something of a stake in the ground for the broadcaster’s college football coverage.
“There’s lots of content, nods to specific traditions and insights that only hardcore fans of these schools and conferences would key into. We understand it, and we live it, too.”
“We wanted to come out of the gate with something that felt big, different and fresh,” adds W+K New York creative director Gary Van Dzura.
Comment:
Some viewers might feel the commercial’s message is a touch ironic considering the broadcaster has aired so few post-season bowl games in recent years anyway.
In fact, of the 39 bowl games of the 2016/17 season, it was rival networks ESPN and ABC who aired all but two.
But there is little doubt that this new spot marks a major change in creative direction for the creative agency.
It reflects a significant change in tone from W+K’s previous comic ‘This is Sportscenter’ commercials that fronted much of the agency’s ESPN work.
Links:
FOX Sports
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Wieden & Kennedy NY
