As far as American Football partners are concerned, the eyes of most sponsorship professionals may have been on Anheuser-Busch In-Bev’s mega-million dollar bet on the NFL – thought to be around $50m-a-year for six years. But Activative was quite taken with the way Gatorade, the NFL’s official sports drink, is expanding its original branded content portfolio with its ‘Everything To Prove’ campaign.
The long-term league sponsor is making the most of its ability to leverage NFL-related content digitally by creating a web series featuring behind-the-scenes footages of rookies getting ready for the season. This is original brand-owned content that no one else has and which is therefore tougher to ambush.
The campaign, which promotes its G Series drinks, follows in the footsteps of its impressive ‘Replay’ initiative. It follows 15 of the NFL’s leading rookies – players brand new to the league, as they attempt to secure their place as fully-fledged professionals.
It runs online at Gatorade.com, as well as on YouTube and Facebook and the rookies themselves become advocates for the show through Twitter.
Both the media platforms and the content focus help Gatorade connect with teenage athletes and help engage with them through building their understanding of the importance of sports nutrition and hydration and how they affect performance.
Comment:
Gatorade claims that this initiative generated 230 million earned media impressions, with 5.5 million episode views and its own research shows that 94% of teens found the content ‘appealing’,
Little surprise then that Gatorade is planning to turn the campaign into a fully-fledged TV series.
Links:
www.gatorade.com/default.aspx#program?s=everything-to-prove
Episode 1
http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-everything-to-prove/09000d5d81eaafc7/Everything-to-Prove-Episode-1
Episode 2
http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-everything-to-prove/09000d5d81eab37a/Everything-to-Prove-Episode-2
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