The fast food chain Buffalo Wild Wings celebrated Father’s Day with a powerful, emotional commercial called ‘Watching’ which featured a father and daughter duo at home watching sport – with the young girl mimicking everything she sees her dad do.
The narrative and the tone effectively blends traditional Father’s Day family emotional creative with a gender stereotype inversion: an approach that aims to both celebrate fatherhood and leverage Buffalo Wild Wings’ sports-centric brand values.
Developed for Buffalo Wild Wings by creative agency Chiat/Day/LA and directed by Elle Ginter, the spot shows a father in a living room, writhing in anguish and excitement as he watches his favorite basketball team seemingly lose a game.
All the while, his young daughter sitting beside him on the couch mimics his movements and sounds: covering her eyes, stretching out her face with her hands and raising her arms in defeat.
After the game finishes, the dad looks over at his smiling daughter who leaps into his arms and deflates the tension – reminding him and us what really, truly matters.
The closing copy reads: “Thanks for showing us how to love sports.”
BUFFALO WILD WINGS | WATCHING from Elle Ginter on Vimeo.
Comment:
We admire this spot: one which sees Buffalo Wild Wings abandon its more familiar men- beer-and-sports style of marketing to tell a more modern, more intimate and more emotional story.
As well as the pure family emotion connection, the message here is that father’s have influence with their children through the development process and need to carefully nurture their actions as role models.
Amongst the other stand out basketball marketing from Buffalo Wild Wings are its March Madness activations around its NCAA partnership which include its 2019 campaign (see case study)
and its work in 2017 (see case study).
Links:
Buffalo Wild Wings
https://www.buffalowildwings.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BuffaloWildWings/
https://www.instagram.com/bwwings/
https://www.youtube.com/user/buffalowildwings
Chiat/Day/LA
