NCAA corporate champion partner Capital One has again teamed up with Charles Barkley, Samuel L Jackson and Spike Lee (and guest star Gloria Gaynor) for a comic multi-platform ‘This Is March Madness’ campaign.
Spanning television, digital, social, games and at-event on-site events and experiences, this is the fourth year that the original trio have fronted Capital One’s humour-led March Madness campaign and again it follows them as they prepare for their trip, travel to and then finally arrive.
Gayner joins the regular trio in one of several new tournament related spots: which sees the stars flying to Phoenix to watch the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Final Four when an airline stewardess who gets to sing her signature song along with the regular ambassador in a commercial called ‘Ringtone’.
Airing on national TV and posted on the brand’s YouTube channel on 10 March,
the sport comes in harness with a ‘Ringtone Bloopers’ online supporting video.
This TVC is one of a series of activation ads within the series all of which sees former NBA star Barkley, is as usual with Capital One creative, the character at the centre of much of the creative’s good-natured taunting.
Others spots that have rolled out thus far include ‘Steak (On A Plane)’,
‘Layers’,
Chuck’s Town’,
‘Clapper’,
and ‘Snack Hoodie’.
The spots were directed by Lee and the campaigned developed with lead agency is DDB, Chicago.
The campaign, by the top tier NCAA partner who’s ‘Quicksilver’ card is also the official bank and credit card of the Final Four, is also supported by digital and social media across the brand’s own channels including amplification of the spots on Twitter,
When someone asks, “How’s your bracket doing?” #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/v3p6zFna2q
— Capital One (@CapitalOne) March 19, 2017
Instagram,
and Facebook.
as well as additional social media content
Game day ready. Put me in coach! It’s #MarchMadness go time! pic.twitter.com/Tuo7WlcZmR
— Capital One (@CapitalOne) March 16, 2017
and a set of spot-themed social games linking in to the spots too.
Another key pillar of the leverage programme includes title sponsorship of the Capital One JamFest (a three-day music festival that includes the ‘AT&T Block Party’ and ‘Coca-Cola Music’( running from 31 March to 2 April.
The Capital One JamFest will be headlined by Aerosmith and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
Other strands of the activation include sponsoring the ‘March Madness Bracket Challenge’, as well as the ‘Final Four Fan Fest’ presented by Capital One (at the Phoenix Convention Center), plus the ‘Capital One Championship Central’ on-air during Final Four weekend broadcasts on CBS and the brand is also the presenting sponsor for ‘Tourney Town’ at the Women’s Final Four in Dallas.
Activative Comment:
This year’s work follows on neatly from Capital One’s 2016 tournament activation (see case study).
Sponsorship and marketing professionals are estimating that US marketers will break the March Madness advertising investment records set around last year’s tournament and will spend $1.24bn on TV ad space during March Madness 2017 (according to Kantar Media).
And Capital One, as the property’s top tier corporate champion partner, is again expected to tbe of the top five TV spenders.
Kantar reports that during March Madness 2016 the brand spent $46m on a TV ad buy for 199 spots.
2016’s top five spenders were General Motors ($493m), AT&T ($80m), Coca-Cola ($47m), Capital One and Volkswagen ($39m).
Links:
Capital One
https://www.youtube.com/user/CapitalOne
https://plus.google.com/u/1/+CapitalOne/about
https://twitter.com/capitalone
https://www.facebook.com/capitalone
https://www.instagram.com/capitalone/
DDB Chicago
NCAA
http://www.ncaa.com/march-madness
