To promote NBC Sport’s 3 October ‘Sunday Night Football’ broadcast for the NFL matchup between the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NBCUniversal family launched an integrated campaign called ‘The Return’ positioning the game as a ‘cultural’ as well as a ‘sporting’ event.
‘The Return’ focused on current Bucs quarterback and former Patriots hero Tom Brady’s first game back in Massachusetts as he led his new, Super Bowl champion side against his former team and his former coach Bill Belichick.
The marketing was NBC Sports’ biggest-ever promotional campaign for a regular season Sunday Night Football game and its ran across NBCUniversal’s cross-platform properties touting the game across its entire portfolio: including Today, NBC Nightly News, USA Network’s WWE Raw, The Voice, Access Hollywood, E! News, Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The campaign includes additional editorial and promotional coverage on CNBC, MSNBC and on Universal Kids, as well as editorial and on-site coverage on NBC’s local owned stations and affiliates in New England.
The centrepiece of the campaign was a hero spot set to Adele’s searing post-breakup ballad ‘Hello’ referencing Brady’s first game back at his former Gillette Stadium home after 20 season with the patriots (and six Super Bowl wins).
Little wonder the creative focuses on Brady: after all, he is the most successful NFL player of all time in terms of championships and he also led his new team to the Super Bowl title in his first season last year.
While ‘Today’, which typically airs one Sunday Night Football segment every Friday, ran daily segments to the game each day during the while reporter Sheinelle Jones reported live from Gillette Stadium on both Friday and Saturday. Today also ran a piece on the Adele promo Tuesday, while NBC aired an extended cut of the spot during Monday’s ‘The Voice’.
In addition to further clips and social content, as well as ‘Hello’ NBC Sport also created a more playful second spot that, according to Lee, “has a sense of fun” and uses Eminem’s livelier “Without Me.”
NEXT SUNDAY: Tom Brady returns to New England.
Watch the @Buccaneers vs. the @Patriots on NBC and @peacocktv. pic.twitter.com/yrwkEyc6TJ
— Sunday Night Football on NBC (@SNFonNBC) September 27, 2021
Guess who's back?
Tell a friend: @TomBrady returns back to New England on Sunday night.
: @Eminem pic.twitter.com/Jo9Mt8br2J
— Sunday Night Football on NBC (@SNFonNBC) September 29, 2021
That promo rolled out early Monday and included quick interviews with Patriots fans conflicted over Brady and his return.
While a third spot focused on the other Patriot-turned-Buccaneer, tight end Rob Gronkowski, and it aired on Monday’s WWE Raw to capitalize on his brief stint as a WWE wrestler following his Patriots retirement.
“We knew it was going to be bigger than a game, it was going to be a cultural event,” outlined NBC Sports SVP Of Creative Marketing Joseph Lee. “His return was going to be an incredible story that we had to deliver in the most powerful way possible, to capture the emotion surrounding the event.”
Lee and his team decided that music would be the most powerful way to capture the conflicting emotions surrounding the game: as almost all Patriots fans still have plenty of love for their former quarterback, despite feeling the pain of his decision to leave the team last year.
Plus, including a string musical element to the campaign enabled the umbrella company to promote the game across its entertainment networks.
Especially with a new Adele album on its way in the days following the game.
“It’s arguably the biggest game on the NFL schedule,” added NBC Sports SVP Of Consumer Engagement Lyndsay Signor. “It’s not just asking the company to promote football, which they’re always happy to do. But because Brady really transcends sports, everyone’s being open to rally behind this game and how big of a moment this is.”
NBC’s aim for the campaign was to give an additional boost to Sunday Night Football, which, like most NFL broadcasts, is seeing ratings increases this season – leading to record-breaking NFL TV ad revenue.
Comment:
Apparently, other breakup songs considered for the spot were ‘Missing You’ by John Waite, and ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’ by Ozzy Osborne, but NBC’s marketers finally settled on Adele’s ‘Hello’ believing that it captures both the love and pain of that separation.
Not a surprising decision given that it is often touted as the perfect breakup song with lyrics like “I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet”.
It seems to have been a clever track choice as the ‘Hello’ commercial quickly went viral after its release, spawning several memes and fan social media reworkings.
The song choice sparked polarising reactions to the promo on social media, which, according to NBC’s Signor, led to the spot quickly going viral and giving the broadcasting giant an additional opportunity to promote the game across our entertainment networks.
As crowds return to the game following an easing of pandemic restrictions, the NFL is racking up increasing audiences: through Week 3, Sunday Night Football alone is averaging 21.8m in total audience delivery – a 12% rise over last season and the best Sunday Night Football performance in its first three weeks since 2016.
This campaigned set out to continue this trend,
Brady, of course, won the game as the Buccaneers beat the Patriots 19 – 17.
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