The NBA’s 75th Anniversary kicks off in October and consumers are delighted by the return of one of their favorite sports.
At Brand Innovators Sports Marketing Upfronts, leading brand marketers shared how they are approaching the upcoming basketball season and what marketing will look like as game play returns in a post-pandemic world.
Connecting with the community across channels and in person is key for the NBA as they think about the hybrid experience moving forward.
“I have been obsessed with the idea of community for a very long time – how people come together, and continue to evolve the way they come together is so interesting,” said Kate Jhaveri, CMO at NBA. “You can go all the way back to instant messaging, being able to chat with people all over the world, and now, we have massive live streaming platforms where you can engage with the streamer and their content. There’s no more dynamic group than NBA fans. People identify with a team or a player, and want to come together to really experience that content. How do we meet our fans where they are? For some fans, that is on social media. For others, it’s in video games, so we started a partnership with Fortnite to enable us to be in that space. We also have amazing broadcast partners in Turner and ESPN, where we can greet our fans every day with really amazing content. It’s that multi-platform media strategy. It’s about being able to customize content, and think through who your audience is.”
The NBA benefits from having a young, tech savvy fan base, said Adrienne O’Keeffe, AVP, Consumer Products & Gaming Partnerships, NBA.
“Our core fan is consuming our highlights on social media, leaning into our collectibles and trading card business, and understanding the value of collecting NBA moments,” said O’Keeffe. “Partnering with Dapper Labs was right for our audience. Dapper really guided us to put Blockchain on the backburner, and lead with the product itself, creating a compelling experience that fans would want to engage in, and want to tell their friends about. We wanted the idea of collecting to be mainstream, and it felt really natural for our fans.”
NBA fans are incredibly loyal to the sport and to their teams. When marketing during the basketball season, brands have an opportunity to be involved in this deep connection in a variety of ways. Brand integration in culturally relevant ways gives AB InBev a unique way to engage fans.
“As we think about basketball, a core strategy for us is to amplify our brand messages in contextually relevant ways, making sure that we are creating valuable content that resonates with millennials and Gen Z consumers,” said Matt Davis, Head of US Sports Marketing, AB InBev. “One example of that over the last 18 months is just how we have tried to integrate within NBA programming. Probably one of the best examples, at least for us, would be our integration in The Last Dance. Our deep fake spots were some of the most talked about moments during the overall documentary and that certainly resulted in us playing a significant role in such a culturally relevant moment.”
COVID shifted the fan experience at stadiums during games. These new innovations are not going anywhere as people are still looking for hygienic and socially safe ways to go out again.
“There have been a lot of arenas and stadiums that we work with that realized during COVID that once the world comes back – and we all knew eventually it would be coming back – that the fan experience was not going to look the same,” said Matthew Coleman, Director of Media, Sponsorships and Digital Marketing at State Farm. “We have made a lot of strides with our partners to be innovative inside of the venue to really drive what that new experience will look like. Grab and go stations, in-seat ordering, we have been doing pilots with teams like the Denver Broncos where fans can scan an app on their phone, walk into a kiosk, grab all the items themselves, and walk out. It takes 30 seconds, essentially removing lines and making that experience more seamless. It was really an opportunity to reset the rituals that we thought the fans would be experiencing inside the venue.”
“What I appreciate about our partnership with the league is our ability to enhance what we already do,” said Lawrence Montgomery, Executive Director, National Advertising at Kaiser Permanente. “We have a few big initiatives that we connect with League-wise. One is our Legacy project in the cities where there are NBA finals. We go in, we select a location whether it’s a boys and girls club or an after-school program, and we love that location. We refurbish the gyms, or whatever they need, we provide computers and other technology – this is a way that we can both be in that moment, where the NBA is playing their game nearby and where we get to create something that will be around for generations to come. What we try to do at KP is not to have those be a one-off and the League really supports us in that. Connecting that type of initiative with what we’re already doing, whether it’s getting nutritionists in schools or another initiative, makes sense for our brand and our storytelling.”
Pepsi uses their partnership with the NBA to build awareness and connect to fans in authentic ways.
“It boils down to two things. One is establishing awareness, first and foremost – establishing the awareness with the NBA fans of Mountain Dew and the fact that we are an official partner. While we’re doing that, if you can do two things at once, it’s trying to build that awareness in a really relevant, authentic way with the NBA fans,” said Justin Toman, Head of Sports Marketing at PepsiCo. “The NBA and the culture around basketball is like nothing else, and drives larger pop culture in a way that I think few other things do so we want to be respectful of that, yet be a part of it. If we do it right and give it our best, hopefully we can even help create a little bit of it.”
