As sports continue to explode as one of the most popular sources of entertainment in the country, so too have the amount of dollars spent on marketing and sports sponsorship. Teams and players are signing huge deals every year with all kinds of brands. Derrick Rose and Rory McIlroy have both signed $200+ million endorsement deals with Adidas and Nike, respectively. On the team side, the San Francisco 49ers inked a 20-year, $220 million deal with Levi for naming rights to the new 49ers football stadium.
With those kinds of dollars, brands are expecting unprecedented activation in order to associate their brands and products as closely as possible to these teams and players. Over the last couple years, brands have started a new trend in athlete sponsorship and activation: fictional endorsers. Cliff Paul, Uncle Drew, Leon Sandcastle and other characters have all been created as a way to create brand exposure and publicity through the fame of an athlete.
Cliff Paul
State Farm Insurance has done an incredible job of activating its sponsorship of Chris Paul through a fictional campaign centering on Paul’s twin “Cliff Paul.” The commercial series debuted during the NBA’s Christmas Day slate of games and was an immediate hit.
State Farm must have known it had a hit on its hands because the insurance giant reportedly spent a staggering $38 million in advertising dollars (which is why you see at least one Cliff Paul commercial during every ESPN or TNT NBA game). In addition, State Farm leveraged Chris Paul’s millions of Twitter followers to create a viral effect for the video while also starting a Twitter account for Chris’s fictional brother, Cliff.
The most recent Cliff/Chris Paul commercial:
Uncle Drew and Jeff Gordon’s Test Drive
Pepsi Max, a sub-brand of PepsiCo that contains extra caffeine, has used a different type of fictional endorser campaign in order to drive buzz about its product. PepsiCo used makeup and hair artists to disguise NBA player Kyrie Irving as an elderly man. After the outfit was completed, Kyrie (now Uncle Drew) went to a public, outdoor basketball floor to get in on a pick up game. As the game progresses, “Uncle Drew” slowly unveils skill after skill to the disbelief of his fellow players and onlookers.
YouTube:
In a similar activation with NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, PepsiCo disguised Gordon as a potential car buyer. Gordon then takes a test drive with an unexpecting sales associate. PepsiCo uses a hidden camera in a can of Pepsi Max to record the encounter.
YouTube:
Both videos were a huge success in the social media space. Uncle Drew Part 1 has more than 24 million views on YouTube as of May 12, and Jeff Gordon’s Test Drive has almost 36 million. That type of viral effect is what almost every brand wants, and PepsiCo did a great job of leveraging the star power and followings of its athletes in order to promote itself and its products.
Leon Sandcastle
Leading up to the NFL Draft, the network was seeking a way to promote its pre-draft coverage as an alternative to ESPN. So, the network created a fictional character/player named Leon Sandcastle, who was played and depicted by Deion Sanders. Much like State Farm, NFL Network created a fake version of a real player and then used that real player’s existing audience to create a good campaign.
Leon Sandcastle made his debut in a 2013 Super Bowl commercial, and his legend has only continued to grow. Since the debut, Sandcastle has run a 4.2 second 40-yard dash, signed a fake endorsement deal with Under Armor, and was famously drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs on April Fools Day.
Debut commercial:
In an age where every brand wants to leverage digital and social media to create a viral campaign, fictional endorsement characters have emerged as a popular and effective way to achieve that. As more brands attempt to copy and replicate what State Farm, PepsiCo and NFL Network have done, it will be interesting to see what other brands do to compete.