Sports Advertising Is In Season!

Football season is upon us, and fans are gearing up to watch their favorite teams take the field! So, what does this mean for advertisers? Join Mark and Lorraine on this week's episode of the Brand Shorthand podcast to learn all about the benefits of advertising during sporting events, how tapping into an emotional environment with advertising can be effective for a brand, and things to consider for a strategy for sports advertising. The positioning duo also goes through a few examples of ads airing during the 2025/2026 football season, sharing their thoughts on whether these brands scored a touchdown or fumbled.  

Join Mark and Lorraine for 30-ish as they discuss all things marketing, advertising, and of course … positioning!

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is our positioning prophet, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, what are you forecasting in your prophecy this week?

Lorraine Kessler
Oh my. What am I forecasting? I don't know. I've got little people. Maybe just I'm just enjoying little people. I don't know. I really prophesy. I don't know. It's going to be an interesting football year. How's that? Yeah. Eagles will be back in the Super Bowl.

Mark Vandegrift 
Ha ha! It is. It is.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Eagles will be back in the Super Bowl

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, that's your hope. The rest of us are hoping on the Browns. That's a huge prophecy there. 

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, that's a big hope.

Mark Vandegrift 
So Lorraine, we're going to cover a little bit about sports and marketing in sports. Not the pure definition of sports marketing, but advertising within a particular, I guess entertainment or a particular type of consumption. And so we picked football because we're in football season now, we're a few weeks in. And I thought before we got into that though, I've seen some recent ads that I wanna throw out at you and get your kind of your feedback on for brand news. These are really kind of fun ones. The first one, I don't know if you've seen it, but we've talked a lot about Bud Light over the last couple of years because of the, you know, what they went through and the stupid stuff they did. But the most recent one and Peyton Manning is kind of featured in it. They're parachuting. They're going along and they parachute out and he sees supposedly the Bud Light, what happens to be on a big mega screen and they parachute parachute in and smack into the into the scoreboard. It's kind of lighthearted. It's kind of the humor that their audience would normally like. I think they're doing a good job of getting back to their core customer. What did you think about that particular ad?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I guess I'm going to be a little bit contrarian here. I think when you look at advertisers like Bud Light, or others that buy mega amounts of air time, and you can think about Progressive Insurance or State Farm or Bud Light or any of these advertisers that firstly spend billions on advertising and literally it's about billions. Looking at individual commercials is almost not really important because it's really like the sum of the parts, right? So I think for Bud Light in terms of this commercial, not this one commercial, but they've been using Peyton Manning for a while. And that's perfect because he's within the context of football. And he's beloved and he's very good in these commercials. And I think it just signals, again, that 180 departure from Dylan Mulvaney and that problem, that debacle. It does, as you said, align better with the core audience who drinks their product or appreciates it. I think more than the individual commercial, and it is kind of entertaining, but I don't think many people will remember the storyline what's really going on other than maybe, yeah, even if you ask people what pro football player is endorsing Bud Light in their commercials, I'm not really sure that a lot of people unaided would say Peyton Manning. I mean, that's how, to me, incidental the ads are. I think what's really important is that they self-dubbed themselves the official beer sponsor of the NFL. So this goes to the fact that they're extending their endorsement, first of all, with just lots of spending. So I think it would be really easy for people to say, what beer do you remember being advertised during football games? I think you'd have a higher response with Bud Light than you would with who is the spokesperson, Peyton Manning. So just a long way to say that, let's take the focus off individual ads. It's the overall whole, the sum of all the parts that are working together here for Bud Light. They're in the right adjacency, NFL. That's what their people care a lot about. That's who their audience is. And they're, this whole idea that we've talked about with Bob Hoffman kind of the fame kind of always being top of mind always being top of mind as a beer in an adjacency with football America's favorite sport. I think that's strategically really smart for Bud Light and it's a great. It's a great recover from where they were with the controversy that you talked about.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, and you know, if I were to answer your second question as to who the celebrity was, I'd actually say Post Malone because they showed that ad post Super Bowl for so long that I would associate Bud Light with Post Malone now more so than Peyton Manning because he's kind of new to the whole thing. And he wasn't really involved in that commercial as much. The one that kept running was Post Malone and another guy. And I don't even remember who the other guy was right now. but post Malone for some reason just sticks in my brain and that would be my answer. Now let's contrast that with something because if you go to state farm, I said, what celebrities besides Jake, obviously Jake is made up, but who's the one celebrity you think of right now with state farm that Jake always hangs out with.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it's Mahomes. I mean, that is pretty well, yeah, if you asked, did a research study, I think, unaided, which means you don't mention who it is, you know, or they've given a multiple choice that people would know as Patrick Mahomes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. So that's another ad I wanted to throw out at you because I don't know if you've seen the recent one and I didn't even know this was Meghan trainer in this outfit, but Patrick Mahomes is in it and he's being treated for physical therapy. And it says, you know, do you want this physical therapy or this physical therapist? And so there's one that's wrapping his leg the right way or this other player the right way. And then Patrick Mahomes has Meghan trainer as is and she's decked out in this bright purple, I don't know, it looks like a dominatrix outfit. It's like weird. don't know if you've seen it, but it's like really scary. I didn't even know that was Meghan Trainor. Like it looks so different than what I remember what she looked like. But anyhow, what do you think of that particular ad?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, there's a lot of, I mean, it's again, it's an entertaining little spot. Again, I don't feel it's all just about the spot, but it's about the billions that State Farm is spending with Patrick Mahomes and that gist, and there's different storylines. And whether you really get into the whole storyline or not, I think is incidental. I guess this Meghan Trainor, I mean, I guess she's known for a song, something about all about the brace. But,

Mark Vandegrift 
All About The Bass. And that converts over to all about the brace.

Lorraine Kessler
I gotcha, I gotcha. Something. I mean, I, you know, I'm lost, it's lost on me, right? But maybe somebody gets that, somebody listening. Okay. Okay.

Mark Vandegrift 
That was her first big hit that really put her on the map.

Lorraine Kessler
And then who knows the trainer for Patrick Mahomes or for the Chiefs? You know, I don't know who that person is. So it's a little less effective than their Batman versus Bateman. But they're humorous and I guess my point is I doubt that many would be able to retell the whole story that was in the ad. What they will remember, it's Patrick Mahomes, it was entertaining, it's the spokesperson that they've had for State Farm for a number of years. Again, it's this idea that it's the sum of all the parts that add up to make it, I think, efficient strategically. And I mean, they're capitalizing on that association of Mahomes, football, state farm, and a little bit of humor, entertainment value to kind of juice the wheels along the way. And I think it's a, why I say I think it's good strategically too is that, you know, state farm spends like 1.2, almost 1.2 billion in its advertising. And yet even so, it's not the top spender. Do you know who might be some of the top spenders in their category? More than.

Mark Vandegrift 
I would think Liberty, Mutual, Progressive, and Geico if I had to guess, because those are the three I remember most often.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, I think you're right about Liberty Mutual. They kill me with how much they advertise. And that's as I've talked before, I can't stand that whole emu thing and blah, blah, blah. But it must be working. I don't know what metrics they're using to say it works and it's not annoying people. But yeah, Progressive spends almost three times as much as State Farm and then Allstate spends more and Geico spends more. But here's the thing, State Farm is the leader in PNC and auto. So I think for our listeners, because they know we were all about positioning, this is to me is a principle in action. They're the leader in PNC and auto and they're doing what a leader should do. They're playing offense. They're spending a lot of money in a high profile adjacency with a very high profile fan favorite football player staying connected to the biggest game in America and the biggest stars. So this is strategically smart. They're doing what a leader should do and that is to play play defense aggressively. Right. So they're staying there. So in a way, playing on their theme,I guess, Mahomes is how State Farm stays there in the mind of the consumer. So I think that's, I think it's applause to them. It's working. And I think most people find their, all of their spots entertaining and not kind of annoying. I think they find them more fruitful than not.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, I at least know how to trigger you going forward. I'll just mention the Liberty Mutual Emu and it will set you off.

Lorraine Kessler
That whole the guy, the guy so, I don't know. mean, I'd like to hear from some of our viewers about that. Like it, it's, it to me, it, that whole concept of the emu is so gratuitous and so desperate to have some sort of mascot that makes to me, no, I don't understand this, how the emu has anything to do with what their message is. Right.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, I won't go to that one. I always liked the Liberty Mutual in front of the statue because that made a visual connection. And they had some really good ads of just people standing on in front of that statue, you know, on the island and doing some kind of, you know, reference to personalizing their plan because that's their, you know, that's the tradition. But the emu and stuff, I don't know, it doesn't connect to the position very well for me. I mean, they say it a lot. They even had an ad where the emu's walking away from its parents and the supposed father says, you'll never make it in life. You can't tell people they can customize their insurance plans. It's even built into the script. And yet that whole thing was I don't know, I'm not a big fan of that either. But I do like the other ones in front of the statue, because that's liberty, right? That's lady liberty there. So I don't know why they don't stick to it.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Yeah. Even though the company's out of, I think, Boston and Massachusetts, which is another weird, weird... And I just don't prefer that actor either. It's just, yeah, we could go on on that one, but yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, it's interesting to see the main insurance companies split their creative because you got progressive with Flo and Jamie and that whole cast. And now you have the what happens when you become your parents, that side of it, which they're showing more of that than they are Flo. I see a lot less Flow commercials than I do the, you know, the parent commercials and Liberty Mutual with the emu and then with their statue one. And then Geico's always varied what they do, although I don't remember the last one that didn't have the Geico in it.

Lorraine Kessler
No, Geico's lost the edge in terms of how their humor became part of our cultural phenomena, like the caveman and even the little gecko. They're not funny. They're made to be funny, but they're not really funny. So humor, we've always said, is very difficult to do. It's very memorable, and it's very effective, and it can be very effective. Not always is it effective. But it's very hard to do well and I think Geico's kind of lost the edge a little bit on that.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, good. Well, let's get to our topic. We're halfway through and we haven't hit that yet. So why don't you give our listeners a little bit of an introduction. And again, I set it up front. This isn't like the true definition of sports marketing, marketing during a sports broadcast. So, and we're picking football here because college football and NFL football tend to have brands that follow them and you mainly see their advertisements during their seasons. So explain to our listeners how it can be beneficial for a brand to kind of log on to these seasons that are being followed.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, it all starts with the audience, I mean, first of all, very fundamental concept is that all of advertising is about finding the right audience. Who's the audience who will care a lot about what I'm offering, what I value, what we offer that's different than another competitor, and that makes us stand out? And who's really going to appreciate that? So you're always trying, when we're buying media, which is the most expensive part of our work, right? More expensive than even producing the spots, even if you used a Hollywood producer, is paying, buying the audience. And so sports are all about audiences. Certain sports have very distinctive audiences. There's a very distinctive audience for golf, which annoys my husband to death, especially when it delays another sporting event starting like football. But that audience is very distinct. NASCAR is a very distinct audience. So anytime you're buying an audience. So I think first of all, it makes sense to advertise within a sports environment based on if that audience is someone that's really going to be a consumer of your product, right? Like that product or have an affinity to it or what have you. The other thing is just the environment itself. You really, is the environment itself informs how the message should be. One of the reasons we just talked about State Farm and Bud Light using humor is this is an entertainment environment, right? And I think it's good. I had to go back and look at our interview with Roy Williams, Wizard of Ad.
And he said something that always stuck with me because it was so right on. He said, you can't go wrong with sporting events because there's anticipation. The person's been waiting all week to see this, right? So I'm waiting all week to see the Browns play the Lions, Sunday. My family's coming. We're making Sunday gravy for those who are not from Philly or New York.
Italian sauce, but we do call it gravy. So that's a whole other argument that could start. But I'm making the family Sunday gravy and they're all coming together and we're going to watch that game. So there's anticipation. People are really looking forward to this and they get their favorite snacks lined up. And as Roy said, they're looking good forward to it. They're feeling great. And so enter that moment. And I think he's so right. And so I think that these advertisers who do follow in particular things like baseball and football are feeling they're making their message feel in sync with the event and with those that emotional buildup that people have the people who love it and that emotional environment. And I think that's I think that's really important to be able to do that.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, good. Well, you touched on something about the psychographic nature of it. think of our our Buckeyes here in Ohio, the Ohio State Buckeyes. And it's funny because everywhere from my nephew's four year old son up to my dad, who's 85 and every like all my brothers and everybody in between were all like about the Buckeyes. We text each other. We're all excited about the game. Like, what do you think's going to happen during the game? We're texting. I mean, it's like experiencing it and we're not even in the same room together. So what's what would be a problem, which is what a lot of media types do is they go and they target the demographic. OK, well, I just mentioned an 85 year old. I'm I'm about 21. You're about 25, Lindsey's probably 15. I'm not sure if these ages are right. But I mean, imagine if all I did was go and say, give me the 35 to 55 year old and I'm just going to hit that. So, you know, Roy, as you mentioned, talked about this idea of getting into emotional environments and there's really nothing more emotional than when you're rooting for your favorite team. So you have to avoid demographic targeting and allow that to bubble up a little bit. So speak on why advertisers tend to make this misstep where they're only thinking demographic and they're not thinking psychographic.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think what happened is in the 80s, I think is when PRISM research first came, I think it was called PRISM. I remember being at a different agency in Toledo and we had this huge presentation. It was the big buzz is that, you know, demographic segmentation, but they could go down to a zip code and do a mailbox and to a neighborhood and then they could take the demographic and lay psychographics on top. And this was the beginning and then of course targeting with the new tools that we have as, you know, it only built on that to a degree. So I think all we've been hearing is segmentation, segmentation, segmentation. And it's all based on demographics, which is I think the wrong syllable. The emphasis on the wrong syllable. It should be psychographics first because every brand has an emotional context. Sometimes the emotional context could be serious. This is a really serious product for a serious solute problem, okay? It could be healthcare, could be insurance, could be something like that. Or it could be something that should be taken lightly. Or that it should be, and if you take car insurance and what we see with State Farm and all. You would say, well, that's a serious subject. Why is everything using comedy? Well, because everybody knows they need it. They have to have it. They don't want to think about it. So make it at least fun to hear a message about it. So these are decisions. the emotional context or the psychographic is, what do I care a lot about? What really, that goes to the heart of why buyers buy what they buy and why they might buy your product and not someone else's. It's a motivation. So when you're talking psychographics, you're talking about what motivates people. Is it fear? Is it guilt? Is it, want to look like I'm the firstest with the mostest in the neighborhood. Do I want to keep up with the Joneses? What is that psychology? Appeal to that. Do I want to seem young even though my age says I'm older than what young is all about? Do I want to seem youthful? I think advertising's message from a message standpoint needs to appeal psychographically first. Then what you can do is see who bubbles up demographically with those values. And you can certainly use that as kind of, that's when you put the message out there to a general audience. And again, I'm with Roy Williams. I'd rather go reach first and see who bubbles up. Now I have some demographics that I can overlay. Now I can start targeting at that point. But that wouldn't mean that I'd leave the general targeting. So one to me is more media focused and that's about demographics and how they bubble up once the message has reached a certain level of awareness and I get the right diagnostics. And that's more about media when you do that and I think the other one that comes from the message has to start with the psychology, the emotional context and why people buy what they buy.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yep. Good. Well, you touched on the creative a little bit and we see football or we see baseball, maybe not baseball as much, but definitely football. You have some of the most fun, creative advertisements there. You know you can start at the, I guess you end at the Superbowl every year, but it feels like it starts everything for the year. And then you have the fall with all these fun commercials. I think of like Dr. Pepper and Fansville. I actually look forward to that because it's an unfolding of a story. But guess what? I don't drink Dr. Pepper because I don't drink any soda. So even in that, I'm paying attention to the ad, not because I'm in advertising, but because it's the unfolding of a further story.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. And even though you don't drink or consume that product, and I find myself doing this quite a bit, those ads have an effect on me in the sense that often I have grandkids and others coming to my home for because we're the site where we watch games and share food and family. And so it influences what I buy for my grandkids and those guests. So I have Dr. Pepper in my refrigerator because I know that there's people I'm entertaining who enjoy that product. So it does have an effect. And I think that we shouldn't discount that completely just because we don't particularly consume that product. That doesn't mean we won't buy it. But I will say something not to do. We talked a lot about what are things not to do since we talked about the emotional context of these games and the anticipation and the enjoyment that people feel. What not to do is what nationwide did. You remember, you know, don't bring the audience down. You know, there's an old song by the animals, don't bring me down. And if you remember that Super Bowl debacle, the dead kid, he got renamed the dead kid ad. The real name was the boy who couldn't grow up because he died because of an accident that could have been prevented in the home. I mean, that was such a backlash effect that the CMO had to resign, the ad agency was fired, and they stayed away from Super Bowl advertising for the I think a couple of years. So, you know, whatever you're doing, really understand the emotional context that you're going into and don't bring the audience down. You're not going to appreciate it.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, give us your favorites over the years of ads that you recall associated with either college football or the NFL.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, let's see. I mean, one of the great ads, and of course a lot of them go back to Super Bowls, right? I mean, obviously one of the greatest ads was the Coke, Mean Joe Green spot. And people can do not ever seen that because it was, you know, 1979. Still, still fantastic ad. That really wasn't so much funny, it was heartwarming. Right? And that's another thing, because it was heroic. There was a heroic moment with this kid and Mean Joe Green and him, you know, sharing the coke. I mean, it just, it's like the Budweiser, you know, stories that we've become aware of with the puppies in the Super Bowl. They're heartwarming. So that plays on the emotional context too. I think. The Force, there was the Volkswagen The Force with little kids dressed up like Darth Vader. I really love that. Doritos has done a great job over the years consistently with humor, introducing both new flavors and snacks. I mean, they've really, to me, when I think Super Bowl advertising, if you said who advertises a lot other than Budweiser, I'd say Doritos. I'd be like one of the two. Probably one of the best. Honest to God still for me to this day is the Snickers, You're Not You When You're Hungry with Betty White and Abe Vigoda. my God, that was just a phenomenal, phenomenal capitalization. So people are going to have their favorites relative to football. And I hope that some people comment and tell us which ones they remember.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, there's football and then there's like other sports that certain brands connect to. And we were talking when we went to Italy this year, we were at the place where they do the extreme diving, the cliff diving. Name that brand that is associated with cliff diving.

Lorraine Kessler
Red Bull. Yep, yep, it's perfect.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yep. You named it. And they do a lot of extreme sports. We were watching, we're watching ESPN. I forget what it was, but they were doing something in Sweden. I think it was, and you had to build your own, contraption that went down this. It was like the Derby soapbox Derby that we have here. You had to build your own and you had to make it through this crazy. I don't know what kind of course you would have called it, but it had ramps and it had weird turns and. I mean, people were building, putting boats on wheels and taking bikes and assembling them in weird ways. so you got points just for the way it looked. It wasn't all about making it to the end, but if you made it to the end, that was a certain number of points. And then the fastest one to make it to the end and, it was crazy. But Red Bull seems to always want to match up to that craziness.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, and I think that's perfect. I mean, extreme sports, right? Extreme adventure, extreme lifestyle things. I mean, this resonates with their attributes and what they're trying to sell. And I think owning that is certainly great for the brand endeavor and the brand, what do I want to call it, equity and how people think of the brand. I think Red Bull has really done a phenomenal job of understanding and it's kind of self-effacing to do that. So I think people appreciate that because it makes the brand more human when you do those kinds of things. So kudos, kudos to them.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Good. Yeah. Well, let's wrap up today's episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Lorraine, thanks for joining us as always. And thank you to Lindsey who continues to produce our fine Brand Shorthand Podcast. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in and don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Tell your friends, shout it from a mountaintop, whatever you can do, but make sure to hit that subscribe button. And until next time. Have an amazing day.