Even if you’re nowhere near Houston for the NCAA championship showdown between the UNC Tar Heels and the Villanova Wildcats tonight, AT&T is ensuring that it is “mobilizing your world.”
The telecom giant — an official corporate partner of the NCAA — is teaming up with a handful of Snapchat and Vine influencers to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at all the frenetic activity around the Final Four, both on and off the court. It is working with MKTG agency Team Epic and influencer agency Delmondo for this push, which is a part of its bigger campaign #GameOn promoting AT&T-owned DIRECTV’s streaming service.
Snapchat artists Evan Garber and Mike Metzler as well as Hawaiian basketball freestyler Kalani Ahmad among others, have been churning out content from Houston in the the run-up to the final tonight. Some of these also feature appearances by basketball stars Shaquille O’Neal and Scottie Pippen as well as musicians including Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco. So far, the campaign has driven more than a million views on Snapchat alone.
In one clip for instance, Ahmad spins two balls as Scottie Pippen watches, before passing one of the balls to him.
Spinning it with @ScottiePippen, thanks to @ATT. #GameOn #ad https://t.co/2dP3mi1Juz
— KalaniBallfree (@KalaniBallFree) April 2, 2016
In another clip from the weekend, influencer Frank Danna is shown dancing around Houston’s Discovery Green, waiting for Fall Out Boy to perform.
Dance, dancin’ around Discovery Green waiting for @falloutboy. Tune in tonight https://t.co/WNQNgRpizv #ad https://t.co/03usHyAxgI
— Frank Danna (@erskine) April 1, 2016
In a third, stop-motion Viner Jack Bethmann delivers a panorama of Houston’s NRG stadium.
AT&T is circulating this content across its social properties, including Twitter and Facebook. But it is also cutting it together as a reel to be broadcast as branded content on the stadium’s Jumbotron — becoming the first national brand to integrate Snapchat content into a major sporting event in this way. A similar reel was already broadcast during the Final Four games on Saturday, between UNC and Syracuse and Villanova and Oklahoma.
Early last year, AT&T created a Snapchat scripted series called “SnapperHero,” starring a bunch of YouTube, Vine, Instagram and Snapchat influencers, such as Freddie Wong and Harley Morenstein and Anna Akana.
AT&T is also trying to cultivate its own in-house stable of social media stars. As Digiday reported earlier, it is teaming up with YouTube network Fullscreen to launch AT&T Hello Lab, a new program aimed at helping social video stars create all sorts of content regularly — instead of specific AT&T campaigns or another.
“Today’s influencer-brand relationships are too transactional in nature,” said Valerie Vargas, vp of advertising and marketing communications at AT&T. “We want to flip that on its head by making a long-term commitment to the community.”
More in Marketing
At the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Mastercard joins a pack of consumer brands flocking to Formula One
For marketers looking to align their brands with F1’s expanded appeal to audiences, the Las Vegas Grand Prix is providing a slip road into the sport.
Why PepsiCo and EA are expanding their partnership into mobile: A Q&A with PepsiCo vp of global sports and entertainment partnerships Adam Warner
The planned, multi-year nature of PepsiCo’s integration into “EA Sports FC” reflects that both PepsiCo and Electronic Arts are playing the long game as they look to step up the presence of ads inside and beyond EA’s portfolio of sports titles.
Key takeaways from Digiday’s 2024 Gaming Advertising Forum
Now that gaming has gone from a buzzword to a regular presence in brands’ media mix, marketers are more closely scrutinizing the value and ROI of their investments in this channel — and the platforms are rising to the challenge. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from this week’s Gaming Advertising Forum.