Advertisers Kickoff New Campaigns

Coaches, players and stadiums were not the only ones making debuts this weekend. The kickoff of the NFL football season also marked the kickoff of new integrated television commercials and digital campaigns for NFL advertisers. The new ads started last Thursday during the Washington Redskins-New York Giants’ game and continued through the Sunday and Monday games.

While not as significant as the Super Bowl ads, the Opening weekend ads are becoming anticipated. Several NFL advertisers debuted new creative this weekend, including Sprint, AirTran, Ford, Miller Light, Coors Light, Mazda, Microsoft, and Career Builder.

The new Sprint ad features a phone that morphed into a stadium to promote their new NFL Mobile Live service. Sprint has also launched a companion digital campaign for the NFL Mobile Live Service. With the service, subscribers can listen live to NFL games and even watch select game live on their mobile device. Most importantly, the NFL Live Service offers fantasy football owners the ability to monitor their players’ stats live. NFL Live Web Site The computer generated ad was interesting and unique. However, this will quickly become stale. I watched two games yesterday and saw the ad nine times.

Last year, Sprint kick-offed with the Peyton Manning in disguise commercial. This spot was entertaining, but quickly become overused.

Nabisco ran a new Oreo ad featuring the Eli and Peyton Manning and Venus and Serina Williams announcing they are joining the DSRL- the Double Stuff Racing League. This integrated effort features a dedicated website where users can register, play games, buy DSRL items, and get a Yobble, which is an on-line, buildable bobblehead-like figure.

AirTran continued their humorous campaign with a spot called “Brainstorming.”

Coors Light featured a new ad for their campaign of Press Conferences by former coaches. The first in the series this year featured former Baltimore Ravens’ coach Brian Billick.

While entertaining, the ad doesn’t come close to the classic Jim Mora Playoff ad.

The challenge, in my opinion, is that the ad spots become stale quickly. Particularly with the typical football viewers who watch several games in a weekend. I am all for frequency, but eventually the viewers will tune the ads out.