Monday Night Football 2013

Monday Night Football isn’t just a sports broadcast — it’s an institution. As such, the goal for this ad campaign wasn’t to alert people to the fact that football would air on Monday nights, but to get them invested in the specific weekly match-up and more likely to tune in to that game. We designed dynamic ads that changed week-to-week based on team changes determined by the client, ESPN. They were thrilled to be able to use these ads all season long without having to redesign or have us redeliver a new ad each week.

Star Power

In an effort to keep the ads even more interactive and engaging, we designed the ads so that the client, ESPN, could upload player images into our ads on the fly, personalizing the narrative of the game for the fans. The client could change the highlighted player image based on whoever was more relevant at the time — for example, if Rob Gronkowski was billed to be the face of that week’s matchup but was injured during the week (come on Rob, get it together), the client could change the featured image to Tom Brady’s golden locks at the last second and keep the creative fresh and relevant.

Fan Suffrage

To increase excitement and investment in the weekly matchup even more so, our ads implemented a voting feature that let users vote on who would win each week’s matchup. If a user rolled over the ad, the creative changed to display each team’s most recent stats (as determined by the ESPN API) and allowed users to click the team’s logo to cast their vote. The voting feature proved to be a successful tool, garnering thousands of votes each week.

Reach

This campaign made use of many high-impact placements for the first MNF of the season, a broadcast that featured a double header between the Eagles/Redskins and Texans/Chargers. These placements capitalized on the excitement surrounding the new season and each one implemented the voting system. By the end of Week 1 of Monday Night Football, a total of 38,186 votes had been cast.