ESPN's New College Football Campaign Features Urban Meyer, Myriad Mascots

ESPN is kicking off the '15 college football season "with a marketing campaign featuring Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer and a legion of vengeful Badgers, Tigers, Bulldogs and Ducks," according to Anthony Crupi of AD AGE. ESPN on Friday "began running 'The Message,' a new 60-second spot featuring the reigning national champions' field general as he intones his way through a grimly pragmatic pep talk." In the spot, Meyer tells his team, "They're coming." The camera then "cuts to a rogue's gallery of mascots clattering their silverware under a sign that reads 'Eat Your Enemies.'" The spot was "created in collaboration" with Wieden & Kennedy, N.Y., and is an "extension of last season's 'Who's In?' campaign." While dethroning OSU will "be a key thread in this season's overall narrative, the new ESPN spot teases out at least a dozen other storylines." The "Eat Your Enemies" sign, for example, is a "replica of the one that hangs in Oregon's jocks-only cafeteria." There are also "allusions to the 99-year UCLA-USC rivalry, the mutual antipathy of SEC founding members Georgia and Tennessee, and Jim Harbaugh's return to the maize-and-blue delirium of Ann Arbor's Big House." Along with the 60-second spot, ESPN will also "air two 30-second edits and a pair of 15-second cutdowns." The creative will air until late October, whereupon ESPN will "begin teasing the two Dec. 31 playoff games and the Jan. 11 National Championship tilt" (ADAGE.com, 8/14).