There’s a buzz of activity on the floor of an otherwise desolate Barclays Center on a recent September afternoon, a week before NBA training camps open. Other than the calendar, two things are telling us it’s not a basketball warmup, although the wooden floor and backboards are up.
The same brand is on center court and on every sign in the place, along with every scoreboard. There’s only one guy seated in the stands — and he seems to be attracting considerable attention. It’s Dan Patrick, urging those sitting where he is — behind the backboard — to fulfill their obligations as sixth men and women.
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Having Barclays Center for your Continental Tire ad shoot would give anyone a big head, right, Dan Patrick?
Photo by: TERRY LEFTON / STAFF
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“Like the exit row on an airplane, sitting here carries great responsibility,” Patrick says, amid the lights, boom mikes and multitude of equipment and scurrying workers that tell you it’s an ad shoot.
Continental Tire, which has sponsored Patrick’s Fox Sports Radio show for a year or so, is using the former “SportsCenter” anchor in a TV ad for the first time.
Continental is heavily invested in college basketball. Since it’s based in Charlotte, it has rights deals with Duke and North Carolina. But it has 28 college deals total, with teams across six conferences, including the ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12. Continental also sponsors a number of early-season college hoops tournaments, including one at this very arena.
Since you can’t use college athletes as endorsers, Patrick is a bridge across that sizable landscape that stretches from Duke’s Durham, N.C., campus to USC’s Los Angeles environs.
“Every tire brand has stuff going in motorsports,” said Travis Roffler, director of marketing at Continental Tire. “We looked at college basketball 10 years ago and decided while we couldn’t be dominant, we could carve out some good space. The schools are so polarizing to fans, Dan’s a great link for fans in a space that has become very noisy.”
Along with the homage to fans as “Distractors,” another spot is shot about buzzer beaters, in which Patrick himself must make some shots.
“It’s not so much a direct tie to tires but to show that Continental understands the passion of college basketball fans, and ‘DP’ is the connective tissue there,” said Brian Quarles, creative director for rEvolution, Continental’s Chicago-based sports marketing agency, which handled the shoot.
Under the stands between takes, Patrick says he’s choosy about his commercial obligations.
“They wrote these with my voice in mind, which is generally what we’re looking for, along with having some fun,” said Patrick, represented by Reed Bergman’s Playbook Inc., and who also has sponsorship affiliations with Harman Kardon and Dodge Ram.
The ads should break on ESPN and CBS Sports Network college basketball games by the beginning of the season.
“Make some noise, dance around; annoy like the season depends on it,” Patrick advises, before pulling out a colossal cardboard head of himself that’s more than 10 times life size, “because it just might.”
> COLLEGE TRY: Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment has won an RFP to sell media and marketing rights for the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a Division II conference largely composed of historically black colleges and universities. It’s perhaps more intriguing to us, especially after the collection of college rights amassed in recent years by the likes of IMG College and Learfield.
Van Wagner President and CEO Jeff Knapple hired Mike Palisi from Nelligan Sports Marketing two years ago to head a move into college rights. Knapple said this is the latest series of moves into colleges, including a recent signing of Pepperdine, looking broadly to campuswide deals and other new business models and away from guaranteed rights payments — the M.O. of Learfield and IMG College.
> TRUCKIN’: Dentsu Aegis experiential and event marketing shop MKTG has won an agency shootout to design and carry out the mobile marketing tour commemorating the NHL’s 100th anniversary in 2017. Two trucks are scheduled to travel to every NHL market, along with big NHL events like its All-Star Game and outdoor games, and the Stanley Cup playoffs. A minimum of 35 tour stops are planned, starting with the Centennial Classic game Jan. 1 in Toronto.
Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
