Dive Brief:
- Keurig Dr. Pepper and Disney Advertising are ramping up an ongoing collaboration with new initiatives around enhancing digital fan engagement during the college football season, the companies announced.
- The partnership will include sponsored content across marquee sports programming on Disney-owned properties like ESPN, in-game augmented reality integrations and targeted marketing that leverages retail and media consumption data.
- Digital data and insights will be used to tailor ads that align with a viewer’s fandom, according to a published report. Hardcore fans could see content based on a team or conference, while more casual fans would get more general fare.
Dive Insight:
Deepening Dr. Pepper’s relationship to college football is a top priority, CMO Drew Panayiotou told Ad Age. The executive joined the packaged goods company as its CMO last fall with a mandate to accelerate the company’s digital marketing. The latest iteration of its ongoing collaboration with Disney Advertising sees the CPG marketer build upon Dr. Pepper’s eight-year-old “Fansville,” an episodic campaign set in a fictional college town while leveraging Disney’s advertising and entertainment offerings to extend the sports marketing push.
The companies will bring together proprietary data to develop insights and models to develop personalized content for fans and take advantage of Disney’s internal dynamic content engine to create thousands of versions of ads for audiences. Additional layers of the partnership include weekly integrations during the commercial-free hour of “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN and a documentary-style show covering the 17-year history of the Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway, as well as mixed reality integrations of Fansville series elements into live college football broadcasts on ESPN and ABC.
The goal is to bring fans together with “the right message at the right moment,” Panayiotou said in a statement about the partnership’s evolution. The marketer also expects to take a new approach to media buying based on the lifetime value of an audience, rather than simply media reach.
The news comes as live sports remains a key focus for brands and media/entertainment companies looking to grab the attention of consumers. With competition heating up in the live sports area, Disney recently launched ESPN as a direct-to-consumer streaming service that can be integrated with its Hulu and Disney+ offerings or purchased as a standalone offering. The ESPN streaming service also includes the recently acquired NFL Network and other high-value sports properties.
