Claudia Pisarek's Marketing Blog

Although in the United States thanksgiving hasn’t even occurred, several companies have released Christmas advertisements already, the National Basketball Association being one of them. The NBA host a Christmas Day game for their fans of all the best players. This event has been called by some as a “mini-super bowl of ads” as many companies advertise during this watched event. Although the NBA receives money from some advertisements and the sales from tickets, they created a new line of uniforms for fans to purchase the solid team colour “BIG Logo” jersey.  This year’s NBA advertisement for the special edition Christmas Day jerseys is called “Jingle Hoops.” Each of the players in the ad is wearing their respective team BIG Logo jerseys. This is the second year that the NBA has done an advertisement like this. Last year’s “BIG:Color” advertisement involved 5 famous NBA players dribbling to the tune of carol of the bells.

Christmas BIG Logo Jersey

The “Jingle Hoops” commercial was released on November 14^th and in the first two days has received close to 4 million views. The combination of skills and basketball with the spirit and tune of “One Horse Open Sleigh,” creates an effective and entertaining advertisement.  Having LeBron James, Kevin Durant,Derrick Rose,James Harden,Steve Nash and Stephen Curry affects the consumer decision process,specifically social factors in the aspiration reference group. NBA has also expanded the product line to warm-up gear and basketballs,and therefore allowing consumers to choose exactly what they want or purchase several.

The NBA wants to maximize their consumer base and will show the ad across the league’s broadcast partners as well as internationally in regions such as China, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Africa and Middle East. (1)

While reading through comments and posts on several websites, I noticed that many individuals really enjoyed the ad but do not like the sleeved jerseys. This could potentially cause a decrease in the sales. However, for the consumer segment that just watches the NBA and not necessarily play the sport, the design might not affect their decision and would still rely on the aspirational social aspect.

(1)    http://www.nba.com/lakers/releases/131114biglogo_uniform

In his blog post, Dale Buss presents a new series of advertisements launched by Dodge. Dodge is advertising their new brand extension or as it’s said in the commercials “new member of the family.” This partnership campaign allowed Dodge to leverage the humor of Anchorman in order to help attract and maintain attention while the Anchorman franchise receives publicity for their new movie. Dodge uses a popular form of brand licencing by using a created character, in this case, Ron Burgundy.¹ The advertisement focuses on the demonstrating features in an easy, appealing instead of a direct verbal dictation of features such as this Chevrolet Cruze commercial. Furthermore, the advertisements affect consumers’ decision heuristics by creating an amusing and enjoyable product presentation. This allows dodge to be one of the first brands to appear in consumers’ retrieval sets. For individuals who are aware of Anchorman and find it humorous, fit into a psycho-graphic segmentation that Dodge can benefit from in selling this product.

What is even better about this campaign is the diversity is presents. There isn’t one commercial that is played over and over but a whole variety on their youtube page.

This campaign has evident results of success, as Dale mentions which is seen by the increase of sales by 59 percent.  Additionally, it is mentioned in the blog post that Dodge states there is an “80 percent increase in web traffic.” The large amount of short ads, conveniently located all together on youtube, provide all consumers, whether planning on purchasing a vehicle or not, to watch all the videos. This also provides Dodge with secondary information for their marketing research.

Overall, I think that Dodge’s brand liscencing of Anchorman is great marketing – truly enjoyable and effective.

Lastly, I leave you with my favourite of the commercials: “Gumball Machine” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxWAFOVrYKA

¹ Grewal & Lewy, (2013). Marketing. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.