The synergy between digital marketing and sports is undeniable. Done well, sports marketing campaigns can capture the hearts and minds of sports fans. Brands that use sponsorships or digital promotions have increased affinity and loyalty with their audiences.
Advancing technologies and multichannel approaches are transforming both sports and sports businesses. A potent mix. But what are the best examples of digital sports marketing? And what are the lessons we can learn? And why are they some of the most creative marketing campaigns around?
To mark Mental Health Day 2023, Norwich City and the Samaritans released a poignant ad urging people to check in on one another. It travelled well beyond the club's own channels and earned praise from UEFA.
The ad follows two Norwich City fans during a football game, highlighting their contrasting attitudes. While one fan exudes excitement, the other remains quiet. The narrative unfolds as it is implied that the seemingly cheerful friend has passed away, leaving his friend to enter the stadium alone and drape his scarf over the empty chair, emphasising the importance of checking in on loved ones.
The campaign addresses the sobering reality of mental health, particularly among men. Fans commended Norwich City for raising awareness, with many sharing personal experiences and expressing gratitude for the club's support.
Public figures like Roman Kemp and Vivianne Miedema lauded the ad as a progressive portrayal of mental health awareness. The initiative aligns with efforts to destigmatise mental health discussions, leveraging football as a coping mechanism and fostering supportive communities within the sport.
Norwich City provided mental health resources and the Samaritans hotline, reinforcing their commitment to mental health support. Additionally, the club auctioned off shirts featuring the Samaritans logo, with proceeds benefiting suicide prevention efforts.
This campaign catalysed important conversations about mental health, challenging misconceptions and emphasizing the significance of checking in and supporting one another.
Remember this? Years in the making, the record-breaking “Space Dive” drew the biggest concurrent audience YouTube had ever seen in 2012, at more than 8 million concurrent viewers. Across the world, millions huddled around desks, watched from phones, and sat transfixed in classrooms as Austrian Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space into blue oblivion. And the purpose of this dramatic enterprise? A marketing stunt. An amazing undertaking, yes. A fantastic advertisement for Austrian energy drink brand Red Bull? Double yes.
What we liked about this particular campaign was its innovative use of live streaming. It paved the way for further streaming on social media and showed – if done right – it could be another tool in the digital marketers’ arsenal.
It also matched the ethos of Red Bull’s brand. A marketing strategy that uses social media for maximum effect, capturing people with equal parts amazement and awe. Whether through the traditional sponsoring of athletes, extreme stunts, or the full scale ownership of successful sports teams like Red Bull Racing.
The only slight dampener on the Red Bull Stratos success story? The relationship between Skydiver Felix and his employer nosedived after he failed to mention the name of the energy drink before he jumped. Ouch.
Orange, in collaboration with the French Football Federation, released a groundbreaking ad to combat negative attitudes towards women's football, coinciding with the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
Produced by Marcel, Paris, the "Bleues' Highlights" ad initially showcases renowned male football stars' exceptional skills, then seamlessly transitions to reveal moments featuring players from the women’s French team, achieved through deepfake technology.
The ad delivers a powerful message: "At Orange, when we support Les Bleus, we support les Bleues," underscoring the telco's commitment to French football in its entirety.
Launched across various sports publications and TV channels, the campaign drew attention in the press and on prime-time TV news. It also received endorsements from notable figures, including the French Minister of Sports and World Cup-winning athletes.
What sets this campaign apart is its positive approach, reframing perceptions of women's football to highlight the team's excellence. It emphasizes that true love for football transcends gender boundaries, promoting inclusivity and appreciation for skill irrespective of gender.
By celebrating the women's team's abilities, the initiative challenges gender biases in football while maintaining authenticity. It serves as a testament to the effectiveness of campaigns addressing societal issues without resorting to negativity, demonstrating that showcasing excellence can effectively counter misconceptions.
Back for the 2018 Winter Olympics, P&G’s “Thank You, Mom” is masterful marketing. It’s an awesome example of how a sponsor can craft a link between (let’s be honest, some fairly boring) products and the sporting event it backs. It’s an emotional masterpiece, and one in a series of ‘mother’ themed ads by the consumer goods giant.
At the heart of the campaigns is emotional storytelling. P&G positions its products as the enabler for mothers to support Olympian heroes. The 2018 Winter Games campaign focused on “love over bias”. According to P&G, it “celebrates mum’s role as her child’s first and greatest advocate. The one who sees her child’s potential regardless of how others see them”. Remove the blurb, and it’s still an ad campaign selling cleaning household brands, but it’s bloody brilliant at what it does.
In 2019 Unibet took the use of data feeds by the scruff of the neck and totally upgraded its display advertising offering. Out of the sports betting companies on the market, Unibet is well known for supplying insightful information to customers in its sports marketing campaigns, whether that is through its digital video, social channels, or blog.
What it did that was so unique this time around, was that it took its insightful data and combined it with its live dynamic odds within its display advertising and landing pages.
Indeed, for a long time, iGaming brands have used data feeds and dynamic content to supply live odds or reactive content but what Unibet did with this project was inject value. It created a new dynamic data feed for its display advertising called “Value Stats”.
This new dynamic feature – used across Unibet banners and landing pages – provides smart insights based on the games highlighted by another data feed in the ad. The value stat data feed is tailored for each market and according to Unibet resulted in increased ad performance. This sports marketing campaign was created and controlled via the Bannerflow creative automation platform too.
Indeed, according to Head of Acquisition Optimization, at Kindred Group (parent company of Unibet), Max Taub: “It’s really important to have this live and reactive data, as it makes a huge impact.” And it’s something many other industries and display advertisers looking to create remarkable campaigns should be doing too!
Want more display ideas to borrow? Browse our best banner ad examples, or see how retail teams use the same build-once approach at Coop and Boozt.
For Super Bowl LVIII, the NFL partnered with Sphere Studios to present exclusive custom content on the Exosphere, Sphere's fully programmable LED exterior, during Super Bowl Week. The collaboration extended to CBS Sports' coverage of the event on CBS and Paramount+.
Executives from both sides pitched it as a new Las Vegas landmark doing something new for the sport. The content included a countdown clock, a welcome visual, and graphics for the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, and the Sphere also showed every Super Bowl ring. During the game, CBS Sports cut to the Sphere in curated moments, showing off the display plane inside the venue as well.
The campaign paired Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) with multichannel coverage, so the experience carried from the Las Vegas skyline to TV screens and streaming platforms.
The Sphere has also hosted other sports-related collaborations, from the NBA Summer League to Formula One, which shows sports marketers have a new way to get their brands seen.
Paddy Power’s use of social media is well documented. It’s a staple of many people’s feeds and unique in terms of sports marketing campaigns. It produces seemingly round-the-clock Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat posts. When it comes to creating content, the betting company thinks like a publisher. And like a publisher, its success comes from the tone of voice and attitude, which runs throughout its advertising and social engagement. Whether print, online display, or video, you recognize a Paddy Power ad.
On its social effort, Paddy Powers' head of engagement, Paul Mallon, has commented: “I can’t think of many brands who produce the standard of in-house social and editorial content that we do”. And he’s right.
Without focusing too hard on one particular campaign, Paddy Power’s ads and posts all have the same traits: mischief, disruption, and controversy. Whether trending when pretending to chop down the Amazon rainforest in support of England in the 2014 World Cup. Or tweeting on the delightful haircuts of footballers Aguero and Falcao. Paddy Power wants to engage with its punters in real-time. It’s a cost-effective way to build brand awareness, increase affinity with the brand, and differentiate themselves from the competition. And that’s why we salute Paddy Power’s use of social media.
Somewhere, someone at 20th Century Fox thought that linking up with Manchester United for cross-promotional purposes was a good idea. How better to sell films than to parachute Wayne Rooney into trailers? The result is predictably horrific. Let me explain, Wayne Rooney is a footballer and not an actor (and he’s terrible). Respected Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw, when analysing a Deadpool tie-in, commented: “It is genuinely difficult to tell if this intentionally seeks to align the pansexuality of Deadpool with what some have seen as the homoerotic quality of footballers’ goal celebrations”. Indeed.
Ham-fisted in the extreme, placing Manchester United stars into trailers for blockbusters isn’t proving a massive success. Take this attempt, a mash-up of Rooney and the (surprisingly good) Wolverine film Logan; replies to the video on social media include “delete” and “why?”. Result! With a huge social following, it’s understandable why 20th Century Fox wanted to join forces with Man United. It’s just a pity the results are utterly awful.
(Thankfully, for movie lovers everywhere, the partnership between Man United and 20th Century Fox ended long ago.)
One more thing! If you get the chance, check out how Italian football team Roma combined its awesome signing videos with adverts for missing children in 2019. It is a smart idea that turns a routine announcement into a cause people want to share.
So there you have it, a selection of exceptional (and one not so great) digital sports marketing campaigns. Each campaign is notably different, yet they all have one thing in common: unique engagement with a target audience.
The truth is, we love remarkable sports advertising here at Bannerflow, especially those that involve online display. The technology layer matters as much as the idea, which is why we cover how modern teams produce and scale creative like this in our guide to creative automation. Here are the lessons we think marketers should take from these campaigns:
One more thing: Stay on your toes. If you’re following a social strategy for a major sporting event, there’s the problem of hashtag hijacking. And with issues of brand safety ever more important, it pays to keep a watchful eye over your social feeds during major sports marketing campaigns.
A sports marketing campaign works when it ties one clear idea to something fans already care about. The best examples here, from Norwich City to Red Bull Stratos, pair an emotional or surprising hook with a format built for the channel, then stay consistent with the brand's own voice.
This article covers seven: Norwich City's mental health ad, Red Bull Stratos, Orange and the French Football Federation, P&G's Thank You, Mom, Unibet's Value Stats, the NFL at the Sphere, and Paddy Power's social content. Between them they cover emotion, live streaming, dynamic data, DOOH and social.
Brands feed live data such as odds, scores or fixtures into display creative so the ad changes with the game. Unibet's Value Stats feed is the example above: it paired insight with live odds in banners and landing pages, and it ran through a creative automation platform instead of manual resizing.
Build each creative once as a template, connect it to a data feed, and let the platform produce every size, language and market version. That is what creative automation does, and it matters most in sport, where fixtures and results change fast. Our guide to creative automation explains how it works.
Hashtag hijacking and brand safety. During a major event, rivals and critics can pile onto a sponsor's hashtag, and ads can land next to content you would not choose. Monitor social feeds in real time and set brand safety controls before the event starts.
Running sports creative across many formats and markets? Book a Bannerflow demo to see how teams build once and scale to every size. Supermarket brands do the same every week: see why supermarket brands use Bannerflow.