The National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) Finals are over, and prestige TV is heating up. On the new Who Won the Week, we break down the brands that won big en route to the Boston Celtics’ 18th NBA title and look forward to the highly anticipated third season of The Bear. Join EDO Content Marketing Manager Aaron Taube and VP of Brand Partnerships Rebecca Sandidge as they dive into the data to reveal how the likes of Taco Bell, Burger King, Kia America, Hyundai Motor Company (현대자동차), and State Farm are making waves with effective TV advertising. All that, plus Rebecca’s reaction to her beloved C’s taking home the O’Brien trophy. Time Stamps: (-9:31) NBA Finals ads deliver 40x the impact of an average primetime ad (-7:25) Taco Bell outperforms average NBA Finals advertiser by 66% (-6:13) State Farm outperforms average NBA Finals advertiser by 157% (-5:35) The Bear returns for its third season on Hulu (-3:25) Burger King ads during The Bear reruns on FX were 45% more effective than the average advertiser running during the program
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Who Won the Week, your weekly dose of TV advertising, news and analysis. My name is Aaron Taub, and I am joined today by Rebecca Sandage, a woman who some people are saying was the 13th person who carried the Boston Celtics to the NBA championship. She's also Edios, VP of brand partnerships. Rebecca. How you doing today? I'm doing great. Still basked in the glory of a championship here in Boston. And you're right. I mean, I worked really, really hard this season. Really, You know, I'm gonna take that credit for the Celtics win. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, go over to tell us about the experience. You know, we talked a lot of smack here about the Celtics on past episodes. Now is your time. What would you like to say in this moment of victory? You know, as as a very strong Boston fan for all the sports, I know I'm in the minority at Edo. It's a lonely place, but, you know. I just, I'm, I'm just really happy. My kids, just seeing them watch the Celtics win as, I mean, there's nothing better than that. So we're really happy around here. It feels like it was a long time ago. It was only a few days, really. But yeah, we missed last week's show. So I wanted to give you the platforms. You have two young boys, right? What was the experience like for them as young Celtic fanatics to take this in? I mean, the next day they just kept watching replays, replays on YouTube, like, you know, just they've been pretending to be Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown. A lot of debates around who really deserved the MVP award. But yeah, it's beginning of a lot of fun championships to come for that. Might think that's lovely. I'm happy, happy for the whole clan and. Yeah, uh, so let's talk about these NBA Finals, uh, from from an advertising perspective. How did they do for, for, for the brands that advertised during them? I mean, not a surprise really. Great environment. A lot of people were tuning into this. I think we saw said that the finals on ABC outperformed the typical. Non sports benchmark by 86%. You know, 86% more engagement observed for advertisers in the NBA Finals. Another way to look at it was that one airing on the NBA Finals on ABC was equivalent to 40 non sports primetime airings. So really Big Bang for the buck, really high impact environment, really some good advertisers to really taking advantage of that super engaged audience really tuning in to watch Boston one at all. Yeah, that's that's, that's great. That's great. And of course, when we say engagement, we're talking about consumers taking action like searches, website visits, app downloads in the minutes after the add errors. That's right, can help brands grow their share of search and their category which has been linked to growing market share and studies and things like that. So that's why we use those metrics to understand the impact of ads and who are some of the brands that stood out during these NBA Finals. So we saw a variety of different. Categories. A lot of brands really. Like I said, taking advantage of this great platform where viewers are super tuned in, they can't take their eyes off the TV set. They're gonna be searching for the brands that they're exposed to in that kind of environment. So a lot of different categories. So we saw Kia and Hyundai both have really strong performances in the finals. And then Taco Bell, Burger King, another popular kind of category that tends to advertise a lot in life. Sports. Yeah. So talk about, let's just talk about them for a second. So they outperformed the standard advertiser in the NBA Finals by 66%. So viewers of the NBA Finals were 66% more likely to look For more information about Taco Bell after seeing an ad there then compared to the standard advertiser in the game. Got it. Yeah. Taco Bell doing a good job of positioning themselves as sort of a brand for like, cool creative types. I know in the past that they had like a pop punk band kind of showing them going to the Taco Bell and some of these ads were DJ who's talking about how, you know, there's $3 value menu helps. It saves me time. It's delicious, saves me money and allows me to get back to doing what I love. So I think that's that's a cool, cool line of. Yeah, you know, and I think promotion, it makes sense. You know, people tend to watch sports in groups. It's a very social setting. You're ordering food, you're not. Going to be, you know, cooking during the show. Really. So I think that kind of like that's that's a really nice fit of this category in that kind of viewing environment. Got it. Yeah. Any other advertisers that stood out during these finals? State Farm. I mean, they've been really killing it for a while now, doing really well in sports, basketball in particular. But there are another advertiser that we've seen really pop and drive a huge spike in engagement. In the NBA Finals, so their spike was 157%, so 157% more likely to drive consumers to engage with the brand versus the typical advertiser in the Finals. Cool. Yeah. And so I guess, um, moving from a program where people are not going to be cooking during the games, as you mentioned to show that may inspire. Some new chefs to to try to whip some things up in the kitchen. The bear season yeah premieres tomorrow at 9:00 PM I know you're a big fan I'm I'm the I'm a little behind on the prestige television, but I just moved to New Jersey so I'm trying to acclimate by working my way through season two of The Sopranos. So little behind. I'm new I'm trying to understand the lived experiences of my new neighbors and you gotta watch the bear it is it might be my. Favorite show on TV right now? So it's launching tomorrow night on Hulu. We've seen. So it's produced by FX. FX has been airing seasons one and two kind of to, I think, build a little bit more buzz, build up some momentum, catch people up before season 3 launches. And it seems like it's really working because we've seen the past seasons on FX that have been airing recently do really, really well. For an advertiser perspective, you know, advertisers are finding a really engaged audience there. So I think that's a really strong sign for Hulu and everybody that's gonna be airing in the Bear season three moving forward, so. One of those advertisers that we've seen, again, Taco Bell and Burger King. So we were just talking about a little bit like kind of some loose contextual synergy in a way with sports where it just kind of fits the mood of the audience at the time. I think this is a similar effect that we're seeing for restaurant brands in The Bear, which is, you know, is about a restaurant, right? It's kind of really tapping into that foodie culture. Harmony the chef is, is just a star. So we're seeing Taco Bell and Burger King again, Dr. Spikes among that audience as well. So these are just two brands that we've seen just do so so well lately with the NBA Finals and the bear. Yeah. So Burger King was 45%. Stronger on engagement driving those outcomes compared to the average advertiser on the bear on FX this past month, so. Definitely some good contextual synergy there. Awesome. Yeah. And let me just tell me a little bit about the distribution strategy for For the Bear. So it's it's, it's released on Hulu and it and it's and it's a binge format, right? The whole season drops at once. What does that mean, I guess for the streamers and the advertisers when it's sort of a binge versus a sort of weekly situation? Yeah, I think that's such a good question. And I guess nobody really knows what would have happened if it had been released periodically, but we do know that. Disney has taken this strategy of releasing all the episodes at once. I think they're doing that because there is so much buzz. You wanna really take advantage of that. They're probably going to see a huge, huge spike in ratings. I think consumers, I think viewers tend to like the bin strategy because they have a little bit more control over, you know, when they watch the episodes. And especially for a show like The Bear, which I know you haven't seen it, but it's so addictive. It's got kind of like this like anxiety inducing, kind of like feeling about it and it just makes you want to watch more and kind of figure out what happens next. So the type of content that the Bear is I think is just such a good match for the binge release. And it's such a popular series that a lot of people will binge it this week. They're going to talk about it. They'll probably pick up some new audiences after. Everybody's like, oh, you know, I'm feel like the only person in the world that hasn't seen the Bear. So it seems like it's going to be a winning strategy for them. Awesome. Yeah, I do. You get anxious as a as a viewer, like I've gotta finish this. I gotta knock this out right away before everyone's talking about it and I get spoiled. Do you feel like you have to clear? I don't feel like that. Like I don't really have the time to watch literally like 9 episodes in a row. It's not like a competitive sport. Like I gotta finish before everyone else. For me personally, maybe for other people it is, but it's more just that each episode leaves you, I think, wanting more and to like learn more about the characters and see what happens next. All right, very cool. Well, we will have to check that out. Yeah. Anything else you'd like to add on the Bear or the NBA Finals or I know the NHL Finals just wrapped up. Congratulate. I know tons of people watching this are big Florida Panthers fans, so, you know, congratulations to them. Boston can't have them all, I guess. Boston can't have them all. We'll share for that. And so, yeah, so next week we'll be talking a little bit about the globalization of sports. We've got the NBA Draft coming up. We got the NHL Draft coming up. We got the EUR and Copa. America and soon the Olympics. And we'll also have a spotlight on some of our top ads in the first half of 2024. Rebecca, congratulations again. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see all of you next week. Great. Thanks, Aaron, see you later.To view or add a comment, sign in