#80: It Ain't Seinfeld

A bunch of stuff to catch up on while you're practicing social distancing!

Apr 27, 2020

MARKETING THING:

The Last Dance — the 10-part documentary about the 1990’s Chicago Bulls dynasty airing on ESPN — has been a rating smash. The documentary averaged 6.1 million viewers during its premiere last Sunday night, making it the most-viewed ESPN documentary ever.

The apparent lack of live sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic led ESPN to make the decision to bump up the series two months. The gambit paid off, as the series has hit with 18 to 49-year-olds, doing about 3.5 million from the sought-after demo. That’s in comparison to ESPN’s year-end numbers, doing 730,000 in that same demo. That’s mostly the audience of NBC’s Sunday Night Football x10 over a period with a lack of competition from other sports programming.

So, how does a network or media platform take advantage of an opportunity like this? ESPN offered exclusive sponsorship of The Last Dance to four brands: State Farm, Reese’s, Facebook, and an unnamed fourth sponsor in the pharmaceutical space.

Learn what those brands did with that valuable real-estate and what their original pre-pandemic rollout plans were. CMO’s-to-be, give this your attention today!

BEHIND ESPN’S SPONSORSHIP APPROACH FOR ITS HIGHLY ANTICIPATED MICHAEL JORDAN DOCUMENTARY

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MUSIC THING:

How Toto’s “Africa” Became the New “Don’t Stop Believin’”

You know how you see a headline and it’s so fascinating that you click immediately without thinking? This is one of those. Also, a reminder that Africa is not a country!