ESPN’s “No Other Night is Monday Night” campaign debuted a few weeks ago with the “Double the Football” 30-second TV spot and continues with weekly Monday Night Football topical ads throughout the season.
Created by ESPN Consumer Marketing and Wieden+Kennedy New York with NFL Films, the campaign showcases the marquee players in ESPN’s MNF games, as well as unique home game elements that are part of the NFL atmosphere in cities across the country – from the Atlanta Falcons’ drumline to the famed Lambeau Leap in Green Bay that fans likely will see tonight during the Kansas City Chiefs versus Packers game (8:15 p.m., ESPN).
As a complement to the television efforts, ESPN Marketing’s internal Creative Services team created a collection of MNF posters (see gallery above). Designed by Matt Juskiewicz, the 16 posters highlight each city that will host a MNF game this fall.
Associate marketing manager Marcus Lynam spoke with Front Row about the unique collection of posters.
How did the idea for the posters come about?
This summer we talked a lot about how Monday Night Football is similar to a concert tour. It’s a traveling carnival, and each city gets excited when [analyst] Jon Gruden, [commentator] Mike Tirico, [reporter] Lisa Salters and MNF come to town. We wanted to celebrate each city that plays host to MNF this season, and we felt this would be a cool tie-in to our ‘No Other Night Is Monday Night’ TV campaign. We wanted to celebrate each city that plays host to MNF this season and showcase the great fans, traditions, landmarks, etc. in each of those cities.
How did you decide what images to include in each poster?
We wanted stadium shots or landmark images that really brought out the culture of each city. A lot of the images we chose have a similar feel to the type of shots we plan to use in our TV spots.
How are the posters being distributed?
We printed over 14,000 posters. The main recipients include local restaurants and bars in each local market, radio stations and the teams themselves. The hope is all of these places will distribute and display them throughout the season. We also sent posters to team bars in New York City. Manhattan is home to a bar (or bars, in some cases) for each NFL team’s fan base, so we included them in the distribution plan.
Internally, we wanted ESPN employees to be able to take home a poster of their favorite team, too. Posters were provided to ESPN offices in Bristol, New York, Charlotte, Los Angeles and Seattle.
What kind of reaction have you received?
People love the posters. We’ve had bars in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Denver and other cities reach out already about getting more sent their way or having a digital copy available to put on their social sites. We’ve also had employees email us asking for extras because they wanted to give them out as Christmas gifts.
