YouTube has a little surprise for NFL fans tuning into this weekend’s New York Giants vs. Buffalo Bills game on Saturday. And like most good surprises, it involves cats.
On Saturday during the preseason football game, the streamer will run a 30-second ad called “Dueling Cats” featuring a nod to the Keyboard Cat meme that, according to KnowYourMeme, first went viral around 2009 on—where else?—YouTube.
The ad promotes YouTube’s upcoming stream of a live NFL game, the Sept. 5 regular season kick-off match featuring the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Los Angeles Chargers held in São Paulo, Brazil, which marks the first time YouTube will stream a live NFL game for free to consumers. The ad featuring two Keyboard Cats wearing jerseys jamming out on their respective keyboards, which hearkens back to the early days of viral memes and also serves as a throwback to YouTube’s 2023 Super Bowl campaign when it announced a YouTube-NFL Sunday ticket partnership that first brought NFL matches to paying subscribers on the platform.
Wes Harris, YouTube’s marketing director, said the goal behind the ad is designed to communicate to audiences the first-of-its-kind stream that the Sept. 5 game will represent.
“Consumers are not conditioned to watch live NFL on YouTube, and so we really needed to make a statement and drive undeniable linkage that this is a uniquely YouTube experience,” Harris told Marketing Brew. “There’s nothing more immediately recognizable than the Keyboard Cat in terms of instantly thinking about YouTube and signaling that this is a YouTube campaign.”
Plan of attack: The “Dueling Cats” spot, which Harris said will run on various linear TV preseason game broadcasts, marks the first phase of YouTube’s campaign and is meant to drive buzz and awareness, Harris said. The second phase, which will roll out in a few weeks, will feature more traditional promotion designed to convey who’s playing and to remind audiences to tune in on YouTube.
Get marketing news you’ll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
The campaign will run on YouTube, TV, digital, social, email, and international channels, namely on YouTube in other countries, Harris said, and on out-of-home placements in countries including Brazil.
To further promote the game, YouTube is partnering with creators, which it has done in previous NFL seasons, for promotion, Harris said. While the creators have been selected for the campaign, YouTube declined to share the names of the creators they were working with.
YouTube plans to put paid social dollars behind that creator content, he added, and YouTube has plans to integrate creators into the game itself.
All the efforts are in service of commemorating the gravitas of YouTube airing a live NFL game on its platform for the first time, according to Harris.
“This is a watershed moment,” he said.
Zoom out: YouTube’s live broadcast of the NFL game, which was first announced in May, comes amid a highly competitive sports rights space playing out between traditional broadcasters and digital streamers, who all recognize the value of large, engaged audiences that only sports regularly delivers.
This season, in addition to YouTube, NFL games will also be available to watch on Prime Video for the fourth year in a row, as well as on Peacock, Paramount+, and on Netflix. Games will also be available on Disney+ and on ESPN’s upcoming sports-centric app, also called ESPN, as part of a landmark deal inked earlier this week between ESPN and the NFL.
Read the full article here
