For the first time since its inception in 1979, the cable sports network ESPN has launched a comprehensive branding campaign. (In the past, the network has advertised specific shows and content.) The new package, titled "Without Sports," began airing in December. Created by Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), New York, the 15-spot effort illustrates how sports have come to define so many aspects of everyday life.
"When you think of ESPN, you think of SportsCenter," says W+K’s Brian Cooper—who produced the "Without Sports" campaign—about the network’s well known sports newscast. "In a way, that’s almost become their brand campaign. They made a decision that now was the time to say something beyond what we’re used to seeing—the funny, sarcastic SportsCenter spot. That’s still a part of this campaign, but ESPN is so much bigger than that, and they really wanted to get that message out there."
The production on the campaign, handled by Cooper and fellow W+K producer Chris Noble, was a giant undertaking that required a very tight schedule. A number of directors worked on the spots, including Errol Morris of bicoastal/international @radical.media ("Next Year"); Kieran Walsh of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures, ("Gathering"); and Stacy Wall of bicoastal Epoch Films ("Coach"). Locations including Madrid, Boston and Long Island, N.Y., were utilized for the stylistically varied campaign.
"In the beginning, we were looking at maybe one production company with many different directors," says Kim Schoen, an art director at W+K. "But as we looked through the reels, and we started having calls with people, passions really came through on particular spots. We thought it was best to go with the directors who were the most passionate about each concept."
"We made a conscious decision to open it up," relates Cooper. "Then it came down to Chris and I working with the client, our account team and each individual production company to find a way to make it all happen, since we had taken economy of scale and thrown it out the window."
"It’s definitely not the easy way to do it," adds Noble, "but creatively, it’s best way to do it."
"Kim Schoen and [copywriter] Kevin Proudfoot, the two creatives on the job, looked at sports fans and how everyone is so different," continues Cooper. "[For example] are you a stats guy or a just a fan of competition? The way each spot is so different represents how each person can be so different."
The Spots
The differences that Cooper refer to can be seen in the contrast between "Nelly," directed by David Palmer of bicoastal/international Partizan, and "Next Year," directed by Morris. The former ad could pass for a music video, while the latter resembles documentary footage. "Nelly" features the hip-hop star and a cadre of scantily clad female dancers performing in jerseys, and ends with the tag, "Without sports, there’d be nothing to wear." Meanwhile, "Next Year" shows a Red Sox fan standing in falling snow, lamenting his team’s persistent inability to win a World Series. However, he asserts, the odds are it’s bound to happen someday. The tag: "Without sports, there’d be no next year."
"A Nelly fan, a fan of hip-hop [who’s] got all the great sportswear out there is an outspoken type of fan," says Cooper. "Or you’ve got the Red Sox fan in the ‘Next Year’ spot. He’s been living those horrible stats since he was a little kid."
"Sports affects culture in so many different ways," says Noble. "That’s the beauty of doing a branding campaign—there are so many different opportunities because you’re trying to reach so many different people. We reached out globally with the campaign."
Soccer may be the world’s most popular game, and "Gathering," directed by Walsh, shows just how ardent soccer fans can be. The Spanish-language spot (with English subtitles) is about a family get-together. As everyone converses, a match between traditional rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona plays on the living room TV. However, not everyone in this family unit is rooting for the same team—arguments erupt over goals and penalties. Once the game is over, the atmosphere at the gathering goes from lively to awkward. The tag playfully asks, "Without sports, what would bring us together?"
"We knew that [‘Gathering’] was going to be a cinema spot," relates Cooper. "We knew we were going to approach it in a cinematic way. We said, ‘Why don’t we try and make this a scene from a great film?’"
W+K chose Walsh after considering a number of feature and commercial directors. "We were digging through reels just to find other options, and we came across Kieran Walsh, who did these two spots that really stand out, one for HSBC and one for Comfort Inn," relates Cooper. "We looked at them and said, ‘Those look like mini-movies.’ [They were] so well cast and so well shot that they jumped off the screen."
In addition to his directorial skills, Walsh also brought a fluent command of Spanish—"Gathering" was shot in Spain—and an intimate knowledge of soccer culture to the project. "Instead of coming back with just a treatment, he came back with back-stories on every single character you see," notes Cooper. "He basically wrote what could have been a great twenty-minute short. He’s someone we’d never worked with and, honestly, had never considered for anything before. He stepped in and delivered a really beautiful piece of work."
While Walsh was new to Cooper, he also worked with directors he had previously collaborated with. For instance, Spike Lee of Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Brooklyn, N.Y., with whom Cooper had done some Brand Jordan work, directed "Teammates" for the campaign. The ad features reminiscences of Brooklyn Dodgers players Jackie Robinson and Peewee Reese, as well as archival footage of the two athletes. "There were definitely a few easy choices [in choosing directors for the campaign], like Spike Lee doing ‘Teammates,’" says Cooper. "Spike has been developing a Jackie Robinson story for years, and is friends with all these baseball players from the old Brooklyn Dodgers that are still alive today."
Another familiar face was director Stacy Wall, who helmed "Coach," which shows sports fans yelling instructions at their teams on TV and radio. "We’ve all worked for him as a creative director," says Cooper. (Prior to launching a directing career, Wall was creative director of W+K’s New York office.) "It was just a matter of trust, and knowing we’d be able to collaborate with him in that process, particularly in casting."
the process
Faith in the spotmaking process was key throughout the ESPN project; despite the campaign’s size, the producers worked without storyboards. "We rarely do boards ourselves," says Cooper. "We go through a process, and we like to develop a final product with the director. Every one of these spots had a really great, tight script. Kim Schoen said to every director, ‘This is just a starting point. You read the script and you let us know what you would bring to it.’"
"Shooting like that is more difficult," says Noble. "You know it’s going to be harder in the edit room. Everything is going to be discussed and nuanced, but that’s what makes great work. You have to know that the process itself is the board."
"On every shoot, magic happened on set," adds Cooper. "What you see on screen reflects some beautiful moments that occurred unscripted."
Cooper cites "Shelfball/Medical Condition," helmed by the directing collective Acne of bicoastal RSA USA, as a good example of this process-oriented method. The humorous commercial shows office workers playing a game they’ve invented—it resembles baseball and requires landing a ball on a shelf—and squabbling over its rules. The ad ends with the tag, "Without sports, a shelf would just be a shelf."
"Acne came up with the best way to shoot it," says Cooper. "They cast four or five principals. We didn’t really know, going in, who the main principals were going to be. The way they interacted on set allowed us to make the decision after we had started rolling. Then it was something like fourteen hours of improv."
All of the campaign’s spots were cut at the New York office of Mad River Post, with the exception of "Chowder," a SportsCenter-themed ad directed by David Shane of bicoastal/international hungry man, which debuted on the Super Bowl. That spot was edited at MacKenzie Cutler, New York, where a number of other SportsCenter commercials have been cut.
Why did W+K pick Mad River for the bulk of the job? "Unlike the production side, where it was like, ‘Let’s just see how many directions we can go,’ we knew that with editorial, everything was going to be jam-packed in between shoots," Cooper says. "There was no way we could shop that around. We narrowed it down to a place that had an incredible roster of talent and was going to get behind the job one hundred ten percent. Then it came down to seeing which editor was available and assigning them to a spot."
When asked what Cooper and Noble brought to the massive campaign, Schoen half-jokingly says, "Besides their lives and blood, sweat and tears? They had a commitment, like we did, to making the best work possible."
