For all the talk about basketball being a global game, the sport still means different things to different people in different places. In countries like China or France, NBA may have more leverage as a brand when Yao Ming or Tony Parker is involved, as nationalistic pride takes hold. In hoops-savvy Spain or Brazil, the true global stars of the game and the teams they follow may hold just as much weight. Balancing that mix across cultures can sometimes be difficult for any sport, and even more so for the brands that look to activate against their NBA sponsorship opportunities globally as much as domestically.
This weekend longtime Coke brand Sprite may have come up with one of the more unique engagement platforms to find ways to think locally and act globally when talking NBA, and also tie the whole product activation back to a key NBA event.
Sprite® announced a global search for the best undiscovered basketball talent in the Sprite Uncontainable Game. The brand engaged six NBA players, two mega-stars in Kobe Bryant (Los Angeles Lakers) and LeBron James (Miami Heat), and players who will have solid shelf life in the States but even more oull in their native countries in Andrea Bargnani (Toronto Raptors) from Italy, Al Horford (Atlanta Hawks) from the Dominican Republic, Omri Casspi (Cleveland Cavaliers) from Israel and Serge Ibaka (Oklahoma City Thunder) from the Republic of Congo.
The team will help evaluate, promote and discover 24 amateur ballers who will represent either Team Sudden (players with moves that are strong, forceful and bold) or Team Intense (players who land lean one-handed dunks, execute off the pick-and-roll and drop passes on a dime) in the Sprite Uncontainable Game™ at NBA All-Star 2013 in Houston.
The platform will involve not just a strong digital play, using p;layers’ social media, and having potential talent upload video as well as creating local tryouts to cover any and all opportunities from around the globe.
More than 27 countries are on the Sprite Uncontainable Game search roster including the United States, China, Mexico and a host of European and African nations, which will give the contest legs at a controllable cost with a huge viral push.
For Sprite and its parent company Coca-Cola, the contest reinforces its global impact in relation to sport and business, especially going into an Olympic year where the globality of sport will again come to the forefront, and basketball will play a bigger role even outside of the large NBA window. For the NBA, the contest is another mega-opportunity to reinforce not just its brand but the universality of basketball in general, as the league continues to expand its marketing presence and grassroots growth into new territories.
Some may say that the world we live in today holds very few surprises with talent, and a contest of this size and scope will highlight more flash than talent. However in a sport where instant stardom (at least perceived) came big time in the presence of Jeremy Lin in the past few weeks, the contest could not come at a better time or have more value.
Whether stars are created for the long term is really not the focus. What the focus is is on fun, excitement and a brand looking to expand its footprint even further using the universal language of sport to do so. In this case its a sport with transcendent stars of every level helping build towards an exciting event with new names a year from now.
Slam dunk of a platform from Sprite.
