ESPN to kick off brand campaign during Jarryd Hayne’s NFL debut for 49ers today

ESPN will use Jarryd Hayne’s first league game for the San Francisco 49ers as the launch pad for its first locally produced campaign for four years.

The sports network will broadcast the game live from 12.15pm today with expectations high of a bumper audience for the former Parramatta Eels star’s NFL debut.

The brand campaign will kick off within the broadcast.

ESPN worked with content agency Now We Collide to develop the campaign in a move to cement growing interest in American sport among its core young male demographic.

The 60-second video merges pivotal sporting moments from the world of basketball and American Football with murals drawn by graffiti artist Russell Fenn, better know as Sofles.

The network hopes the time-lapsed amalgamation of sports and street art will create a social buzz among the 18 to 34-year-old demographic and prompt them to share the content across their networks.

Marketing manager John Webb told Mumbrella last month it wanted to create a campaign that was shareable.

“It’s one thing to make a great TV commercial that we can run on our own platforms but we wanted to build something that will become shareable that strikes gold and potentially goes viral,” he said.

“We wanted to design a campaign that goes beyond our hardcore fan based and hit those casual fans who are on the fringes who we want to bring more into the network.

“Using Now We Collide and Sofles was the perfect way to design something that we could use on Instagram and Facebook and would go out to twitter and hit the demographic that are congregating on those platforms.”

Steve Jones