Breaking down the Top NIL Ad of the year!
Now Presenting This Week in NIL, a newsletter about everything you need to know to keep up with the rapidly changing world of name, image, and likeness in college sports!
This Week in NIL:
📺 Breaking down the Top NIL Ad of the Year from an unlikely source
🎙️ Interview with Vice President, Business Insights & Analytics at Excel Sports Management, Professor at Northwestern Masters In Sports Administration program, and Co-Author of The Sports Strategist, Adam Grossman
👀 Top Deals you need to see from Athlete Airbnbs to a new NIL Podcast
Breaking down the Top NIL Ad of the Year courtesy of a Pediatric Dentistry Practice
The Players:
The Talent: Joshua Paschal, Senior DE at Kentucky, 14 Tackles for Loss and 4 Sacks through 11 games
The Brand: Steckler Pediatric Dentistry
The Creative Team: Creative Caddie
The Inspiration:
In creative fields, there is often a thin line between taking inspiration from the original and plagiarism. There is a clear benefit to taking aspects from one of the most beloved Super Bowl ads of all time - you don't have the risk of running a concept that won't connect with fans. The downside of being called a copycat is real, but the brilliance and originality of this ad really shines through while paying respects to its predecessor.
Ad Breakdown:
In the first 11 seconds, Dr. Steckler sets the scene. A very unlikely source is going to be helping out around the office. The audience is curious and has a reason to keep watching.
0:15 - Paschal slaps a soda out of a kids hand and admonishes him for "bringing sugar coated lies into my house." Shocking? Yes. Hilarious? Absolutely. Not to mention great acting from Paschal.
0:35 - Paschal is giving a lecture on putting away social media and brushing teeth. We are led to believe the parents are going along with the message but they look even more terrified than their kids. Just like just about every scene so far, our expectations are turned upside-down
1:00 - Paschal (in his generic Kentucky Blue Nike Uniform) - is sign spinning on the side of the street. The magic of athlete buy-in.
1:15 - Paschal the… Dentist surprises us yet again with dental knowledge. Great example of keeping the commercial topical while also remaining on-theme.
We end with a nice Terry Tate-esque tackle at the end to leave the audience with a final laugh as they scroll through their feed.
What we learned:
From Paschal's tweet alone, this ad has 480,000 views.
Here is the Google Trends chart for the company (you can guess when the ad aired):
A broken misconception that NIL is only for large sports brands like Nike or Gatorade.
The Value of a Creative Agency like Creative Caddie (8 In The Box also helps out with video content ideas and production - contact us here if you are interested)!
Three questions with Vice President, Business Insights & Analytics at Excel Sports Management, Professor at Northwestern Masters In Sports Administration program, and Co-Author of The Sports Strategist, Adam Grossman
Q: What is your day-to-day role at Excel Sports?
A: "There's three main groups that I work with. One is the brand group/brand team that works on corporate partnerships, primarily from the brand side. So some of the clients we have include Under Armour, Vistaprint, Citibank - so those are the types of companies that we work with. On the property side, that's helping teams leagues, events, athletes, large scale sports organizations monetize partnerships typically by selling partnership rights -- either naming rights or Jersey patch deals or kind of stadium, core stadium assets. We also work with our talent team. This probably applies to the NIL conversation as we are particularly looking at the value of athletes both on the field and off the field and how their contributions generate value either for brands and companies or also for the teams, leagues, events, competitions that they play for."
Q: Misconception about your role or the NIL industry?
A: "The true value of these [NIL] partnerships. In particular, the thesis from starting my company Block Six Analytics (which was acquired by Excel) was using an approach that's more similar to what happens with investment banking or venture capital and private equity. That is what is called asset based modeling or inherent valuation, which is the idea that different assets can have different values even for the same company. The focus is on how assets generate either revenue or profits for a specific company. I mentioned some of the companies that we work with, but let's take two examples which are well known: Citibank and Under Armour. Citibank and Under Armour have very different businesses, very different goals, very different customers, why would they get the same value from the same assets? It's similar to the NIL space: different companies would have different goals that they would try to achieve by working with different athletes.
Q: What trend currently occurs in professional sports branding that will be coming to college athletics?
A: "I think what's interesting is that one of the things that you would see particularly just purely in terms of athletes is that professional athletes because they've grown up with this and the idea of monetizing their name, image, and likeness has existed for a long period of time. There are a lot of professional athletes, not all, but certainly several who understand what do I need to do to maximize my value, whether that's through social media or media appearances, or the various different channels where you can monetize your value. However, NIL is novel for not even just for college athletes, but for high school athletes, or athletes at any level, that are looking to monetize their brands. The idea of athletes being conscious of those opportunities, and taking direct and specific steps to maximize their value I think will be very interesting. And I think that's probably where this is heading to is that college athletes, high school athletes will grow up with this in mind in ways that professional athletes have adjusted to have made a critical part of their way to maximize their own value."
Top NIL Deals you need to 👀
Michigan Running Back Blake Corum gives back to his local community
Oregon athletes x Airbnb Creator house
Linktree "GameFace" Podcast x Chloe Mitchell (not neccesarily a cash deal but certainly more exposure for both parties)